Altostratus

Cracking winter's day...a decent covering on the ground, some sunshine and frequent heavy snow showers. What's not to like?

Just visiting to say good luck folks. I was lucky enough to be living in SW London during the Feb 2009 event - really magical and stands out as one of my favourite snow memories. If I recall correctly that 'sea effect' event was not modelled too well and the warnings only really came out as it started! Hopefully this one has been underplayed somewhat by the models. Early radar returns starting to shape up nicely...

Decent fall here. Haven't measured but looks like there is around 6 inches or so on the garden table.

Looks like a good 3-4 inches fallen overnight. Good start to the day - fingers crossed for more snow showers today and tomorrow.

First heavy snow of the winter. Settling on all surfaces just now...long may that continue.

Heavy snow here for the last couple of hours. Almost whiteout conditions at times. Looks to be a good few inches additional cover so far. ..

Fingers crossed as the night goes on and the colder air digs in we'll see more and more parts of the city come into the game. Excluding western suburbs I would presume so. Good to see more snow being reported in the region!

Kingswells - still technically a city suburb but right on the city/shire border. Snow getting heavier now and building nicely.

Can confirm a good covering on all surfaces here. Hopefully it stays that way...

Good trend from the GFS within the 120-144hr time period...perilously close to unleashing the beast. If we can squeeze a wedge of high pressure between GL and Scandi the link-up would surely be in the offering. UKMO not so good but room for improvement. As long as that Siberian high lurks in the NE we will always be in with a shout. One to watch over the coming days.

Yes and I can't see the Met changing their outlook either as there are no strong signals for anything just yet. I know certain folk look for trends in the ens but that has proven useless time and time again. The movement of the Siberian high is notoriously difficult to predict, particularly on the northern fringes around the Kara strait locale. Historically, if we can get pressure to build into that territory it is a precursor to a cold shot into Europe. If there is more support for pressure building around Kara and into Svalbard in the next few runs things could get very interesting indeed. Let's not forget the Kettley high saga back in Feb 2001!

Hopefully the GFS is picking up on a trend for that ridge being thrown up to Scandi...interesting...and ties in with the Met outlook.

As has been noted, ECM op looks a bit of an outlier so don't think we should be reading too much into that run. Looking across all models, the picture isn't as bad as some are making out. Plenty of interest being shown on GEFS, GEM ens and a couple of the lesser models. Don't take any run in isolation, particularly given the highly turbulent background.

The ECM more or less follows the mean up to day 7 and the envelope is pretty tight. Thereafter, there is some divergence as expected, although that is well outside any semi reliable time frame. It's worth remembering how useless the ensembles have been so far this winter, so probably wise not to go looking for any trends beyond 120hrs as they are likely meaningless.

Knowing our luck there will be an instant downwelling of the w'lys that negates the e'lys! Seriously, given the lagged response and the fact that the PV will be weakening at the back end of winter anyhow, I'm led to believe its influence would be minimal. Let's hope we have some HLB in place prior to that though.