moffatross

Yes, sensationalist poop, but the really sinful act in that item is the inference that the UK Met Office have been quoted as saying a 'White Easter' is on the way. And of course it has provoked all the usual comments and criticisms of the Met Office too.

Thanks Tripod, timer and long exposure over 5 to 10 seconds with manual focus (I use 30-50 year old film SLR lenses that don't have autofocus but are a skoosh to focus manually). Oh, and a lot of trial and error too

It was a beautiful day in Moffat today, the cloud came on for a bit and delivered some very light, but dry and fluffy snow, but it's ended clear and starlit, and not a breath of a breeze. Took a stroll up onto Tinto hill from Wiston Lodge late last night and got a wonderful view of Glasgow and the Central Belt to the north, and the motorway and railway winding their way through the Southern Uplands to the south. But it was f... b.. brrrrrr.... cold up there at 11 pm From Tinto summit, moonlight illuminates the south of Scotland. Below is the village of Wiston, the west coast mainline railway, Abington services and the M74, and the lights on the Lowther Hills radio installations. Looking north to the Glasgow 'burbs with my pal illuminating Tinto's summit OS trig point.

Looking on the bright side, most of us would take cold and dry over wet and windy

But to be clear, it's not the couple that have been missing since last weekend. This was a pair of male climbers that failed to return as expected yesterday.

Amazingly sharp NW/SE boundary line of between mild and cold air. Not a snow flake in sight here, just dreich and still, but a pal in Wanlockhead reports 10 cm of fresh up there.

Aye, 'normal service' is restored. Cold, heavy rain, lashing horizontally at Moffat too.

Haven't even looked in the model thread here (or at TWO), but a quick glance at the 12Z GFS and the ECM just rolling out suggests there'll be some maudlin misgogs this evening, and that the word 'euroslug' will be used in one or two posts. I've really enjoyed this relative calm/dry spell and managed quite a lot of outdoors work on the house. Shame the most unreliable scaffolder/roofer in Dumfries & Galloway (possibly in all of Scotland) didn't just tell me on day one that he was going to jerk me about, instead of spinning his "I'll be there tomorrow" story out for the last week and a half. Looks like I'll be completing the rendering in the wind and rain.

Nevis range (Back Corries) yesterday, shamelessly robbed from Facebook ...

Last day of dreich in Moffat, and very much looking forward to the next 4-5 days.

I'd be biting the weather model's arm off for even a short, calm, dry period Almost Spring-like here now today, bird song, nae wind, and the sun looks like it might be threatening to peep through a bit later. Honestly, it'd be uplifting to have a few day without windows rattling and rain spattering.

Not meaning to be too parochial, but I'm sure when you said UK, you maybe meant the south of the UK ? I'm in the South of Scotland, and only at 150m ASL, but even I've already seen a few snow falls that have settled and stayed around for a few days so far this winter. Anyway, it seems to me on this rare almost wind-free day, that the increased uncertainty is a function of the slack synoptics that follow a trough digging further south than we have become accustomed to. I know there're primary and predictable interactions aloft further afield but away from the main action, the consequences are secondary. A bit like the eddies that slowly swirl in the northern slack side of a pool on the bend of a river, they're unpredictable, while the raging currents on the gravel bank on the southern side of the bend follow a much more predictable route.

But for the next 24 hours it'll be mostly 'mingtesting'.

The Torridon Hills, then Creag Meagaidh, then the Torridons again look to cop even more ?

The afternoon of wind and heavy rain appears to have run itself out of steam now but it ended pure torrential and I left me with 15 minutes of mopping up the run-off water that made its way onto the kitchen floor. Some mastic, sand & cement required when it's next dry to fill a crack at the base of an east facing wall. Ho-hum ...

Aye, coming ESE, and not just the wind, but the rain is splattering horizontally onto the east facing windows too. Pretty typical of this perpetual wild autumn really, to be getting pish from the east, pish from the south, pish from the west, and pish from the north too

Currently gusting up towards a window rattler, and despite the transient mild uppers, it's cold outside in the wind. Nearer to hand model wise, this Monday night into Tuesday also has potential.

Strangely parochial news item from the BBC about a February snowfall 20 years ago, conflating a snowfall in Dumfries with all of D&G, I have seen snowfalls in Moffat deeper than those pix more than once in the last 10 years. Wanlockhead gets heavier snowfalls several times most winters. The item also noted that the 50 cm that fell at Eskdalemuir was small-fry compared to snowfalls elsewhere All very weird, a bit like saying that Argyll rarely gets heavy snowfalls because it doesn't snow much in Oban. Nice pix though http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-south-scotland-35461633

At our latitude, winter proper continues until late March and we can still get heavy snowfalls into April so to condemn winter at the start of February is pure bonkers. As you said, some nice surprises may be in store for us. The GFS has just rolled out a run that (even in the absence of deep cold) suggests they may not be that far away either. This is for Moffat from the GFS 06Z ...

Yep, both the 10 day ECM and 16 day GFS ops are looking distinctly more settled for us with the jet a lot more sedated, and a few hundred miles further south. Ironic that we can only see the Met Office model output to 6 days as their longer term text update appears to have dropped just what the ECM and GFS are showing this morning.

Nice captures, CMD. The cloud has arrived in Moffat now but with a bit of rare sunshine, and some snow in the garden I went after the snowdrops this morning too

Mild and windy, yep, but thankfully, the probability of being the bullseye for a weekend storm seems somewhat reduced today ... And locally, wet obviously too. Notably, the only remaining Met Office warning is centred on Moffat http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/public/weather/warnings/#?tab=warnings&map=Warnings&zoom=5&lon=-3.50&lat=55.50&fcTime=1454630400&regionName=dg

I think the heavy snow showers that got driven in on high wind Monday and yesterday were about ideal for the West. They'd have been the first proper gully filling snowfalls of the season and might set up the front of Glencoe, and the back corries at Nevis with a base that'll last a good while. The SAIS blogs may make interesting reading later ... http://www.sais.gov.uk/ Just a dusting of snow in Moffat this morning, or to be fair, more like an accretion of frozen slush. The hills are white though.

Sensitive ? I've spent days digging new culverts and ditches in the adjacent field and in the neighbour's garden to channel fresh rainfalls away from our hoose. So not 'sensitive', more like absolutely sick of it

Brrr ... it'd be "colder than a well digger's ass". http://dreamsteep.com/writing/humor/237-the-well-diggers-ass.html