BleakMidwinter

I've seen that happen in the Balkans in 1996 - blazing hot 40Ccentral-south European summer, two days of grey rain, bang into freezing winter... in September!

I get a kind of "reverse SAD" so for me, summer is a terrible time, and I struggle horribly as everyone around me celebrates the blue skies and hot temps and dry weather... Now I can see the autumnal weather on the horizon, I already feel better. I wake up more alertly in the mornings, I sleep more soundly, I feel taller and lighter, I am *interested* in the world around me more, I care about stuff more, I laugh and smile more... I no longer wake up feeling grimly determined to drag myself through yet another day with "no air in the air" as it feels to me. It isn't only "ooh, I love winter!" - it is also that hot dry weather is as difficult for me as the dark cold weather is for the SAD-sufferers...

Did someone call?

As the temps here hit 30 yet again, forecast to do it every day til next week and it's only Tuesday now, if ONE MORE PERSON says to me that "with this much hot weather, it's bound to mean a really cold winter..." I am going to get *very* sarcastic at them...

Nah, you're alright - we'd never have got the matches to light in this wind

Startling footage of it going too - sheet metal behaving like a sheet on the clothesline! Landed on live wires in the street too... lucky nobody hurt...

My parents flew into Heathrow on the very last flight allowed to land as the 1§987 hurricane hit... and that was only because it was Cathay Pacific whose crews were used to flying and landing in typhoon conditions!

Strewth!!!!!!!

Ah right! Thanks, I was confused there! Yes, that makes sense... I think one factor might be that the start of the Red was pushed back a little to start at 7am - last night it was a 5am expected start and iirc originally 3am, so presumably the whole thing has approached slightly later than originally expected? I know a lot of coastal places are hugely relieved that their high tide has now been and gone and is starting to recede, prior to the storm surge arriving, where originally it looked as if the surge and high water would coincide disastrously...

Wow, that's abrupt! Hope you get your electric back on soon - many thanks for your updates, they've helped me explain to friends that it isn't *only* Britain being affected by this...!

Riight. So what you're saying is that, during a period several hours before the peak, your peak was below the peak, yes? okay.

Peaked? It's still building for an hour or so yet!

My old home in Edinburgh sat 30m below, with nothing at all in between, the Blackford Observatory station which recorded the 102mph gust in Storm Ulli - at exactly that time, a huge heavy Victorian cast-iron skylight was wrenched out of our roof (on the leeward side of the roof, at that), and landed three storeys down in the back garden as a startling piece of twisted metal. Neighbours two gardens away found broken window-glass shards across their gardens... We were lucky the damage wasn't worse, and that it landed harmlessly in gardens, but a gust can do serious damage...

Grey and drizzly here in Telford, but looking forward to some colder weather soon, preferably of the white and blizzardy variety! I shall never forget early December 2017 when we had a foot of snow on the Friday (7th?) from the NW and then another foot on the Sunday from the SW, two totally unrelated weather systems giving me more snow than I'd ever had in my life to play with! I keep hoping...

You can click on a message and set that user to "ignore posts" - it means you miss anything of interest, but it does mean you can skip the tweets...

This is all right on the edge of my comprehension but you're explaining it brilliantly, even for a non-chemist - thankyou! re KW's posts, unfortunately, I've had to set to 'ignore' as my RSI-wrists can't cope with scrolling through 20 or 30 Tweets in a single post

Well, it was the forecast for my 150m asl postcode, so not that hilly It's vanished now, replaced by biblical deluges of rain all day Friday...

Er.... presumably this is unlikely to happen?! XC's forecast for Telford: 14cm of snow on Friday!

No, no - if you keep a nice thick 10" or more of snow on your roof, you end up with fabulous insulation!

Oh, it turned out that it is a legal obligation in the UK as well but it's so rare for it to be a problem, esp in Edinburgh, that nobody knew, or had tools, etc... eventually people started to get the hang of it but by then there was so much compacted on most pavements it was impossible. We were lucky in the street I used to live in, a little dead-end lane, because we had one 87-year-old and one 65-year-old and they nipped out sharpish after each fall and cleared a track to the main road - then the 87-year-old went on holiday, and the woman next door and I tried and totally failed to keep on top of it and in the end after a weke she had to get three hefty builders from her work to come and clear it for cash! Edinburgh has its own micro-climate - that winter of 2009-2010 when the entire UK was blanketed in snow? Literally not a single lying flake and hardly any falling. I was lamp-post watching in despair. Then late Nov 2010 it walloped in like anything, and I stopped bothering (!) to measure it once it was over 20 inches in the back garden. Week after week it was that deep, hardly any vehicles moved, it was amazing. I used to go out on foot with our wooden sledge to help folk home with their shopping. We hadn't had snow like that since 1979-80 winter, my first one living there as a child. I may be mistaken about it being every single day, but if you have access to records, it wouldn't surprise me in the least if Edinburgh didn't have that warm blip in December. Certainly there was nothing resembling a thaw. My recollection is that there was fresh snow every single morning because I was going out before dawn to sweep a path to the birdbath, to fill it, having swept ice and water out at dusk each evening (because it was less effort than trudging back and forth with kettles trying to thaw a frozen birdbath in the morning!). That first winter when I was ten we had two weeks when it didn't go above zero celsius and I remember thinking it must surely be very similar with the snow needing swept every morning. Telford, on the other hand, had incredible snow on Dec 7/8 2017, when we had an incredible blizzard from a NWerly Cheshire Gap Streamer, on the Friday, followed on the Sunday by blizzards coming up from the SW from a totally separate weather system. By the Tuesday when I tried to unbury the car it took over two hours to shift the frozen snow, which was 27cm deep on the roof of the car and had frozen completely in -12C overnights... I learnt then never to leave a car buried if you plan to use it before spring

I think the bigger problem will be childcare - majority of teachers drive to work, many of them long distances, so schools are often closed with comparatively minor snow. If we had major snow and ice, and schools were closed, how many people will have to take time off work to look after their kids? If people are unable to get to work, that means shops may not all open or only short hours, public transport may not have enough drivers, etc., etc. It became a problem in many places in a small way two years ago, but I think in the event of serious and prolonged cold winter weather, the closed schools and the domino effect from there (no pizza deliveries, come to that!) will be the bigger problem. Bear in mind that when Edinburgh had its "Big Freeze" starting late Nov 2010, the post office promptly bolted closed all postboxes, and Tesco and Amazon both refused to take any online orders for anywhere in the wider region for weeks. And that did need the Army in the end - come the eventual stop, after something like six weeks with falling snow every day, the pavements across almost all the city had 8-10 inches of compacted snow-ice, so everyone had to walk in the roads (most of which had been impassable for most of the previous weeks). In some areas, pneumatic drills had to be used to break it up.

The frost-watch discussion thread has been saying how unusual a Sept frost is! Steady rain here and distinctly cooler than before. I absolutely love this time of year, filling the freezer with soups and stews, and baking lots of bread, and making crumbles to have with custard, mmmm.... and getting my lovely cosy winter woollies out again Rumours starting of a distinctly cold second half to winter - and no, not just the Express's annual SNOWMAGEDDON!!! hysteria, proper actual analysis seems to be cautiously and warily suggesting we check our thermal undies are in order https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/uk-weather-forecast-beast-from-the-east-coldest-winter-latest-a9096601.html

It looks as if the wind has veered to be more northerly than initially forecast, so the bulk of Monday's rain is further south... tonight, and Wedensday currently look like the main days for the Midlands, but it's all a bit unpredictable!

It's all likely to be a bit soggy, that's certain! the problem is that it's the flailing throw-off from the storms centred down on/near Brittany, and as they flail round anti-clockwise they swirl across the lower part of this island and the upper curved part comes across anywhere from the Tyne to the Wash, and it's just not quite clear how and where and when and how much! I'm wary about the East Coast warnings, though, because I remember how much snow we got in Telford off the East Coast snow warnings - if it's at just the right angle for a Humber streamer, it can get right the way across to us!

Increasingly heavy sleet here in Telford, but in the last ten minutes it's changed to distinct snow, large snowflakes floating about like feathers, although still very wet when they land against the window-glass and of course not settling. (I'm having A Day In Bed after various work-trips and whatnot, and it is utterly splendid, sitting up idly knitting with bread rising in the kitchen and soup ready for lunch, and sleet lashing down outside! Horrible for all of the rest of you, I know, but I'm enjoying looking out at it from in here! )