recklessabandon

noticably colder now than at 9am.....the softer wetter snow in Durham is now freezing onto the hard surfaces.....going to be a mess tonight when the temperatures nose-dive as suggested. still snowing steadily though in the city.

I was amazed at the patchiness when I was out and about today, lower Tyne valley (east of Hexham and under 100m) was all green this afternoon, as was curiously around Edmundbyers and Minesteracres. County Durham (including the usual suspects!) has faired far 'better' for snow even to comparitavley low levels. There was a very pronounced line just east of the A68 that divided the much whiter conditions to the east, it was almost as though the warm sector that passed through only reached the A68 but gave remarkable differences in the snow line. Fresh dusting/thin covering in Consettshire but it has pretty much stopped now.

Watch the rainfall radars between Northumberland and Aberdeenshire, you can clearly see the rotation now, and, PPN developing off the 'back edge' and rotating southwards and westwards....

Easing right off in Durham now.....will be interesting though, the band has certainly broadened and slowed as it has reached the coast....

starting to look quite scenic in Durham now....I just cant see this lasting past mid day though unless the brakes get slammed on...

Has been steady (moderate) for around 30 mintues in Durham city, put a thin covering down. The band seems to have moved in quickly with it only starting to slow down very recently, whether it slows quickly enough to keep us all under this remains to be seen, if I was to guess, I would suggest that east of the A1 is a good bet for this to last well into the evening/night, west of the A1, especially into say Hexham/Wolsingham/Barnard Castle might be a little more touch and go.....just my opinion though....

Snowing steadily in Durham city.

nice even covering in Consett, nothing to get excited over though. The most remarkable thing is that the roads have been gritted, im speechless....

Interesting reminder to everyone with respect with the difficulty of forecasting snow even at T+24/T+36 and similarly a reminder not to get hung up on outputs at T+168 etc....this is a quote from MWIS this morning...where the speed of the snow moving through Scotland has caught them out... "A front will bring steady snow from the northwest (significantly faster than earlier forecast)." Already into the borders now.....doesn't matter what the models show, nature will do what she wants....

A question (kind of) that I raised last year. There is inevitably a bias toward the locating of Meto MAWS (Marine Automated Weather Station), they are all in the western half of the UK's waters, similarly the North Atlantic is loaded with lightships and MAWS, hardly surprising when what, 80% of our weather comes in from that direction. By comparison as I understand it the Meto have no MAWS in the North Sea. There are of course weather data stations in the North Sea and off the Norwegian coast, generally all associated with the oil installations, so inevitably there will be data source cluster then comparatively large gaps between them. I dare say that data sources towards the Barents and Arctic Ocean will be limited to research vessels and experimental stations. I would suggest that this is why in times of 'zonality' the ensemble clusters are 'tight' due to the wealth of data feeding into the models, whereas easterly/north easterly flows are interpreted on data sets which are poorly spread in a geographical sense by comparison. Understandable, if you have a limited budget, where would you spend your money.....probably not to the NE of the UK to keep us snow chasers happy

Had some snow on the ground every day since 1st Dec in the hills of NW Durham....interesting regional comparisons for sure!

I wouldn't like to be out in it any longer than needed ha ha ha....to be fair my office is top floor so sounds worse ;-)

Pouring with rain in Durham city....all the ice lying about has a nice slick coating of rainwater....

glad it wasnt just me that thought that....

1.3/-1.1 Durham, more interesting Lanehead under the PPN in upper Weardale has now dropped to -0.1/-0.7 under the PPN so I can only assume they must be under snow now....

DPs are still below freezing around and east of the A1, not sure whether the wind just isn't scouring out the colder surface air, or whether some colder upper air is hanging on in there...going to be a close call I think...

becoming very dark in Durham now....we will find out soon...unless that NP rain shadow effect takes hold....

DPs stubbornly low around Durham as that front approaches....

I wouldn't worry about much after T+120 in the models, if indeed that far ahead....it is the trends that are of interest......and they remain on the colder side in general....

watching the DPs across the pennines as the front approaches, DPs rose fast, but have now stabilised and have started to fall back below 0C in the dales as the PPN starts.....

You can see the 24hr trends showing the DPs soaring as the weather moved through from -9 to around 0 in a very short space around Loch Morlich....be worth seeing if they start falling soon...

DPs rising fast in front of the PPN....I suspect the wind will be scouring the cold air out of the valleys now....close call I suspect...

DPs have risen from nearly -3 to now only -0.8C in the last hour up at Lanehead in Teesdale whilst temperatures have stayed around -0.5C, I fear this could be a classic example of how high humidity and elevated DPs will spoil this for lowland areas....

snowing lightly in Durham city now.

notably absent around here, however, it has been a poor summer all around for insects. much as though many of us loath wasps and wish they would all vanish, there is a much more complicated issue with the general lack of insects; bats. The numbers of bats this summer have suffered horribly, the very wet summer has not only reduced the numbers of insects, but also the mating opportunities for insects (hence numbers) and foraging opportunities for bats. The wasps we notice, as many of us despise them, but their low apparent numbers are symptomatic of wider issues in our natural world due to the abysmal summer.