Sean Batty: Scotland faces longest wait to reach 12C in 40 years

One thing I’ll give this winter – particularly since New Year – is that it has been remarkably consistent. Temperatures have hovered close to the seasonal average.

What’s been missing, though, is any real spike in warmth.

In most recent years, we’ve managed at least a brief push to 12C during January – and in fact, 15C has been reached every January over the past four years.

However, this year has been different. The mercury simply hasn’t lifted in the same way.

That may change this weekend, with the first proper pulse of milder Atlantic air arriving, potentially nudging temperatures towards 12C. If it does, it will mark the longest wait to reach that figure since 1986 – when it astonishingly took until March 4.

The early months of 1986 were a grind. A notably cold winter bled into a chilly spring, with temperatures not reaching 15C until the end of April. In recent years, by contrast, we’ve sometimes achieved that milestone as early as January.

So, are we heading for a repeat of 1986? Let’s hope not. That year went on to deliver a disappointingly cool summer, part of a run of subdued seasons that included cooler than average summers in 1985 and 1987.

For now, though, this winter remains defined by being ‘average’ for temperatures – but also by its stubbornness to break into double figures.