Harve

After March? Then you're definitely forgetting the exceptional spell in the second half of May, and generally 'good' weather between mid July and mid August (I can't comment; that was exactly when I wasn't in the country).

8 500 000 Youtube views disagree with you!

I'm not sure if bashing the Met is warranted.There can still be an SSW and significant blocking and yet the UK could remain mild. At times the Met Office's 16-30 day outlook did suggest mild but I think it generally stuck to the cold theme. That seems about right to me, the very cold period only started at the end of March (outside the forecast period) and temperatures did indeed recover to the seasonal average, albeit briefly. They're never going to say things like 'record-breaking cold', as the difference between record-breaking and merely rather cold can be relatively small, and subtleties like that are impossible to pick out at such a range.

In terms of temperatures, it very much could be...There have been over 100 summers cooler than the coolest of the last 5 years (2011). In fact, 1985-1988 had four consecutive summers that were below the supposed 'cool' summer of 2011.

12.3c. Very settled with cool-ish nights preventing an extremely warm month. Thanks.

Just to help you: you can copy and paste links from an iPad. Highlight the site's web address and click copy from the options that pop up? Then press and hold for ~1 second and a 'paste' option should also pop up.

Not sure, but that sure is a hypnotic animation.

This is surely a notably cool day for the end of April. The coldest CET mean for a day in May is 2.9c, so a slightly cooler day than forecast could produce something impressive.

Indeed. Northerlies are probably the most reliably sunny direction for the weather to come from, and any sunny spells at this time of year are going to be reasonably warm (even if they are interspersed by rogue wintery showers).

October 2010-January 2011 by the 61-90 averages.

There is a wreath of snow still left on the SW facing slopes of the Weaver Hills in the Staffordshire Moorlands, still visible from much of Staffordshire. Rapidly depleted from last Friday though, where cover was still 30-40% on the slope.

The snow cover has been obliterated over the last 48 hours by the wind, rain and high temperatures. Snow patches have now completely disappeared below 150m, and at this rate any snow higher up won't last too much longer, either.

As if the rest of the week hasn't been bad enough, a vile day today with a maximum of 3.6c and a terrible diurnal range. Could the cold uppers and sunshine please come back?

The main reason why it's looking so brown is because the temperature hasn't spent substantial periods above 6c yet.

Roads are still blocked in places... crazy.

Not sure what the CET was, but the 4th April saw 35cm of snowfall and daytime maxima of less than 1c down to valley level (150m) down in this part of the CET zone. It never really properly warmed up again until mid May so the CET will be hard pushed to maintain the rolling average at less than 9c.

I'll try 7.2: cold returning mid-late month after an above average spell. Identical to last April's CET.

In 2010, snow lasted above 400m (so not exactly 'highest peaks') till May. Despite there being slightly less snow in the north and west of the Peaks, this year is slightly ahead of that, I think.

Snowing lightly in Preston.

Okay, so just getting to the southern end of the Peak District would be okay as I know plenty of people there: apparently the A53 (A54?) road between Buxton and Leek is open, but is the A52 from Leek to Ashbourne okay? Failing that, the A6 from Buxton to Matlock is possible, but I'm unsure about whether the B Roads from Bakewell, Darley Dale and Cromford towards Ashbourne are passable. There's always going around the Peak District, but since I've got a train ticket to Buxton, it'd be expensive to get off at another stop and buy tickets on the day. Any advice is appreciated, thankyou!

Christ. I remember going there in January 2010 and it was impressive, but that's something else. Definitely eclipses that and December 2010's incredible snowfall... if only I'm there to see it! There's no way of getting from Buxton to the Newhaven/Grangemill area, is there? Yep, definitely no way.

An issue that must be pointed out is that despite the climate seeming to have got colder, we're still well below our 'fair share' of extremely cold months. By law of averages every year should, statistically speaking, have one month within the 29 coldest CET months (355/12), for that that month of course. So in the last five years, only two have: December 2010 was second coldest and March 2013 should be within the top 30 coldest if it has a CET of 3.2c or less. Before this supposed shift, we have to wait until February 1986 to find a month that was similarly exceptional, when there actually should have been 25 such months. On the other hand, we've seen 13 months in the top 29 most warm: January 2007, February 2008 and 2011, March 2012, April 2007, 2009 and 2011, May 2008, September 2011, October 2009 and 2011, and November 2009 and 2011. This is as opposed to our 'quota' of 5.

www.buxtonweather.co.uk seems to indicate that things are still difficult. I thought living very close to the A515 and coming back three days after the snowfall would make life easier, but seemingly not!

Whilst not necessarily heavy, I believe Terminal Moraine has recorded 16 consecutive days of sleet or snow falling this month, and with any luck a few rogue snow showers could make that continue.

I know we tend to concentrate on small amounts of snow causing excessively widespread disruption and then we get the usual complaints about the UK being awful at dealing with snow, but it must be pointed out that many train services have barely been delayed - for example the Manchester to Buxton line has been running smoothly amidst all the chaos. I'll be taking it tomorrow so that bodes well for me, it's just getting from Buxton to home!