Aaron

Midnight, 0300 and 0900.

I see heavy snow forecast for Leeds, with snow showers too.

In retrospect, sunny and warm is hardly exciting, so could equally be described as dull. Pleasant nonetheless.

Yesterday was a truly beautiful day, visibility was excellent, the following picture was taken at Temple Newsam in Leeds, and the tall tower in the distance is Winter Hill transmitting station, near Bolton, some 45 miles away.

Mean: 2.8°C Mean maximum: 4.7°C Mean minimum: 0.9°C Maximum temperature: 13.0°C (day 29) Minimum temperature: -7.1°C (day 16) Lowest maximum: -3.7°C (day 16) Highest minimum: 9.4°C (day 3) Days >10°C: 4 Days <5°C: 17 Days <0°C: 3 -------------------------------------------------------------- Precipitation: 38.9 mm Rain days >1 mm: 6 Rain days >0.1 mm: 14 Most in one day: 20.5 mm* (day 26) Maximum snow depth: 25 cm (day 26) -------------------------------------------------------------- Maximum pressure: 1035.8 mb (day 4) Minimum pressure: 983.3 mb (day 27) Maximum wind gust: 60.1 mph (day 31) Sunshine: 38.4 hours Mean: 1.2 hours Most in one day: 6.2 hours (day 9) -------------------------------------------------------------- Thunder: 1 Lightning: 2 Hail: 0 Snow falling: 9 Snow on ground: 14** Air frost: 16 *entirely snow melt ** excludes 2 or 3 days with patchy cover

14 consecutive days of snow cover is definitely not normal for Leeds (as noted above it's a similar number to the average annual snow lying days, let alone January), nor is 25 cm of level snow, or 3 ice days in one month, and the max of -3.7C was colder than anything in December 2010. The sheer number of snowfalls was also very high, hence the high snowfall total. The snowfall total last month is similar to continental climates in N America.

38.4mm for January, most of which was snow melt.

For last month as a whole I had around 35 - 37 cm of snow, with a max depth of 25 cm (10 inches), 14 days of snow cover, a further 2 or 3 days with patchy cover, 3 ice days, and a max of -3.7C. All in all, pretty damn good. No deep cold, but the snow alone was enough to make last month one of the best I've experienced (I was born in the 80s so only have limited memories of certain winter months, and nothing has beaten Jan 1995 yet).

Didn't even realise that my 'predictions' for both Jan and Feb are exactly the same..

4.6C

Loving this turbulent period of weather - certainly makes up for the lack of snow, very little beats going outside onto an open field with the gale force winds buffeting you (or am I just a nutter?!). LBA peaked at 63mph yesterday.

Oh no, we're missing the storms already.

Ditto

The River Aire in central Leeds has burst its banks - not surprising really, but it's started to fall again. There was a lot of water around recently, it sounded like there was monsoonal rain yesterday morning, but it was only all the water running down my roof and into the drains thanks to snow melt.

There was a day in June colder than Christmas 2011.

Well, I had no idea what it was like as 9am this morning, but the landscape is vastly green again. A few snow patches in gardens, and one of the fields behind me house is totally covered still, and there are snow piles in people's drive ways.

just got back from city centre and the snow is still here, front garden totally covered back garden mostly covered but starting to lose a fair amount rapidly, woludnt be sur[rised if it was still there by 9am in the city centre i didnt really notice much i was too blurry eyed, now im off to bed so goodnight

Absolutely pouring here, odd experience with thick snow cover. Roads are a slushy mess, diabolical.

Look at that intense area of PPN heading for this region.. hope the Pennines don't eat them up.

I thought this cold spell would have faded into obscurity, but this recent snowfall has really upped it to something completely different. I've never known a winter to encompass so many snowfalls, even if there was thaw between them.

The dreaded rain has arrived now.

The figure is 2.0C for me.

Just finished making a large snow pile in my garden - want to see how long it will stand the test of time.

The same was said in March 2011, or was it March 2012? Either way, there have been many predictions of snowy March's and none of them have come to fruition, so I'm going to hold you personally responsible for the outcome.

I would like that storm to position itself over the Grampians.