Alastair Dalton: Little prospect of warmer weather despite arrival of spring next week

Forecasters said the current snowfall in Scotland would be followed by a return to the bright but frosty conditions of earlier this week.

But perhaps anxious about how their long-range forecasts – such as last year's "odds-on for a barbecue summer" – are interpreted, they declined to predict when we should feel the change of season.

Traditionalists would have it that spring does not start for another three weeks anyway – at the vernal equinox on 20 March.

Vernal comes from the Latin word for bloom, while an equinox is a time when days and nights are the same length.

The Met Office admitted 1 March was just a date on the calendar, as part of its approach of neatly dividing up the four seasons into three months each.

However, its caution over forecasting a rise in temperature may be borne out by 2010 having the fourth coldest start to a year on record.

Between 1 December and 14 February, the average temperature in Scotland was 0.8C, with only 1947, 1963 and 1979 colder. Snow lay in Aviemore until 5 February before fresh falls last week.

Jim Watson, a public weather service adviser with the Met Office in Edinburgh, said: "There is nothing tied into the date of the start of spring that means the weather will suddenly get better.

"Generally, it will continue on the cold side next week."

The outlook comes despite scientists announcing this month that animals and plants in the UK were breeding on average almost 12 days earlier than they were three decades ago. They included oak trees coming into leaf and woodland birds such as blue tits laying eggs.

The Oxfordshire-based Centre for Ecology and Hydrology said the discovery backed up the theory that spring and summer were starting earlier.