Harve

I can see down to that height (when the winds briefly abate!) and the snow seems to be settling fine. I'm a good deal further north than Cannock Chase though.

A few snowflakes blowing around in the wind here, but for the most part there's nothing really happening.

An hour late! 8.7c please.

I doubt few would call it "nice", but the Bartlett High winter of 1988-1989 must be one of the best examples, if you consider it anticyclonic.

Rain turned to snow earlier this morning and gave a 1-2cm covering. It's thawed very quickly though.

"Twice the average temperature" is such a ridiculous thing to say. I realise they simply mean that temperatures will be double what their average over 0c, but if you doubled 9.3c, you'd actually end up with 291c in terms of actual heat.

By south-east, I meant south-west. My geography's not that poor!

Almost completely clear skies here - that's about 35 miles from Telford! There's a bank of cloud to the north, but nothing towards the south east. I imagine most of Staffordshire's clear, too.

2011 is probably my favourite summer. Reasonably sunny and showery with temperatures rarely too hot. There's certainly room for improvement, but that's for a different climate. I imagine summer high up in north-western USA would be fantastic.

If I'm interpreting them rightly, GP's posts seem to indicate some sort of April 1981-esque switcharound.

Yup, in December 2010 I saw -14c, 15c and -17c on a car thermometer (as inaccurate as they can be) near Dovedale, not too far from me, on three separate mornings. In contrast, I don't believe it dropped below -10c at the nearest Met Office station in Leek in December 2010. The dales here are really quite steep and narrow compared to most other 'frost hollow' locations and some north-south orientated dales receive no sun until early afternoon in the winter, so I've often seen temperature differences between the tops and dales being as much as 11c on sunny spring mornings. Again, that's according to the car. There was once a Met Office station further down the valley as I remember the date record being broken on a day in December 2010, the location of the original record being Mayfield, Staffordshire set sometime in the early 20th century. I've got no idea what's happened to the station though. The nearest frost hollow station is all the way over in Shawbury, Shropshire. I'm quite sure it's often colder in local valleys here, alas we'll never know for sure.

There's a slight covering here after a rather heavy snow shower, though fell as hail initially.

In nearby Buxton: December - 242mm January - 143mm February - 24mm A more zonal outlook for February should mean that it reaches at least 100mm. Of course, the Peak District's weather is very different to places even 20 miles to the south, nevermind East Anglia. However, I was under the impression that the entire country was quite dry? Clearly not.

The thaw was surprisingly slow yesterday, but was noticeable nonetheless. There's roughly 90% snow cover above 300m and 60% cover at 150m in the dales.

I believe it's simply convective activity in cool, polar-maritime airstreams. There's focus on showers rather than thunderstorms. It's one of my favourite weather types.

I hope altitude makes up for my north-easterlyness.

I'd like a spring to be a little more extreme form of May 2010 - rather cool and northerly early on with snow showers that give temporary cover above 300m. If this were to occur in March they would be coupled with sharp frosts of -5-10c. This showery spell was followed by a rather gorgeous warm spell that was never too hot, like they often are come the summer. With some frontal snow early on (okay, unfeasible for May, but entirely possible in March and much of April) it would've been a perfect spring, all in one month.

As a side note, those graphics were horrid, especially the rain/snow map at 0.35 on the second video for example. I can't believe there was such a fuss when they switched!

In terms of wintriness I'd say that 2007/2008 was quite dire. I think one of my least favourite winter months would've been February 1986, even though it's almost considered 'legendary'. I see no appeal in a cold but dry easterly (I assume this also means cloud?) with almost the same weather day after day in my region. If it meant freezing fog and rime then it'd be far better, if that was the case? I wasn't alive for it, This winter has been really good, I think. There've been plenty of snowfalls above 250-350m, with 17 days of sleet or snow falling, even if most of them have been light. If I lived just a few miles to the north I'd be on my 8 consecutive day of snow cover, with 1 (?) more snow lying day earlier in January and at least 5 or so in December. I don't keep statistics on these mind! And of course, February looks set to be better than December (rather good) and January (admittedly poor) put together. I'd rank the last 5, the only ones I've paid proper attention to, as follows: 2009/2010 2010/2011 2011/2012 2008/2009 2007/2008

Snow has eased to light again, but has started settling on main roads aswell as everywhere else.

I've got no idea what thread to post in being where I am, while Derbyshire's in the Midlands, there's parts of it that're considered north western, and around the Chesterfield area its weather is certainly more like Yorkshire! But anyway, it's snowing moderately here, enough has settled to more or less cover lawns.

Snow has gotten heavier without much warning. I'd estimate moderate now, earlier this afternoon it was light / very light.

Really? To the south-east of you, nearer Matlock, I saw the most level snow in my life on 1st-2nd December at ~60-70cm. Perhaps December 2009 and January 2010 would've beaten it if the whole month had been windless! It certainly wasn't a disappointing winter. This winter has also been good if you ignore the lack of snowfall sticking around (although just 10 minutes away snow's been lying for an entire week), with numerous small falls. The number of days of sleet or snow will make the winter seem far / even better than it has been. I guess altitude has helped here.

3.2c please.

I imagine you're a little too far west for snow tomorrow.