ukpaul

I retired as a teacher a couple of years ago. Most of the time it was heavy snow it was overnight so just a phone call in the morning and listening to local radio, the few times it was during the day were panic stations. I was an early warning system, saying it might be an idea not to open but they seemed happier with the chaos of children stuck, parents stuck. In 2010-11, without anyone taking a decision, parents were pulling their children out of classes so quickly I was left with no students even before the school closed.

Ah, that came out of nowhere. Just looked outside and snowing and sticking from near the end of that streamer. Not much on roads and pavements but seems to have started to. Walking around earlier notable that cars, grass and roofs were white and icy but not roads/pavements.

That's the very road, I live a stone's throw from it. I see cyclists wobbling up it slowly now and again and just think.....why torture yourself like that? There are steeper but shorter roads around here as well but that takes the prize for being steep and long.

The various model charts on Wetterzentrale show peak intensity to be between 10pm and Midnight on Thursday.

The front of my house is 10m higher than the front. I can also walk go for a 5 minute walk to get to the top of the road or the bottom and the bottom is 75m lower down than the top! Welcome to the Pennines, you too can live precariously perched on the side of a valley.....

Really swirling around here, horizontal a lot of the time. Too fine to get a covering yet, though.

Snowing lightly here in Calderdale.

06z just moved things a little bit south. Not by much but enough to reduce marginality.

Is that the same as the UKMO HD on Meteociel? WWW.METEOCIEL.FR Meteociel propose de manière régulière le modèle à maille fine UKMO 0.1° du UK MetOffice (météo angaise) sur 5 zones (France, Nord-Ouest, Nord-Est, Sud-Ouest, Sud-Est et pays limitrophes)

Most ensembles have a more organised system and more widely spread precipitation than the op. This is the ensemble mean for 1am Friday vs the Operational. Many members are similar to the mean.

The 12z out to the same time pretty much proves my point. Here in Sowerby Bridge, 6cm instead of 20cm and freezing but. Guildford, still 2cm of rain and even warmer, at 7 degrees C! Even the midlands isn't helped much, intensity might retain snow cover but at no point does it get to 0 degrees C. To wish it south is for nobody's benefit.

With this setup, the thing is that, if it moves futher south than UKMO/ECM, which are the most southerly as it is, it will be because the low is becoming less organised and that means lower preciptation. That's not even thinking about dewpoints, air temps and warm sectors. I just checked ECM for Thursday to Friday AM for where I am now in the Pennines and where I used to live in Surrey. Here is 20cm snow, all under freezing, there it's 2cm of rain at 4-5 degrees C. EDIT: ah, that was the 00z, still awaiting the 12z!

I think they've covered both extremes in the last two runs. Personally, it's the same as the mid Pennines is covered by both but it misses Scotland and North England this run. with a more fleeting brush in Wales and North Midlands.

I think they've made the low at lot less deep, which is why it pushes south. It needs to keep its form, as per GFS etc, to maintain snow levels so it may need to push back north. They suggested as such in the deep dive, the two variables being depth of the low and its track, both being connected.

Calderdale just after sunrise.

Yet Sowerby Bridge, Elland, Brighouse etc., which were also affected by heavy rain with Ciara (and associated flooding) are left in the yellow warning area. If Mytholmroyd is in the heavy rain area then how on earth are these places outside it?

Huh?! It’s almost a carbon copy of the GFSP 12z which gives this - What gave you the idea it was poor? Weaker than before, yes, but no moreso than for the rest of the country.

The ICON isn’t the most accurate model for us, it has to shift northwards massively for today, for example, and has a clear southwards bias. It’s a short range German model so, really, that’s its main purpose. EURO4 is pretty decent for gauging falling snow (but rubbish for snow depths).

It isn’t southward to any real extent, it is now weakening earlier, however, so that might affect areas to the East of our region. There is the possibilty of wraparound snow for those areas later but it’s a risky proposition. Sweet spot is west of Birmingham, maybe not reaching North Yorkshire (sorry folks) and maybe not much south of the dreaded M4.

Again today I’ve been looking out of the window and staring at snow covered white fields, All of them about fifty metres higher than where I am. Textbook.

Look beyond the hopecasting and you see that the system on GFS and ECM (and others) pivots somewhere over Yorkshire. Currently a bit north of me I think. There's a lot of desperate hope to send it south but (like today) it isn't happening. I do think it is arriving a bit more slowly, though, and it might arrive some hours later than thought. Today pretty much as expected here - constant medium and heavy snow for up to four hours but with very little sticking because of daytime temperatures. Metoffice pretty much correct on temperatures, BBC on timing. Thursday is a nighttime/early morning event and it does make a difference.

Heavy snow here too. Also not settling owing to above freezing temperatures. Would need a cool down of a degree or so.

Turning to snow now (I'm up at 200 metres asl at the moment).

Sleety rain here, just started and right on the edge of the band. BBC suggests 2pm for the main band, Metoffice a couple of hours earlier, so we shall see.

Hmmm. Much better angle. Undercut plausible but maybe a few more runs needed in that direction?