Harve

Looks like lying snow on the road of Glenfinnan's camera, west of Fort William, and possibly right on the coast at Morar too.

Anyone west or south of Glasgow? Showers are rolling in across Argyll, Ayrshire and Renfrewshire now, as well as further north. Glasgow Airport is at 0c.

Live from Glasgow: black ice + alcohol = falling on my ass far more often than I'm willing to admit.

Wow... where is 'Running in the opposite direction to UKIP' exactly?

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I'll guess 5.5c! Way above average for the CET but not quite far above average for further north, perhaps?

The showers streaming off the Irish Sea seems very similar to the set-up in early January 2010 that gave areas north of Buxton a phenomenal amount of snow - the most I'd seen in the UK in my life by a wide margin until it was of course bettered by December 2010 and March 2013 (in these cases the south and east of the Peak District got the full pelt of it).

9.0c

Indeed, I'd assumed SB was talking about what looked like lake effect snow in NE Ohio, NW Pennsylvania, parts of Ontario and Michigan coming from a north-westerly - those wee 'splodges' are actually across fairly large areas once you consider how big the map is. The gap between Hudson Bay and the snowline is enormous.

Facts? No no, there are no definites when it comes to getting either a mild or a cold winter right now. The snow cover might be a good thing for increasing the chances of a cold winter but it still doesn't guarantee anything.

When it's below the latitude of the UK, definitely not anything of the sort we tend to look for.

definitely sensible to change to 12.4c...

I might not've been paying attention all the time, but I'm pretty sure I haven't seen the sun since Sunday. Definitely an enormous comedown from spending most of summer 'working' of some sort in France and much worse than my previous memories of the West of Scotland's climate - we might get lots of bad weather here but blue sky never feels too far away!

'Up-to-date average' seems like an oxymoron to me. Surely the most meaningful averages are those that encompass as long a time period as possible?Given that, if they insist on using only 30 years then I'm not sure why it's 61-90 they've chosen.

'Snow monsters' in Japan.

I'm making this post at 4.05am. Speak for yourself!

8.8c

Do we have a higher minimum extent, assuming we've reached the minimum, than any of 2008, 2009 and 2010 according to IJIS? Google almost has too much information...

But if the Shropshire cloud effect was persistent, then it would be reflected in the averages and not the anomalies. All of your examples with relatively less sunshine in Shropshire compared to elsewhere in the country would therefore be cancelled out by examples of Shropshire getting relatively more sunshine in the rest of the country.http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/climate/uk/averages/ukmapavge.html You can get averages here. Perhaps it's because Shropshire finds itself between the Irish sea coast, which has plenty of sunshine, and the south, which also has relatively more sunshine but doesn't benefit from either of these locations. But it's still sunnier than the upland areas surrounding Shropshire.

After spending the last few weeks working-ish in the sunny South-ish of France, Derbyshire throwing a 13c max at me on my return is definitely a shock to the system!

The most boring month in almost all measures for me. I'll try 14.9c

Which would in turn suggest that any gains in August and September would reduce the scope for October expansion (since some is already in place) and therefore be a bad thing for a cold winter?I'm reluctant to say a cold August or September means anything at all.

All four countries of the UK have fairly wide variety of snowiness making it impossible to generalise. You can't, for example, say Scotland is less snowy than England because Glasgow is less snowy than Bradford. Wales and England both have snowy and almost snowless areas.

17.7c

Holy hell!This would explain the puddles of water in the house.