BleakMidwinter

It is slowly dropping here, acc'g a local Wunderground station - it was 4.7C with a 5C dewpoint at 5pm, and an hour later it's down to 4.0C with a 4C dewpoint - till too warm, but a fair drop, with plenty of time to go... Fingers crossed...

That is a REALLY useful set of images - thankyou very much for the time and effort in doing that. It's the only way we can really learn which models are more reliable or less reliable for types of weather pattern.

That was what I meant, sorry a bit cold-lurgied so maybe not clear enough - I used to live in a bit of Scotland that really DIDN'T get much snow, so this is very familiar excitement, except that I'm having to learn all the new weather systems that could provide set-ups for my new home-district!

A little further north like this would be nice for we greedy souls in Shropshire! I think one of the problems with trying to sort out reliability of different models is that snow results from so many different set-ups. The Shropshire snowmageddon a fortnight back from the Cheshire Streamer on the Friday was reasonably solidly forecast for some days in advance on pretty well all models, but the Sunday/Monday snow from the Werly was uncertain right up until a few hours beforehand for Shropshire - I can only assume that the specific conditions of the Friday dump were less volatile and unpredictable and easily altered than the specific conditions of the Sun/Mon Werly snow. I've only lived here three years and the last few weeks have been amazing - but it's a vertical learning curve, in here and in the MOT, trying to learn the multiple different set-ups that could result in snow in Telford. I used to live in Edinburgh which was simple: very little snow from most set-ups, including no snow at all when the whole UK was buried in 2009-10, but then snowmageddon from very specific Eerly set-up such as 1979-80 and 2010-2011 when it snowed for six weeks every single day without exception and for days and days on end didn't go above freezing, the Post Office stopped collecting post across the whole city, and we ended up having to get the Army in when it did stop because half a million people walking on snow from late November to mid-February results in pavements with compressed-packed-ice some 8 inches thick which required pickaxes and even pneumatic chisels to break up... but mostly, Edinburgh gets very little snow. So I'm used to the idea that you wait patiently for years until just the right set of things com together (it's the same with supporting the Scotland rugby side ) but I have to learn the set-ups needed round here...! I love this site

I think it depends on the exact course of the snow* - most models seem to have shifted in the last 12 hours a bit further south and east so it seems to hit al of the region except Shropshire! We're just clipped off the top corner, it currently looks like. BUT... not all models clip us off. Some just sneak us in. So I reckon for Shropshire we're looking at headcasting: if you step outdoors and snowflakes land on your head then you've got some of the snow; if not, then not. * (Opinion from the Dept of Stating the Bleedin' Obvious. Other opinions are available from local High Street stockists)

And NetWeather's own forecast is the first time I've seen "torrential" for a snow forecast...!

Well the MetO has just changed to having this for Telford, so fingers crossed we do well again in Shropshire again!

There's only one way to find out... hang up a stocking on the end of your bed and go to sleep reeeeally quickly and, if you've been a good boy or girl all year, then in the morning, there'll be SNOW! (It is just possible I've muddled up meteorology and Father Christmas there...)

Same here - the roads in the morning may be, er, interesting...

And look what's sitting over Ireland, in the same line to us as the recent snow...! MORE!

See when those nice chaps called round and re-surfaced your driveway for such a low fee, did they happen to use Teflon and do your whole district while they were at it? Could explain why it isn't sticking for you...

Yep, we have about an inch here too, just south of the motorway! And it's those big flakes, like it was on Friday, with no obvious wind, so... er...! We've only just got the car-park clear! I'll have an interesting morning tomorrow if it's serious snow again - dentist at 09:10 some 3-4 miles' walk away. That's some round trip on foot!

This happened earlier: that's our car, with a white van which had been trying to turn round and get out of our big shared car-park for over an hour. PILLOCK. Took 8 or 9 of us pickaxing and shovelling the inches-thick compacted polished ice he'd created, not to mention manually shoving him uphill sideways because the entire car park is on a slope so when he tried to drive forwards, he just slid to the right downhill (and onto our car more than once - amazingly, no damage, thanks to over a foot of snow...) WHY CAN'T PEOPLE LEARN TO DRIVE ON SNOW???? Or just not go off the gritted main roads? This is the front of our car. He had literally only moved the snow off the front of it. You can see the depth where it's broken away vertically at left of picture. Lucky us, eh?

So far as I have seen, it hasn't actually stopped all day here. Much of it was a very fine powder but it fell steadily. Small flakes again now, and the gritters just went past again, which is good... My footsteps from when I went out about 2pm and measured Fri+Sun as c.27cm or 10 inches have almost completely vanished now. It looks like maybe another two inches, which would give us a foot. In an urban area at only 150m asl. It's not like we're up a mountainside! I have to say, if we aren't going to get continuing snow, I'd be okay with heavy rain on Wednesday - lingering snow in towns that aren't used to it is horrible... nobody's cleared pavements so you have to walk on the roads, and the ice just persists for days and days underfoot, as the snow gets greyer and slushier... What we have now is beautiful and for a day or two it will be beautiful. I'd rather have my snow do a James Dean!

Yes, but more people lived within emergency-walking distance of their work then. It only becomes a problem when all the school staff and caretakers, etc., live where they must use a vehicle to reach their work.

Oh hallelujah - since you have that option of "first unread post" I went and ferreted and ferreted, and I found it! In Chrome, on MacBook, each forum group has a little speech bubble symbol to the left of the group title. If you hover the cursor over that it gives oyu the otherwise-bloody-invisible option of going to first unread post. Hurrah!

Might be a daft question, but... When I come onto the forums, I can click on the thread title and go to Page 1 of 73, or I can click on the last [pst made and come straight to p.73.... but am I missing something to click on to take me to where I left off half an hour ago?

Intelligent boss! If everyone who could stay home did do, or arranged to start an hour or two later, it would help enormously... I honestly have not seen one person driving as for snow, Friday or Saturday or today - they all seem to have zero idea of how to move off slowly in second...

We're not even going to try to clear the car...! It's a good thing neither of us has to get anywhere tomorrow either! Eleven inches/ 27cm and still coming down... this is what people have been trying to drive out of uphill by gunning it til they burn the clutch out, idiots...

I'd suggest you nip over to Telford to enjoy our snow, only half the roads are closed and all the buses and trains are stopped, so, er...

Just been out to measure - a clear ten inches/ c.25cm on the roof of the car which is level and not drifted! And they're still trying to get that car out. They've got it to the entrance now, currently at ninety degrees to where it was going and wants to go, it's steeply uphill all the way now... if you want to be rich, you should move into Clutch Replacement. Going by how every single driver we've seen since Friday morning has tried (failed) to deal with snow, there's gonna be on helluva lot of cars being booked in for work!

Like we had on Friday - it simply didn't stop all of daylight, having started long before dawn and continued into the night. Just about to venture out to clear the steps now BEFORE the freeze tonight - dishwasher-salt granules, btw, folks. Acts immediately as grit and then as salt, much cheaper than salt or grit (Also, while I'm at it, I'm sure you lot already know but w have watched SO many cars failing to get out of our shared carpark which is across a slant north-south and then when you get to the entrance that's a slope east-west... every single one of them has simply gunned it, burning clutch and trying to burn through the snow to the tarmac - really doesn't work. Honest. An ordinary non-4wd car will cope perfectly well with driving in six inches or more of snow but ONLY if you can drive on fresh or near-fresh snow, not on polished ice, and move away SLOWLY in second gear, and once you're moving basically try to do as little as possible - don't brake, don't accelerate, don't steer, the absolute minimum of each... God, there's another out there now - little hatchback with five people all pushing and it gets two foot forward and then slides three foot sideways across the carpark slope on the ice it is creating for itself...

Yes, it's good timing for minimising the bad side - and I'm really glad the forecast for Telford was downgraded for today - at one point there was strong confidence for 20+cm today on top of the existing 15+cm and then possibly another 15-20cm tomorrow... those are the levels where people start suffering in inexperienced urban areas - and the number of people who didn't know Friday's snow was coming, and on Friday afternoon spoke to several people who hadn't any idea more was expected today... so non-NW people seem very unprepared...

I'm a newcomer round here, only lived here for 3 years, but I hope there are enough long-term village-dwellers out there to help the newly-arrived village-dwellers, if that makes sense? I lived in Scotland before, and when it became a Thing to run a business from home online, a lot of people moved to beautiful rural villages, and rebuilt the old cottages to have huge great big windows and rip out the old ranges and put in the newest electric ones... you get the picture All well and good, and revitalised local economies so no bad thing overall - but when the heavy snows hit they were totally unprepared for it... fingers crossed there are still plenty of farmers with tractors to get cars out of drifts, and so on! We're within Telford, but all the same the silence out there is eerie - no traffic... Sadly, I've noticed how few kids there are out in it, Friday, yesterday, this morning... Friday we saw nobody else out on foot when we walked to the shops a mile away to the south, and Saturday when it was sunny on the fallen snow, we only saw half a dozen people on foot when we walked a mile east to other shops. Two teens with plastic sleds, but that was it. And they were walking, on a steeply sloping footpath cross sloping grassland...!

Er... there's been an Amber Weather Warning for several days now covering the West Midlands... so they sort of kinda did, really...!