page_title: Climate of the United Kingdom
section_title: Autumn
hierarchical_section_title: Climate of the United Kingdom / Seasons / Autumn
caption_attribution_description: English: UK &amp; Ireland plant hardiness zone map
context_page_description: The United Kingdom straddles the higher mid-latitudes between 49° and 61° N on the western seaboard of Europe. Since the UK is always in or close to the path of the polar front jet stream, frequent changes in pressure and unsettled weather are typical. Many types of weather can be experienced in a single day. In general the climate of the UK is cool and often cloudy and rainy, and high temperatures are infrequent.
  The climate in the United Kingdom is defined as a temperate oceanic climate, or Cfb on the Köppen climate classification system, a classification it shares with most of north-west Europe. Regional climates are influenced by the Atlantic Ocean and latitude. Northern Ireland, Wales and western parts of England and Scotland, being closest to the Atlantic Ocean, are generally the mildest, wettest and windiest regions of the UK, and temperature ranges here are seldom extreme. Eastern areas are drier, cooler, and less windy, and also experience the greatest daily and seasonal temperature variations. Northern areas are generally cooler and wetter, and have slightly larger temperature ranges than southern areas.
context_section_description: Autumn in the United Kingdom lasts from September to November. The season may be a little more unsettled; as cool polar air moves southwards, it can meet warm air from the tropics and produce an area of disturbance along which the country lies. This can combine with the warm ocean due to heating throughout the spring and summer, to produce some unsettled weather. In addition, the land may become colder than the ocean, resulting in significant amounts of condensation and rain-bearing clouds.
  Atlantic depressions at this time can become intense, and winds of hurricane force (greater than 119 km/h or 74 mph) can be recorded. Western areas, closest to the Atlantic, experience these severe conditions more often than eastern areas. Autumn, particularly the latter part, is often the stormiest time of the year. One particularly intense depression was the Great Storm of 1987. A very severe storm also affected the UK on 27 October 2002. At Mumbles Head near Swansea, a maximum sustained wind speed of over 123 km/h was recorded: equivalent to a Category 1 hurricane. The autumn of 2013 was also littered with severe storms, including the St. Jude's Storm on 28 October 2013.
  Autumn can sometimes be a cold season - in recent years, very low temperatures and heavy snowfall have been recorded during November 1985, November 1993 and November 2010. There was a new record low of −18.0 °C (−0.4 °F) in Wales on 28 November 2010. At Northolt, in Greater London, the coldest temperature of the year 2016 was set on 30 November. Snow also fell rather widely across the UK on 28–29 October 2008, causing traffic problems where it settled on the M4. Even further south, low temperatures can be recorded, with temperatures well below freezing as far south as Heathrow Airport on 29–31 October 1997, with a lower temperature than any recorded at this station in March, November or December 1997 and even the following January 1998; only on 2 and 4 February 1998 were lower temperatures recorded here that winter. The first frost of the winter usually occurs between October and December; frost is quite unusual in September, when the surrounding ocean is at or near its warmest, except on high ground. It is not particularly unusual for September to be warmer than June, as it was in 1999.
  However, the United Kingdom sometimes experiences an "Indian summer", when temperatures, particularly by night, can be very mild and rarely fall below 10 °C (50 °F). Such events are aided by the surrounding Atlantic Ocean and seas being at their warmest, keeping the country in warm air, despite the relatively weak sun. Examples of this were in 1985, 1999, 2005, 2006, 2011 and 2016 when September saw above average temperatures which felt more like a continuation of summer than autumn. Autumns since 2000 have generally been very mild, with notable extremes of precipitation; the UK has seen some of its wettest and driest autumns since the millennium. 2011 and 2016 were notable as many areas of the country recorded their highest temperatures of the year in September and October (for example, 28.2 °C (82.8 °F) at Hawarden on 1 October, 26.3 °C (79.3 °F) at St. Athan on 2 October 2011 and the UK's highest temperature of 2016 on 13 September with 34.4 °C (93.9 °F) at Gravesend). On 13 October 2018, temperatures reached 26.5 °C (79.7 °F) at Donna Nook in Lincolnshire, the latest in the year such a high temperature had been recorded. Temperatures on the night of 12–13 October were also just under 20 °C (68 °F) in London.
  Coastal areas in the southern half of England have on average the warmest autumns, with mean temperatures of 10.7 to 13.0 °C (51.3 to 55.4 °F). Mountainous areas of Wales and northern England, and almost all of Scotland, experience mean temperatures between 1.7 and 7.5 °C (35.1 and 45.5 °F).
caption: Hardiness zones in the British Isles. Based on the USDA system and used to indicate growing conditions for plants.
exif: {}