Big chill to last two more weeks

Course closed sign in snow at Buckpool Golf Club

Three weeks of snow has brought chaos across the country

Scotland could be set for another fortnight of freezing winter weather, the Met Office has warned.

The country has already suffered its third coldest December since records began in 1914.

The average mean temperature for last month was the lowest since 1981, which had the coldest December on record.

The Met Office said December 2009 was even colder overall than December 1995, when temperatures fell to record lows of -27C in some part of the country.

Heavy snow and freezing temperatures has caused chaos across Scotland over the past three weeks, with hundreds of schools closed and motorists facing hazardous conditions on the roads.

There are no signs of any let up for the next 10 days or two weeks

Ross Melville
Met Office

Ross Melville, a public weather advisor at the Met Office, told the BBC Scotland news website it was "very unusual" for Scotland to suffer such a prolonged period of severe winter weather.

He said: "We can all remember far deeper snow and colder temperatures, but it has maybe lasted a week or so and then milder weather comes in and the snow disappears.

"From our point of view it is more how long this current spell has lasted that has been so unusual, and it is the prolonged nature of it that has caused so much disruption.

"There has been a cycle of snow showers which means roads are closed, then they are cleared, then it snows again and freezes over.

Coldest temperature

"Even if it stopped now we would think it had been different from the norm, but the fact is it is due to go on. There are no signs of any let up for the next 10 days or two weeks."

Mr Melville said the average mean temperature in Scotland in December was -0.3C, the third lowest for the month ever recorded and the lowest since 1981, which had a record low of -0.7C.

The winters of 1981-82 and 1995-96 are generally considered to have been the worst in living memory, with the mercury plummeting to -27.2C at Braemar on 10 January 1982 and at Altnaharra on 30 December 1995 - the lowest temperatures ever recorded in the UK.

In comparison, the lowest temperature recorded so far this winter has been -18C, also at Braemar.

The UK had its coldest winter for 13 years in 2008-09, bucking a recent trend of mild temperatures, the Met Office has previously said.