in the vale

Morning All. How do I change the email address that the automated forecasts go to?

Quite widespread snow showers from that, albeit rogue as you say. A change has to come at some point!

Ring a decent camera shop and get a price for remapping the CCD, may be less than you think.

Are these turning up in the same place on each photo regardless of exposure length, or are they related to heat build-up (i.e. when using a long exposure)? The fix will be different for stuck pixels and hot pixels. For stuck pixels the K10D does not have an on-board pixel mapping routine, so you would need to take it to a dealer who could do it. Hot pixels are less of an impact, but harder to avoid (try a lower ISO setting). Hope this helps.

I have more snow on the ground now (3-4mm) than I had at any point during the weekend just gone!

I am a couple of miles away and I want to see pics too!!

Only about a cm here down in the Vale. Just shows what a bit of height can do. Quite disappointing here really. Hey Ho. Maybe more to come later and tomorrow.

There is more to Wales than the South - we moan about the Southern bias in the MOD thread! Here in the North we are potentially looking at quite a dumping.

I was looking at this earlier (06Z run) and it was showing all snow for me Fri & Sat. Once the new design was activated the symbols had changed to sleet for Fri, but it was still using the 06Z data. Has something changed in the 16-day interpretation of the data? Thanks.

Interesting that the GFS and ECM seem to have come full circle to show (for N Wales) a similar outcome for this weekend that they were showing four days ago - with much movement in between. Suggests more movement still to come, albeit less as we are nearer than we were. Personally, I would bank the GFS out until 168 and ECM thereafter. Oh, and by the way, N Wales is a real place. Rarely gets a mention, even in the Regionals.

GFS now also showing a snow event next weekend for Wales. Worth watching as that's now ECM and GFS showing something of interest.

ECM showing a ton of snow (>25cm) for N wales next weekend. Almost certain not to verify like that, but that's what the Norwegian Meteo ECM viewer is showing.

ECM showing around 25cm of snow for N Wales next weekend. That'll do nicely.

For snow-starved N Wales I'm liking the boundary positioning on the ECM today. Tomorrow it may be back to being a poor model, but today it's a top performer!

Carlsberg.

It's snowing in Denbighshire. Moderate at the mo.

For those of you who (like me) can't wait for Sunday..... http://www.ustream.t.../ct-weather-cam (Sighs)

I am pretty pleased with the outlook as here we've seen only a couple of highly unimpressive snowfalls so far this Winter! I think we managed about a 2-3mm covering for about an hour before the rain came back in, so I reckon it's my turn! NE Wales still in the more 'marginal' zone though, so a 50M correction east would see us as a mainly rain event. The NAE only goes out to 12Z Sun at the mo, but there is a big pink blob over my house! Oh - how I love big pink blobs! EDIT - the NW NMM model only shows rain for me at the same time (-1 850 hPa). I think that by then the colder upper air will have already started to feed in from the East though. Or is that a hopecast??

I was watching the increasing likelihood of a warming event that was first being talked about in November (very early signs of increasing, potentially disruptive wave activity), so I have watched things unfold as much as time allows. Something caused the spectacular easterly prediction failure in Dec which, modelling wise, was a significant event in itself. Was the failure down to a particular feature associated with the (at that time, potential only) upcoming SSW?

I don't have anywhere near as much time as I would like to read the excellent posts in here, but I have a nagging question that I'm sure has been answered already - perhaps someone can point me to the answer if so? Anyway, I am starting to get to grips with the likely candidates that are associated with an SSW, but SSW's seem to almost pop out of nowhere, relative to the more sedate changes that occur in the drivers of an SSW e.g. QBO and on large scale Rossby stuff. You can set your watch by the QBO and Rossby waves are huge features, so why are warming events not predictable further out? The reason I am asking is that prior to the recent colder couple of weeks, there was a clear end result from most NWP output (i.e. cold) but at the time we learned about Shannon Entropy (which I first assumed was the place not the Mathematician) which meant even the larger-scale NWP solutions danced about like nothing I can remember. I guess this was the NWP trying to make sense of the odd input numbers it was being fed from the measured high-altitude hPa data which must already have been feeling the effects of the SSW. The other stand-out feature of NWP modelling this winter was the failed beasterly in December. That really went up to the wire before it vapourised in front of our eyes. The question (at last) is, in the same way as the effects of a SSW can take a few weeks to reach the surface, was something happening in the statosphere early December that (unnoticed) heralded the SSW and caused the NWP to get it so wrong? I wonder if there is any correlation between SSW's and a NWP fail 30 days earlier?

Welcome to the madhouse! That is a good question and, as always, there is a long answer and a short one. I'll stick with the short one. The major models tend to be pretty good at predicting general patterns at 10+ days out, suggesting maybe a flow of air from the Atlantic to our west. This suggests a general weather pattern that is likely, on average, to be milder, wetter and windier than an easterly flow which may be colder, often drier and calmer. As the clock ticks down to day 0, then confidence builds and you can start to make certain predictions on where in the UK will experience what type of weather. At 3-7 days out, you can start to see maybe where in the UK will experience what type of weather and then short-term models like NAE and NMM (+48 hours) can start to pinpoint what the weather may be like in your area. So basically the nearer you get in time the more accurate the models are. The models do often get it very wrong even 6-3 hours out, but the error tends to be where conditions really could go either way for a specific location. Tomorrow is a good example. The models have shown an atlantic incursion for days, but exactly where the boundary between cold and milder will be is still not certain. Blimey - that was supposed to be the short answer!

Are there actually people in NE Wales??

Derek Brockway rolling out the GEM at D7 is about as near to ramping as I've ever seen from anyone BBC-related!

It's possible - the snow seems to still be coming across from the East for a while yet - looks better than it did earlier. Your area should be getting a bit of a pasting now? I've ordered oil for Tues - 61p!! Glad ours does DD!

NMM shows some snow for this area until at least 20:00, although easing after around 17:00.