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I saw my first House Martin of the year feeding over the River Tamar in Devon last Sunday. After a long winter it was a welcome sight! Buzzards also were enjoying the thermals and playing their acrobatic courtship games.

I can sort of answer that. My son, nephew and I were out tobogganing a few years back. After about half an hour my late father, who at that time was 82 had been watching us with a big smile on his face and a plum red nose, blurted out -'come on then, lets have a go'! He lay down head first and trundled off down the hill on the toboggan. My comment was then and remains now - I hope I get to follow in his footsteps. If I last that long I certainly plan to!

Hi SC, no weather station you say, but do you have a lamp post to watch? - thats what most of us like to use! Agree the models have been a little dull recently, but yesterdays downpours and lightning gave a bit of excitement. Where are you based?

Hey, you're just down the road! Yes it was the first real lightning here for ages and torrential rain too. Just glad I swept up the beech leaves a couple of weeks back otherwise drainage would have been blocked. I was in Southampton last night and had heavy rain there, did Dorch get it last night as well?

Yes, I tend to agree, but don't give up yet. I was expecting real cold to return around the 20th Jan but currently feel less confident that this will be either very cold or snowy. Much of our best Dorset snow arrives in February or even early March - probably because the sea is at about its coldest then, offsetting or minimising the sea temperature effects described . I believe the sea temps have dropped 2 degrees since November but will probably have stabilised over the last two weeks.

In the absence of other 'properly qualified' replies I will have a go at my understanding of this. Lets initially disregard snow and think about temperature and precipitation. 1. Temperature. Weymouth is sheltered from the mainland being at the foot of the Ridgeway. It therefore reflects sea temperatures more than temperatures over the land. It can therefore be significantly warmer than Dorchester (15 miles inland) in autumn and winter but conversely its air temperature scan be pegged back during spring and early summer due to cool breezes off the sea. This is most notable in May and June when warm Atlantic air chills over the sea and creates sea fog, but this evaporates by the time the air has passed over the Ridgeway and warmed up a bit. In Winter the air can be 3 or more degrees warmer in weymouth compared to Dorchester when wind is coming off the sea, but maybe only one to 2 degrees warner when wind comes rom the North, maybe less if the wind is strong. 2. Rainfall is often triggered as warm Atlantic air is forced up over higher land meaning that it can be sunny in Weymouth and cloudy and maybe raining in Dorchester. Conversely if we get a wet North westerly, it will rain on the North facing uphill side of the Ridgeway but the air will warm and become drier as it flows down the Weymouth side of the ridge and rainfall ends. (explore the Fohn effect?) Now think about conditions for snow. If strong wind comes from the North, we are usually marginal for any precipitation because of the point in 2 above as well as because this tends to be a relatively 'dry' wind direction anyway over England. So Weymouth will get light precipitation even though air temperatures might be low. If wind is light northerly you get the same effect but also the warm sea nearby has the effect of raising air temperatures and making temperatures more marginal for snow in Weymouth, therefore a tendency for light sleet. With wind from the Southwest - there may be plenty of moisture in the air but air temperatures too high for snow to settle. Go up the Ridgeway and the sea effect is a little less and the extra height both reduces air temperature and also triggers 'convective' effect leading to heavier precipitation which in turn cools the air mass as it rises. Net effect - more snow. In fact this effect becomes even more pronounced on the downland up towards Shaftesbury, which is why I head up there for snow. Typically it is 1 to 2 degrees cooler there than in Dorchester and therefore maybe 3 or 4 degrees cooler than Weymouth. The added height can give still more precipitation from a South Westerly with snow depths commonly twice those of Dorchester. Very occasionally the conditions are just right and Weymouth can get a real dump of snow, but that is a very rare event as you are probably aware. I believe similar 'microclimate ' effects are found in a number of seaside locations, Poole is one and parts of Devon and Cornwall too- Torbay referred to as the English Riviera. There is another factor that i do not fully understand that others may wish to comment upon (and maybe correct me if I have got any of this wrong!), that is the way that snow cloud apparently heading North towards us from France, tends to sheer away in a more Easterly direction up the English Channel to make landfall in Sussex and Kent. This effect seems less pronounced in summer when thunderstorms coming in from France over Portland seem happy to move straight inland rather than sheer off up the Channel. This may have to do with there being reversed air/sea temperature differential in summer to that in winter. (winter is cold land / warm sea, summer is cold sea / warm land) My personal assumption is that cooler wet air is less inclined to rise over higher cold land mass and therefore sheers sideways, whereas relatively cool moist summer air off the sea is warmed over land and will readily convect and lift over the higher ground and be displaced less sideways.

I popped in this evening to see what folks up around Gloucester experienced just after mid-day today. The rainfall radar appeared to show torrential rain for and hour to and hour and a half. Did that really happen, or was it picking up sleet? We had a quarter of an hour or so of torrential rain at 7.00 but nothing special since. Models continue to look confused for return of cold, but I am expecting something between 20th and 23rd as I would see it taking that long for Greeny High to rebuild and to ease the warmer weather out. It will be interesting to see what actually happens!

Surprised that there are still green bits in N France

Hoping tomorrows picture looks very different for England!

Other things that have changed since: Roofs now highly insulated - ok if water tanks also well insulated. Less waste pipework outside, less risk of freezing Some haven't - overflow pipes still prone to icing if allowed to drip Some have got worse: condensate drain pipes on modern condensing boilers can freeze up, stopping the boilers working. Last year was the first real test of this detail and some didn't pass the test! many houses have no chimneys, so wholly dependant upon electricity (electric heating or electric boiler controls/pumps) Watch out if power fails! (worst case scenario if we get widespread freezing rain on power lines like France experienced a few years back)

i can see it i Yes, when i lived in Essex this was the best source of snow most years - most notably in 87 when we had nearly 18inches (level) snow in the Southend area, much less further inland although very cold and what snow did fall kept blowing around and forming new drifts. The sea is still really quite warm at the moment so it happening again in that area if the temperatures drop as forecast.

An interesting thread - the bit I always wonder about is the reliability of our gas supplies given that we are at the 'end' of the gas pipeline. If E Europe get as cold as predicted will it put too much strain on supplies? Last year we got by, but some non essential commercial users did get turned off. Car deliveries from Germany (Wolfsburg) were delayed due to snow in Feb/ March time so I imagine there is potential for even more effects if this were to turn out to be even harsher winter. Certainly the start of heavy gritting in November will cause real consternation in local councils, who have just been seeking to make unprecedented spending cuts and trimmed all vestiges of flesh from already hard strapped budgets.

Agreed, sadly the Meto deliberately failed to report congestion in the English Channel and closure of the Port Of Dover due to Icebergs jamming up the shipping lanes. Similarly the submarine that rode over a stray iceberg off Scotland this autumn was misreported as having 'run aground on a sandbank' Hopefully Ann Widdecombe and John Sargent will not let these errors influence their voting so Fear Sneacha should be assured of at least three votes.

Yes, well done indeed Crewecold, but no mention of the horrendous snowfalls that Dorset will be getting this year. (well they are overdue, we got 'nuffink' last year!) That's the nearest to a forecast you will get from myself! Dorsetbred - time to buy your snowchains? More seriously these forecasts do help us novices get a handle on the weight you each apply to the different indicators/factors. Keep up the great work.

I suspect the answer will relate in some way to the terminal velocity of someone falling through the atmosphere (120mph) where body friction with the air equals force of gravity upon body mass. There would have to be a vertical component (upward movement) to make you take off rather than slide along and that would be a combination of a gust bouncing off the ground and the body pivoting around your feet (fisrt you would lean at an angle and then rotate around your foothold). Best guess 130mph to take off and go a few yards? In a tornado scenario it would be a case of air rising at more than 120mph to take you (or a cow as in certain film clips) aloft.

Time to set up feeding stations for the Mammoths? (or am I looking too far back? ) LOL More seriously BFTP, how do you see trend developing (how much colder and for how long) before we return to, say, 2005 temperatures? Do you believe it to link to solar activity and if so do you expect low sunspot activity to continue for several years yet? I ask the latter as the pattern of past cycles suggest that we might now expect to emerge from the quiet spell. If that is the case, and unless the lag of CO2 and temperature effects lag sunspot activity by about years, it would look to me as if we might get 3 to 5 colder years rather than about 10 in this cycle. That would spoil the long term pattern and look like a hiccup in the data.

Tt I agree - in the 60's and 70's I used to do a lot of sea fishing in East Anglia. The saying used to be 'the Cod will be in after the third frost'. Despite disproving this bit of folklore (I have caught codling up there in September!), we did always count the frosts as our 'half term' fishing week approached. There was about 80% prospect of getting our three frosts before the end of October. The past two years (and now this one) have brought us back to that pattern. Gut instinct is that we are indeed entering a cooler phase, whatever the reason might be. The correlation with solar activity appears compelling but the scientific arguments still need to be proven. I am content to 'watch and see'!

Yes, and the one that tickles me is the solitary white pixel on Corsica. Has someone over there in the Med left their laundry out or is there actually a snow patch? Its been there for a few day now so perhaps it is time they brought their laundry in!

Thanks for these links EOTS and apologies if this is off topic. (mods please feel free to move my post across to the NAD thread - my comments relate to the links which EOTS has kindly sourced) I think many of us are pondering the the reasons for changes in surface flow speed / circulation and the likely effect upon sea surface temperatures. These may or may not affect our climate and may or may not depend upon surface winds.. It would however appear logical that actual sea surface temperatures wil impact our weather in some way and, unless I am mistaken, these temperatures are now showing a marked reduction in warmth around NW Scotland compared to recent years. The effect on waters off the SW Coast of UK appears less distinct. Do others agree or does the effect of NAD only show up clearly later in winter?

OK my tuppennyworth as well - we seem to get two forecasts (local and national) one immediately after the other (like buses!). The informaton seems almost identical (as if repeated in case you missed it first time) One forecast with more detailed information would be much preferable on the same timeframe. This would indeed give time for a flash of the synoptics and jetstream plus a comment on probabilities and what is happening overall.

Interesting - I am not sure of the relevance of the photo attached to the link which would tend to indicate warmand summery (hot even?) rather than frosty ;-)

Yes, nice early spring - winter didn't last that long this year!! Blackbirds will soon be nesting.

So this would mean that the last very cold winter should have been 2006/7 or 2007/8? But 2008/9 and 2009/10 were colder than the previous two winters. Does this mean that a Hale winter is not due and this year should return to being less cold? With the current atlantic influence it is difficult to imagine a cold winter but this autumn already feels more like those I remember in the 60's (as have the last two years) and I can well imagine another winter like that of 2008/9 and would not be surprised if it is similar to last year. I can see no reason for the jet stream to edge northwards so a relatively still, cold, November is IMO on the cards and lead on to snow in early/mid December with considerable snow falling N.England and Scotland and parts of the east coast before Xmas. Sadly for us in coastal parts of the SW it remains pure lottery whether we get heavy snowfall and February will remain our best chance (when the sea has cooled). I appreciate that this is very subjective and please forgive my lack of detailed study of the various climatic factors that guide the true experts on this thread. I read your postings with huge interest and respect.

Yes there is always a danger reading lots into data we see today without knowledge of historic data and patterns of data. I have been surprised to see 'above average' temperatures around the Maine coast (N. America/Canada) across to Newfoundland, is this connected with the warm stream heading up there rather than across the Atlantic? If so this might signal a meaningful change which could affect us in the UK. I actually enquired of Southampton Centre of Oceanography if they had data covering sea temperatures in the English Channel approaches and off N. Ireland for this year, 10, 20 and 30 years ago for comparison purposes. They were unable to help but suggested a couple of possible sources. Has anyone already made such comparisons?