BleakMidwinter

For some years now, I've only read the model thread in winter, trying to learn more about How Winter Happens and why it sometimes seems not to happen at all... but if there are going to be people posting in her with the same kind of clear explanations of why they hold a particular opinion, and what a chart shows, and why one model is more reliable for certain things than others.... ...well, if you lot keep it going year-round, I'm getting more and more interested and will happily try to keep following it. Although very much from a standing start, I'm afraid...

I'm really pleased about that, not least because after my confidence a few pages back, we have rain again!

Mine was going nicely in TF3 Telford, but seems to be turning back to distinctly-liquid rain now, not even sleet... still, plenty of hours left yet of "the evening" so fingers crossed!

Turning to light snow and starting to settle - just!

It looks like it's going according to plan here. For some hours, we've had SWerly rain. That's now veered round to Werly and sleet. If the forecast was correct it should now continue to veer round to NWerly and bring us the coveted Cheshire Gap Streamer, and THAT is what will bring us the snow. Don't fret about the Welsh mountains. They never were relevant to today's snow chances - it's this next bit where it veers to NWerly that brings the snow down to the Midlands, and across...

Well, I certainly didn't see any forecast for today which started with snow! They ALL started with rain turning to snow, all the ones I saw... So you're writing off what's forecast to happen this afternoon, evening and overnight... it may indeed not happen as snow, but since we're still five or more hours beforehand...!

Ah. You ever thought of moving to Telford? All taken this morning on the mile walk home from Sainsbury's...

I rarely post anyway, but at present I am reading every single post really thoroughly because, for whatever reasons, nearly all of you are posting brilliant "teaching posts" - you post a chart and then say "you can see the feature I've circled in red; this is going to behave like this unless the feature circled in blue moves to the west in which case both will do that", or you post a fax chart and explain what the big curving line here shows or why there is such closeness between lines there, or whatever. Or you give your opinion and explain why you hold that opinion. For weeks I've only read the most recent couple of pages because there's been 15 pages overnight - but now I'm able to read the lot because it's manageable quantities and they are WORTH the reading! Thankyou, all of you knowledgeable ones!

An inch or so of snow in TF3 - and even from the window of the flat it looks lethally icy - take care if you're in an icy area, folks!

We have the same - about an inch down and where cars have driven over it in the carpark it's stayed white, ie hasn't melted under pressure of tyres...

Who's to the NNW of Telford, then? You have precipitation. Meanwhile, whoever is NW of Telford is in the dry! Not sure I've ever seen such a stark vertical divide between staying-up and coming-down! Meanwhile, to the NNE looks pretty dark and precipitating...! (Conifer pretty much due north, you probably guessed...)

It's a huge advantage to have spent a lifetime supporting the Scotland rugby side, really... you get used to huge hopes crashing down at the last twenty minutes But all these models are only models, aren't they? All of it is based on "well, analysis of past very similar situations indicates that the outcomes are most probably this or this or this with possibly more likelihood of this one". And one of the things I find really interesting, as an audience-member watching these discussions, is that it seems plausible to me that different models are better or worse at particular types of event or weather systems, but there seems a strong urge for people to defend their pet-model vehemently in all circumstances, or to damn their least-favoured model in all circumstances. It is fascinating to read - specially those of you kind and patient enough to explain why you have reached your particular conclusion! My own personal aim is to have any kind of understanding of fax charts, which remain a pretty mystery at present...

Stopped now but was chucking it down at a harsh 45-degree angle for ages in Telford TF3... About an inch lying, I think, including on wet tarmac car-park after heavy rain earlier. Looks pretty wet, but am not going out to find out!

Revoltingly slushy wet sleet is splatting against the windows now in TF3 - from the south/south-east. Really, really glad I'm now in cosy pyjamas and tucked up in bed with a hot water bottle - not ill, just knackered and decided to abandon housework in favour of knitting in bed! Gives me a grandstand view to the S/SW and a lamp-post for later...

Ours has stopped now, but that was a good solid 45 minutes of very pretty fluffy snowflakes! No settling, but just really lovely and wintry and exciting! It seems Telford does well out of Cheshire Gap streamers - our astonishing Fri Dc 8th 2017 was one of those!

Yep, falling snow in Telford TF3 as well - proper decent flakes too, not tiny ones. Just drifting about in the breeze, not enough to settle by a long way, but distinctly proper snowflakes! Editing 22 minutes later to say it's not stopped, it's got heavier and I think it is considering settling...!

Specially those of us who got the single biggest snowfall I've ever witnessed on Friday 8th Dec 2017 from the NWerly Cheshire Streamer, seemingly ALL of which landed on our street, and then got re-buried on the Sunday 10th from the SW... iirc that was 27cm in three days but most of it was on the Friday, just incredible. Literal blizzard conditions in a kind of Canadian sort of way! I've got one eye on he lamp-post already!

I don't have a wife to leave me... My boyfriend seems happy that I generally have some idea about overall weather patterns, though

Oh, one of my annual delights is the vast and initially baffling range of spellings for what I think is ARPEGE... It's amazing how many different spellings turn up!

I do always look for your beard-pic, to read your steady and informed opinions when it gets hectic in here, you know! Keeps me from panicing So... we have some frosty wintry weather starting up, which is likely to get a bit more frosty and wintry. It might get very frosty and very wintry, depending. That about right? I'll learn to read these charts myself one of these days...

Not as cold here but plenty of sunshine on Thursday morning on the ridge above Ironbridge power station!

Definitely agreeing with, and applauding, your comments re not believing everything, but just wanted to say - some of us did our PhDs in our 40s whilst we were working as senior figures in our discipline...! Not all PhD students are 23-year-old novices straight out of undergraduate degrees!

Tell 'em what I tell my mates! That snow is pretty much the most difficult weather type to forecast, and that snow on an island which can have, and has had, snow-bearing winds from any direction is very nearly impossible to forecast until the snowflake lands on your head So far as I can tell (Grade 8 Audience qualification, no meterologist-performer training whatsoever), the different models have better or worse reliability in different types of weather, different seasons, and even in different parts of the islands of the UK, so it's a question of trying to keep up with discussions in here, learning gradually which posters are the ones who cautiously but steadily incline towards a prospect which then tends to occur and which posters leap towards something yelling that it's nailed on only for it to vanish at T240, and slowly learning that all we ever can be sure of is nowcasting, but that it's a heck of a good time in here on the roller-coaster of nail-biting Oh-my-God-that-can't-possibly-actually-happen-can-it-it's-out-in-FI-but-still-maybe-maybe Mind you - I have emailed my elderly parents up north and told them to keep more coal in the porch and have plenty of dishwasher-salt-granules to hand, because it's about to get a good bit colder. Snow, dunno. Hope so, but, well, it's snow (or snaw, in the Kilted thread, of course), so we can't tell til we're building the snowman. But cold, yep, so far as I can read this lot in here, the cold is definitely on its way. Frost this morning, ice still on the car at midday needing scraped off, and I'm expecting that more mornings than not in January...

That would be my preferred option... I turn 50 on the 5th January so if the Clerk of the Weather could arrange a white birthday, that would be lovely! It is really exciting seeing the possibilities - I love the will-it-won't-it drama!

I suggest you treat them like a form of haiku poetry - works for me!