summer blizzard

I think a few people should remain calm because there's a bit too much pessimism. Firstly we should note that Ian Ferguson's forecast last night showed snow arriving over our region between 12-3, as i look to the south i see very dark cloud and we have had reports of light snow as north as Huddersfield (although it looks to be struggling to breach the Pennines on radar) and to top that off the front is now aiding vorcity over the north sea with some hefty showers. Now i think its a given that the 12-3 prediction looks to be wrong however the NAE does show moderate to heavy snowfall over our region by midnight and still there at 06:00 as the front moves north and seems to combine with the shower activity off the coast (if anything it looks to me like everything is 6 hours early). We see this in the charts below.. http://expert-images.weatheronline.co.uk/daten/proficharts/en/nae/2013/01/18/basis06/ukuk/prty/13011818_1806.gif Pretty much the picture now but the forecast is for 18:00. http://expert-images.weatheronline.co.uk/daten/proficharts/en/nae/2013/01/18/basis06/ukuk/prty/13011900_1806.gif It's almost like the stuff over London just surges north and combines with the showers. http://expert-images.weatheronline.co.uk/daten/proficharts/en/nae/2013/01/18/basis06/ukuk/prty/13011906_1806.gif Still giving the goods for Yorkshire at 06:00. http://expert-images.weatheronline.co.uk/daten/proficharts/en/nae/2013/01/18/basis06/ukuk/prty/13012006_1806.gif Snow to the SE approaching (needs to drift west if its for us though) on Sunday.

It will be interesting to see whether fronts over the west Midlands can beat shower/troughs over the north east given that in December 2010 Northumberland had over 1 meter.

If you zoom in over the last hour the greens are approaching again.

I'm not sure we can call them showers looking at them (too widespread). It looks to me like we get a similar feature to the one we have now.

Heavier snow inbound for Leeds and Bradford looking at the radar.

I'll be going to my parents on Sunday which is 184m (about a mile away it reaches 220m) so i'll be able to tell you exactly how much fell (currently 6cm from Sunday-Monday).

His forecast had exactly the same graphic he just uses a crappy Yorkshire only angle really close so you couldn't see what was really happening.

Looks to me like it arrives between 12-3 and doesn't stop all day and evening.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/weather/hi/news/newsid_7760000/7760862.stm Again i say, the BBC are forecasting snow through most of tommorow. Skip to 1.20 for the national picture.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/weather/hi/news/newsid_7760000/7760862.stm Skip ahead to 1.20 and you can see our region getting covered tommorow.

I've been using the radar to try and get a grip on the movement of the front and it does appear as if the precipitation within the front is travelling NNW (as you might expect with a SSE upper flow ahead) however the front itself is moving NNE (ever so slightly east basically as it moves north) so the moral here is probably that whatever is south of you is probably what you will get. Based on this there is somewhere between 2-8 hours of snow left. York will see a period of moderate to heavy snow within the next hour.

Movement is definitely NNE now. No sign of letting up.

Snow started in Leeds city center around 3pm and was very light but around 4.30 it picked up. Current conditions are moderate to heavy snow forecast to remain so.

As i've missed it does anybody know if its on Iplayer. As for the mystery snowfall now the radar shows movement ever so lightly NNW (really backs up Steve's point about it being a convergence zone) which if true means we have the better part of 200 miles of snowfall to come (Leeds's snowfall is coming roughly from Nottingham. Already a good cm down so i'd wager 2-5cm is about right.

Whilst MEI values will probably get close to a weak La Nina i'd expect that to moderate in spring/summer as that +QBO strengthens (subsurface waters are still fairly warm).

Got the chart?

Casman just said that the update is a positive one.

I cannot stress this enough but at such a close range (48 hours) the Met Office will not be paying a blind bit of difference to the normal model runs, they will be going with the high resolution outputs (NMM, NME, UKV).

The TV forecasts at 18:30 and 22:30 will have been based on the 12z model outputs which clearly go against the GFS squib.

That's true but when we consider the budget and resources that the Met Office have at their disposal it's hard to believe that they would fall into line with lesser models inside 48 hours.

Keep calm people, the Met Office have access to extremely high resolution models not to mention the UKMO and all 50 ECWMF ensembles. If they have decided their models are correct then i shall back them over the GFS. We already are.

A shove about 50 miles east will do nicely.

Oh yes, the fact that the temperature is forecast to be -3C on arrival will mean that we have a bigger chance of maximizing every drop of snow than normal and so i agree with the Met Office of 10cm being widespread however because we are east of the Pennines i'm simply saying that we won't be seeing 20cm+ east of the Pennines. Personally i'm more interested in the fact that we have wind forecast for once. Do you remember the last snow event with good windspeeds because i'm struggling to.

After tonight it will probably be worth dropping the main models and going with the high resolution NMM and NME.

If you exclude the 18z which had no precipitation at all then i actually think it's being pretty stable has the output for the last day or two. Sundays event seems to have disappeared.