EGHH

For those in Poole, Bournemouth, Christchurch etc. enjoying this lovely cold rain (about the only weather I actually hate, I mean, seriously what's worse than 1-5c and rain, totally pointless, bah!), cast your minds back to 2009 - I think it was, possibly 2008. I remember it reasonably well if not the date. Very similar situation to this. Low in the channel, occlusion pushing up from the South, started off as rain. My business partner and I were going to see a client in his rather modified Subaru Imprezza. As we were heading over to Boscombe, it started to get a bit sleety. He was going too fast for my liking but I kept my mouth shut. Going down Ashley Road in Boscombe it flicked like a switch to snow. Within about 100m we went over the railway bridge but there was a stationary bus about 200m in front. Although only doing 25mph or so we couldn't stop and wen't into a car behind the bus. It hammered it down with snow for about 2-3 hours after that. We picked up the damage and managed to limp the car to the Client, did the meeting (which was rather surreal) and then tried to head to his flat. But we only got as far as Bournemouth as the radiator was leaking like a burst water main and it was still so icy everywhere. We spent about another hour trying to repair it well enough on the roadside before giving up and going for a KFC. By evening time it had all melted again. Will we see that again today? Well we won't be crashing in his car because that incident wrote it off hehe. Oh well, hopefully this was a mildly amusing diversion for the fellow south coastians who are trying to find the first hints of sleet before it maybe turns to snow for a while.

Looking into the future (a decidedly dodgy endeavour at the moment, given uncertainties in the near term), the GFS 12z goes for a mildly interesting evolution by sending the residual vortex from Canda into the atlantic by next weekend, manifesting itself as a sub 930mb dartboard low. Thus heralding the arrival of [sorry for swearing] wet, windy and mild : http://cdn.nwstatic.co.uk/gfsimages/gfs.20130121/12/123/airpressure.png I think I'll forget about that for now, though, too much of interest in the next 36-48 hours!

Looks very interesting tomorrow. If I'm reading this right, we have a wave on an occlusion creating a small depression which then quickly occludes. All "on our patch". Below is an animated gif snapshot from the high res models for 12z tomorrow. Should be NAE-NMM-UKV The UKV looks like a better resolved NMM while the NAE seems to be beating it's own path. I guess MOGREPS is highly useful in this situation and given what Ian is saying, there are several possibilities on the table and the best they can do is make a prediction basd on the most likely outcome - yeah good luck with that one! PS Happy b/day GTLTW!

It's the precipitation over a 6 hour period. It's showing the potential for some week convective showers I think. Basically a few flakes in the wind from 6am till noon.

What I've noticed with the snow here is that the ground it fell on just wasn't cold. We've only had 1 night that really dipped below 0c in the week leading up to the snow, which is quite unusual. So underneath the snow is a lot of mud. When I was walking on it yesterday it was really weird to find the mud still in liquid form and melting the bottom layer of the snow. In fact it was quite tricky as you couldn't tell where the mud was so you can suddenly sink up to your shins in a whitey brown sludge. Certainly here, the snow is getting attacked on both sides!

20 mm of precipitated water (ie rain equivalent) is very roughly 20 cm of snow. 20 mm of snow is 2 cm of snow. There you go, clear as mud !!!

Here's the raw NAE 12z T48 snow accumulation chart with an easier to read scale. 10cm over a significant part of England and Wales.

Great pics Iceberg! I love that area. In 2010 I walked from the "car park" on the top road at Spread Eagle, the bti before Melbury Abbas by the airfield, down in to Compton village. Spent more time on my backside than on foot... Bet zigzags was er interesting this morning too. As for me today I can report 4 cm in my garden but 10+ cm in plenty of places on a morning stroll (not far from Bournemouth Airport). Saw heavy snow, moderate snow, light snow, snizzle, graupel, rain, just about the lot! Edit: Can also confirm I've got Sky working again by climbing a ladder and sweeping the dish off. Thought it was a stupid idea myself, byt SWMBO was certain I needed to do this.

Last update from me. I'm very pleased with the way it's going. Very much as the meso models have been suggesting. Latest UKV (or is it UK4 - I'm not so sure now!) on Met Office website keeps more precipitation over Southern Dorset, pretty much continuous all the way into Saturday infact. Wind has definitely picked up here. Temp 3.8 , Dew Point -3.5 IMBY. The low dew point makes it feel very raw indeed. Good luck all, whatever your preference! And thanks again to the mods who do a fabulous job keeping this place running.

You can see the fronts on here. The upper front, which is ahead of the main front, slows down and grinds to a halt. The main front catches it up: http://www.yr.no/satellitt/europa_animasjon.html

Just to clear up this main frontal band issue. What is showing on the radar is the main band: It's a bit wider at the moment, but it will probably bunch up as it slows down. Here is the predicted position by 3am: And expected temperatures by 3am:

22z surface analysis: Note the dewpoints starting to fall. Hurn now showing -2 dew point. Note that the temperatures in Poole, Bournemouth etc. are not due to drop until after midnight.

Here's the 18z NAE with the patent pending EasyReadYouSnowLevel colour changes for the projected snow depth at 18z tomorrow: 18z And the 12z for comparison.

21z surface plot. Note the -5 dew point in the channel <grin>

As far as I can see the temperature profiles across the south coast match what the mesoscale models predicted earlier. The same models show the temperatures falling very slowly if at all until between 12 and 3am, when the drop off rapidly. So, I'm at a loss to understand why there is a constant stream of posters who seem to appear from down here to either moan about downgrades, the current temperature or look for some kind of reassurance. How about everybody waits until tomorrow evening before moaning about not having any snow? If you haven't got any on the ground by then, then you'll have every right to have a moan. But surely not now? Nobody knows for sure what is going to happen. Waiting and seeing with the Mk 1 eyeball is surely the best way forward. Anyway, rant over. The 18z NAE should start dribbling out soon. Hard to imagine there being too many changes now. Latest UKV seems to up the precipitation on the front a bit from the last run. Also shows some potentially hefty showers around once the frontal wave develops into the depression.