UK Weather: Coldest start to Bank Holiday Monday in nearly 40 years as thermometers hit zero degrees

England witnessed the coldest start to an August bank holiday Monday for almost 40 years as thermometers nudged zero degrees.

A chilly 0.6C recorded at dawn in Ravensworth, North Yorkshire marked the second coldest start to the summer bank holiday on record.

The coldest was in 1983, when the mercury plunged to 0.2C.

A Met Office spokesman said it looked likely to be one of the chilliest August bank holiday Mondays on record, with most of the country expected to experience cloud, with the odd bit of sunshine breaking through, as the highest temperatures hovering at around 19C.

The "unseasonably cool" spell is in stark contrast to last year's late August bank holiday Monday which was the hottest on record, when the mercury hit 33.2C at Heathrow airport.

Alex Burkill, a Met Office meteorologist, said that while this year’s holiday had been markedly different, it was unlikely to break any records.

"Daytime temperatures (on Sunday) did struggle, but the lowest maximum temperature was 12.5C and the record is 9.1C, so we're quite far off that,” he said.

"Monday daytime temperatures will struggle again, probably only just about getting into double figures in some places, but i'd be surprised if we broke any records.”

He said August had been “quite extreme at times” with two named storms, a heatwave, and the hottest August day recorded in 17 years.

"Even this bank holiday has been unseasonably cool, it's not that often that we get temperatures around freezing in August,” he added.

"(The weather) has brought everything this month and that's not really going to be captured in the monthly averages.

"They're not going to show the extremes that we've had."

Last week, the UK was battered by Storm Francis, which saw gusts of 81mph hit The Needles near the Isle of Wight, just days after Storm Ellen had struck.

Cornish councillors have warned that the terrible bank holiday weather has forced overcrowding in rural towns because no one is heading to the beach.

Tourists in the area have deserted the coast during the cold snap, causing social distancing problems in crowded towns.

Councillor Rob Nolan said: "Places like Looe and St Ives, the harbour towns with narrow streets, are really struggling, there really just isn't any social distancing going on."

The Met Office has warned the remnants of Hurricane Laura could hit parts of Britain later in the week, as an Atlantic low pressure system tracks eastwards towards Europe.

Heavy rain is forecast to spread eastwards across most parts on Wednesday, with rain in the south on Thursday and Friday and sunshine and showers in the north.