WITH winter drawing to a close and the promise of more balmy weather on its way it may come as a surprise that one of the hottest temperatures already recorded this year was in Pershore.

Taking the third spot on the highest temperatures of winter 2015 chart the town reached a high of 16.1C on January 9.

It came just beneath Exeter Airport, where 16.5 was recorded on the same day, and Sidmouth in Devon, which soared to 17 on January 10.

Ian Michaelwaite, of netweather.tv, said it wasn't far off the record temperature for January.

"The average temperature for the UK is 6.7C so it's almost 10C warmer. It's quite unusual for January, that's freakishly warm for January," he said.

"The warmest temperature ever recorded in January in the UK was 18.3C so it's getting close. Three places hold that record, two in Wales and one in Aberdeenshire."

Now two months on we are reaching the time of the year we would expect higher temperatures.

"We are getting excited because it might crawl up that this weekend and that was two months ago," he added.

"The winter has been a bit bitty, all three months were slightly above average, February only just, but it's much colder than last year.

"This weekend if you keep out of the wind it should feel quite pleasant. But there will be a bit of a breeze.

"I call it the weekend of a million lawn mowers when everyone does the first grass cut."