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staplehurst

Pro Forecaster / Meteorologist
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Posts posted by staplehurst

  1. Just now, pinball wizard said:

    Thanks very much for the explanation, been a typically hit and miss snowfall. What are your thoughts on snowfall from showers across Norfolk/Suffolk overnight? Meto warning for showers seems quite extensive when ppn seems quite limited and prone to fizzling out across Nfolk/Sfolk. 

    I suspect the warning for East Anglia is more catered for the ice aspect rather than snow accumulations. (That said of course we have accumulating snow right now in SW Essex). The odd cm or two might be possible very locally, mainly above 100m, but I suspect it'll struggle to settle for most places (if not falling as rain/sleet in any case)

  2. 1 minute ago, pinball wizard said:

    Thanks for sharing, what makes it so difficult for models to predict this? 

    Probably because it's such a small-scale feature (in the grand scheme of things compared to most larger-scale upper-level features). Looks like the upper low slowly weakens as it continues to clear eastwards through tonight, so expected a slow weakening of the precipitation over SE England over the coming hours, but it could still snow for some time yet given it's slow movement and decay.

    • Thanks 1
  3. 34 minutes ago, staplehurst said:

    Looks like the 06z EURO4 with a lot of snow edited in - you can see where the (relatively narrow) band of precipitation would be in the original model where the line of rain over the North Sea is. Snow has been drawn in north and south of this line to 'blur the edges' and spread the risk I would imagine

     

  4. 4 minutes ago, Downpour said:

    Which model are they using? Certainty not ECM (6z). Eyes down for this evening’s ECM...

    Looks like the 06z EURO4 with a lot of snow edited in - you can see where the (relatively narrow) band of precipitation would be in the original model where the line of rain over the North Sea is. Snow has been drawn in north and south of this line to 'blur the edges' and spread the risk I would imagine

  5. 9 minutes ago, Nqp15hhu said:

    The models have not been very accurate for this area, recently. The EURO4 predicted snowfall on Sunday night, we received heavy rain all night, with a temp of 2c. The EURO 4 also predicted snowfall for this area this evening and overnight. 

    None of the models from what I can remember predicted snowfall in Central Eastern England and rainfall in Eastern East Anglia tonight.

    The Sunday night / Monday North Sea wintry showers the EURO4 always overplays - similarly 2 weeks ago it suggested 10cm of lying snow in Norfolk, when most other models only had 1cm. Eventually it backed off the idea - this is a known issue in the EURO4 with it's convective rain rates being excessively high, and hence convective accumulation too high.

    This plot from 21z may go some ways to help explain the marginality of tonight's rain/snow. Red shading highlights areas where the dewpoint is warmer in reality than EURO4 expectations, while blue depicts colder.

     

    deviation_T_21Z.png

    • Like 5
  6. 3 minutes ago, Delka said:

    Wow, never knew that that area was so high  Always assumed it was close to sea level as they tend to struggle with snowfall but I guess that's just because of how far south it is

    Yes.. checking the south-west thread it does seem the radar is being a bit too enthusiastic with dealing out the pinks today

    Precipitation type radars will never be perfect because they are based on model algorithms - so if the model hasn't quite captured the right vertical profile, then the 'precip type radar' will also be incorrect. Also, a lot of these precip type radar products won't adjust for evaporative cooling in the heavier bursts of precipitation. The Met Office precipitation radar (the grey maps they occasionally tweet) uses model algorithms but also compensates for evaporative cooling and adjusts accordingly.

    • Thanks 1
  7. 27 minutes ago, feb1991blizzard said:

    Icon - EU  has no snow falling from the showers following the front anywhere in England - all rain event.

    The ICON is also notoriously poor at advecting sea-generated showers inland. Usually the only time you'll see showers inland during the winter months in the ICON-EU is if they're courtesy of an organised trough. Countless times you can run the precip accumulation charts out to the end of the run and see how all the precip from the showers stops along the coastline.

    As an aside note, last Wednesday the EURO4 was consistently predicting 10-11cm of snow in Norfolk from the brief showery northwesterly flow on Thursday. In reality very little to no accumulations occurred, and the model eventually backed off the idea and only had 1-2cm by the morning runs on the Thursday. So I suspect the snow depth charts are a little exaggerated in the EURO4 world for some areas at this lead time.

    • Thanks 1
  8. 4 hours ago, Justin123 said:

    Oh ok! That makes sense now. Sorry, should have looked further before posting that, but thanks for your help. Is it because the GFS isn’t as high res as some models.

    It's more an issue with the GFS physics than the fact it's a global model per se - this issue tends to feed into high-res models that use the GFS for its boundary conditions, such as WRF and NMM, so even though they are higher-res models they also have a habit of being too keen on developing showers in the same situation. Several other global models that have the same resolution as the GFS are pretty much dry today.

  9. 1 hour ago, Justin123 said:

    The chance of some surface based thunderstorms in the far southeast, moving north east- south west. With up to 450kj/g there are more likely to be pulse storms rather than organised, but the isolated stronger cell can’t be ruled out. Only a 50% chance of lightning today though. I really hope convective weather pick up on this for today’s small chance of seeing the first thunderstorm in the southeast. As being in Essex missed the last storms from  the last heatwave. Also funnily enough I have never seen estofex issue a forecast and not convective weather. Maybe the chief forecaster is busy this week!

    BD9487BD-B27C-48DF-9FF1-DAD80197B36B.png

    I've looked at the potential but decided not to issue anything - it really is just the GFS producing anything, all other models are practically dry. Some decent CAPE, but virtually no shear, dry looking profiles too. As you say, if anything did develop it would be pulse-type rather than anything organised, and hence relatively short-lived. So some convection may bubble up in SE England, but will likely struggle to gain sufficient height to produce very much - GFS has a habit of overdoing these marginal risks due to its issues with excess moisture. 

  10. 23 minutes ago, Ben Sainsbury said:

    I love ConvectiveWeather but whilst the forecast was accurate for many areas, they moved the MDT zone westwards after we had received all our lightning across Bristol, Bath into Wiltshire?

    Bit like the Met Office as people mentioned, issuing a yellow warning for rain when people already received all their rain and wasn’t getting anymore aha!

    Indeed, here's the evolution of the forecast for Saturday. In general, everything developed about 50 miles further west than earlier expectations, and hence no point keeping a 'wrong' forecast online when nowcasting would suggest the risk had shifted slightly west. 

    comp.png

    • Like 1
  11. 3 minutes ago, Flash bang flash bang etc said:

    Probably my wording sorry, point simply being that CW haven’t ‘got it right’ in terms of where the storms actually occurred the last few times.

    I don’t know what ‘getting the storm risk right’ means... surely a forecast is just a forecast?

    Evidence is good that tomo will have some activity somewhere, but they keep chopping and changing our area so I’m waiting until tomorrow morning to decide whether to head out during the day and chase. Would be amazing to see two storms in one day if the evening risk comes off in the SE

    Worth noting that up until now, no MDT risks have been issued - and hence all forecasts so far have suggested storms are more likely to not happen than to happen (SLGT = 30-45% chance). There are very few forecasts issued in this country that carry high confidence, and the greatest uncertainties are often mentioned in each forecast text.

    We make mistakes, we're human - the point is to always verify your forecast to see if it went to plan or not, and if not try and find out what went wrong to ultimately avoid that mistake in the future. Two examples from the past month or so (15th March vs 3rd April) where the forecast didn't quite go to plan on one, but succeeded quite well on the other. (Black dots are the detected lightning strikes during each forecast period). In the case of the former, a post-event analysis was posted explaining what went wrong >> .

    comp.png

    • Like 4
  12. For those concerned, compared the 06z EURO4's expected snow accumulation for 17:00 today (this includes sleet too, and is mm water equivalent rather than pure cm) vs how much in total may have accumulated by tomorrow afternoon.

    You have to take into account any melting that has already, so its possible it is over-estimating totals in some places right now

    ea_snowtot_201803171700.png

    2.png

    • Like 3
  13. 5 minutes ago, Paul Sherman said:

    Inversion Maybe ? A la 2009 ?

    Adjusting the 00z Norderney tephi for a 6C with a dewpoint of -4C (representative of North Sea conditions today) gives you convective cloud top of about 2km (6,700ft ish). Inversion then present at this level, with very dry air above. Wiating for the upper cold pool to approach this afternoon/evening to help moisten the profiles a bit more and increase the convective depth.

    But yes, inversion could be playing a role with the radar, as can blowing snow and the snow itself make the radar over-read the intensities.

    • Like 1
  14. 39 minutes ago, Norfolk Sheep said:

    Yep, does seem that the areas originally predicted not to have much in the way of snow are now going to get what we should have had. They started pinching our storms and now this. 

    I'm not sure Norfolk was ever predicted to have large amounts of snow? East Norfolk could get quite a bit when the flow swings back E then SE on Wednesday morning with the deep instability around

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