asjmcguire

PS - for a bit of a laugh - here is the text from the email I received from Exacta Weather - let's see whether it turns out to be accurate....

I'm a bit disappointed to be honest - with the increased chances of people being out on the roads and other forms of travel - even if it gets downgraded significantly between now and the day - the Met Office should have at least said something (especially since other less reputable sources are). Matt Taylor is sitting on Twitter telling off various amateurs for mentioning Storm Barbara because "it doesn't even exist yet" which is technically true - but it does exist on computer models.

Crossing my fingers you retain power and broadband - and a roof.....

While I have largely been staying away from the model thread - for the sake of sanity - I have been keeping up with the models via tweets, Gavs Vids and the odd look at the charts - So I just wanted to say - I don't believe this is the first time the GFS has toyed with the idea of several bad storms in close proximity over the festive period. More worrying is that with the time frame being quite close now - the models are still chopping and changing both between runs and between models. And with it not just being the odd change about how something develops - and is instead entirely different outcomes, confidence in what exactly to expect must remain quite low. It seems like British Airways, The Train Service, Royal Mail, Amazon Drivers and Weather Models are all going on strike......

This is a newer model of the one I have - https://www.weathershop.co.uk/shop/weather-stations/technoline-ws1600-weather-station It's both wired and wireless - and would require a PC connected to it - but you could always just get him a Raspberry Pi to connect it to if connecting it permanently to a PC is impractical.

Just missed -1 here (-0.8) - nice to see that several days in a row have suggested a cool down for Friday on wards....(well providing it doesn't change 3 days before or something)

I'll take some pictures tomorrow, but I'm 80% sure that at least one tree in our garden appears to have new leaf buds on it.....

Being the Scottish Thread - seems like this is the place to say RIP Ian McCaskill (who apparently shares my Birthday, which is something I was previously unaware of). Here is hoping that the BBC run some sort of tribute programme for him over the next 7 days.

Thanks for the links Jo. I assume in the coming months now that it is in position and near to starting operations we will get an update on how it will be used for forecasting the weather - as opposed to being used after-the-fact for more of research / statistics job. As for @CatchMyDrift can I suggest that as we are going to be watching the paint dry, as well as choosing the colour as @Ravelin suggests - maybe we should ensure we use the worst possible conditions so that the paint takes so much longer to dry. As for the recent chat about the weather models, I assume - that if they still flip flopping on every run - we are still very much at the point that nothing they show can be taken seriously, until at the very least we get a consistent several days of output plus Ensembles and ideally at least a few other models following the general idea. But as of right now - not only are runs inconsistent, Ensembles are inconsistent and models are not agreeing on a general outcome. Does this sound reasonably like where we are right now?

No problem, just added one more photo in there - it's what the ventilator looks like hanging on the shelf at B&Q - however it might not be the actual one I used as the photo appears to have been taken after the box has been built and painted - and I'm sure the ones we had were in a blue packet not a red one - but in any case - it makes it clear what sort of thing it was that we actually bought.

Note sure what exactly you are asking for - are you just wanting me to re-post the link from a few pages back? If so - this is it: https://goo.gl/photos/vberuHRJAfPpkoTB7

Thank you @edo that summary above is exactly what you are paid* for! Short, concise and saves days of reading the model thread. Oooo exciting, can anyone remember? I'm sure like a month back the experts were suggesting that based on goings on with background signals and the lag between something happening and it actually affecting the weather - the general feeling was that regardless of what was going on in the short term, the cold and hopefully snow was not really expected to be showing up until the last part of December. * payment is in gratitude and cake, but there is no cake at the moment, so gratitude will have to be enough

Has mate the road been auto-corrected to mate as in a friend? Edit: Yup - that's behaviour I have not seen before!

Urgh I was considering popping in to the model thread today as well - we need @edo to pop in there and come back with a summary - as they have unofficially taken up the position of model watchers watcher. It's 3.8C here - that is actually the max of the day as well. Day average still below zero (just) at -0.5C In the league table - Munlochy is still below 0 (just) and a chunk of stations around Fife, Scottish Borders, Tayside, Lothian (Edinburgh Airport) still either at or below 3C.

Still at -0.5C here.....

It is simply not possible to like the post by @CatchMyDrift enough times.... Like X 1000.

Well my Oregon ran from 2006 to 2012/13(ish) and my WS2300 cost £100 from UK Weather Shop and has been running since it replaced the Oregon. The cost of entry for decent weather stations has been falling as the cost of making them has fallen dramatically. After all: 10-15 years is a long period of time, and technology does not stand still..

I know all about the inaccuracies with wind readings - my previous station was an Oregon WMR928NX which was completely wireless (and never needed it's batteries changing - the solar was that good) - but the transmissions from the wind sensor had a frequency based on the wind speed. Normally transmissions were every few minutes but if the wind speed went above a threshold - the readings became more frequent. Unfortunately the wind speed hardly ever went above the threshold because of there being too much shelter, and in the end I had to tell Weather Display to defer to Edinburgh Airport for wind speed readings. The current station is a WS2300 and is a bit better (and also wired) though the wind speed sensor is some 10m higher up than it was for the Oregon - but it still suffers from the issue that because it's not in the middle of a wide open field with no houses or trees near it - it still doesn't get reliable readings (it also suffers from a known issue where for some reason sometimes when it rains it will periodically report silly readings - like 98mph on a calm wet day) PS - Currently -1.9C dropping at 0.8C and an average temperature of -3.1C

Mine isn't the most professional but we bought 5 plastic air vent things from B&Q and made a cube with the air vents screwed to some wood on the top, bottom, sides and front, only the back where it is affixed to the post is solid wood. It's as stephenson-y shield as it's going to go on the cheap, and it does seem relatively accurate - but it was important to do because our garden is SW facing. See here for some photos of the box being built - could be something to think about - https://goo.gl/photos/vberuHRJAfPpkoTB7

Well.... it dropped to -5.9 overnight, then it gradually rose to the dizzyingly high 1.3 around 1pm and then fell again and we are currently at -0.2. Average temperature currently stands at -3.5

Currently -2.5 and an average temperature of 1C for the day. Right I'm off to find something to do to keep me awake for the Westworld finale since Sky Atlantic announced on Friday that they are going to simulcast it with the US - which isn't widely known because obviously all the TV guides were already long printed before they made that decision. (2am - if you didn't know)

....do you know - how cold?

Urgh and yet on Twitter people are delighted that the postage stamps show cold returning middle of December (which seems to be pretty much was what being suggested about a month ago?)

Our lowest temperature of December and in fact ever recorded (since 2006 when records start) is -14.5C and while you may have some chance of getting there, it's currently -0.5C here and I don't see it dropping anywhere near that low, I doubt we will even go down to -5C here.

Wow, what a difference a few hundred miles makes!