West is Best

Well to be fair the GFS and most apps have it as marginal, whereas the Met Office are pumping it confidently as snow. I think the Met Office have this right: mainly a snow event.

So sorry to hear. It was awful around Okehampton today.

Whatever your disposition, for freezer or flamethrower, the phrases 'firming up' and 'day 10 and beyond' shouldn't belong together in the same sentence. Or even post. Actually, they shouldn't even belong together in your mind. I'll just about accept 'firming up' for charts at T72-96 (day 3 to 4) but that's it. This is model forecasting not Government bonds.

I'd buy that more if the air ahead and to the north was more entrenched cold. I'm sure there will be some snow off this but I'm not salivating about the setup.

Too much warmth wrapped up in that for my liking:

I still urge a lot of caution over Tuesday. It's super-marginal on at least two counts relating to the track of the low. Too far north and the upper air temps won't support snowfall near the centre. Too far south and there simply won't be precipitation at all. It's not as if it's abutting very cold air ahead of it either. In some ways the greater interest (concern) is the strength of the wind near the western wrap of the low. Could be vicious:

The 0z GFS has a predominately westerly flow with northerly incursions. There's no sign of sustained blocking for the UK. Ironically, however, the less cold setup might produce considerably more snow. The two boundary events of 30/1 and 1/2 do look pretty interesting but I'd still urge great caution. That's a long way out, GFS tends to exaggerate lows and they're quite marginal. Still some cause for excitement, even if the overall trend is not one of deep freeze. 30/1: 1/2:

The 0z GFS has a predominately westerly flow with northerly incursions. There's no sign of sustained blocking for the UK. Ironically, however, the less cold setup might produce considerably more snow. The two boundary events of 30/1 and 1/2 do look pretty interesting but I'd still urge great caution. That's a long way out, GFS tends to exaggerate lows and they're quite marginal. Still some cause for excitement, even if the overall trend is not one of deep freeze. 30/1: 1/2:

^^^ As mb018538 says.

??? Perhaps in the winters of 78/9 or February 86 but there is not really a cold pattern locked in on this morning's models. There is some evidence of cold incursions, but these are mostly still beyond T168 and change from run to run. There is insufficiently strong blocking, especially to our north-west over Greenland and this, coupled with the jet, is encouraging a westerly counter-force. In such circumstances 49 times out of 50 the west wins. Sadly. I urge some caution.

That's probably the word which causes so much trouble. We all want to believe, or most of us. As they say, seeing is believing, and therein lies the problem. We live on an island cosseted by the Gulf stream, mild seas and prevailing westerlies. It takes a significant synoptic shift to break that triple hex. Most of us will recognise that cold setups beyond T168 invariably downgrade, so we need them to show something really really dramatic to allow for the inevitable decrease in potency. At the moment, the FI charts are really not overly impressive. That may change. Sometimes the models, especially the control, fail to pick up signals and you start to see them emerge in the ensemble permutations instead. That's something to look for here. I'm wary of this one. I don't want to be. But I am.

When I consider the FI cold spells down the years, the ones which have translated future promise into present action, there really isn't a huge amount in the current models to make me sit up. Consider T168, which many veterans on here would see as the sanity cut-off: That's not exactly dramatic. It's not until out into the far flung realms that anything cold shows up, and even that's a bit 'meh.' T268: Alice was told that she had jam for tea yesterday and she may have jam tomorrow. The problem for Alice, and ourselves, is that we'd quite like jam today please.

Hi all, ho hum. I've not posted this winter because I've not yet seen anything to make me sit up. I still feel that's the case. The easterly never looked as prolific as it ought to from the timeframe (considering they nearly always downgrade as they approach) and now we look to be heading for something pretty insipid really. Chilly midweek and some snow around in places, but nothing exactly dramatic. Please forgive me if I'm misreading it but it's a bit ... meh. Might be a little more nippy in Prague where I'm headed for a few days:

G'day all and how nice to be back for the winter sesh. I say! This reminds me a little of November 1985. We had a glorious Indian summer and then, wham, a Beast from the East hit the UK during November, presaging a bitterly cold second half of winter: February 1986 remains the coldest month I can ever recall: the CET was -1.1C. Anyway, we are a long way from such things but this could be a distinctly bitter spell.

Flipping heck. If Ali is wild, Sunday looks huge

G'day folks. I don't normally post much before winter but the storms are interesting to me. I've been surprised that the GFS has not only continued to keep the Helene low pressure centre well west, but hasn't shown precipitation on any of its eastern flank. I don't really comprehend that, especially when a cold front is progressing west to east as the low pressure slides northwards through the UK. How can rainfall 'only' remain on the westward flank of the low? I'm somewhat baffled to be honest. Anyway, greetings everyone. It's good to be back Must behave myself as I have a number of Met Office friends these days.

Stunningly heavy snow in Exeter. Just beautiful.

West is Best

Hammering with snow here at Exeter.

Yes I agree. That's one of my areas of concern where a change is needed. Unfortunately, for many people, amber means 'take the risk' hence 'amber gambler.' For the majority of people the equivalent of an amber warning ought to mean: Don't drive. It doesn't. We must remember that many people don't understand the weather and they're not used to these conditions. Cars, in particular, are not geared up for old-style winters. Most people don't drive on winter tyres or snow chains, don't carry a shovel etc. Many are not 4WD. And most people have little idea how to drive on snow or ice. My other major gripe is that warnings must be properly and repeatedly issued well in advance of the event. To whoever claimed otherwise, this is what the United Kingdom Meteorological Office is there for. Issuing a red warning at 08.05 on the morning of the event, when it was obvious what was coming from all the charts (including their own Fax charts), is poor. Sorry. No other word for it. For the reasons I've given, warnings need to be issued much sooner and hammered home. Yes, sure, sometimes they will overstate it, but that's better than erring the other way. Finally, there should be far less reticence to issue Red. It's a rather tiresome throwback to the old-school marking scheme. If you have marks out of 100 you should be prepared to mark to 100. If you have Red you should issue it.

A light covering here in Exeter overnight, which will mean some decent accumulation up on the hills. However, the main band of ppn is now heading our way so we could see something significant in the next few hours. What unexpected fun!

Good to be in the south west this time around. I was up on Dartmoor at lunchtime, driving through a blizzard and it all looked stunning. I'm now back in Exeter and looking forward, I hope (?), to some serious snowfall later.

No one doubts the effort etc of the Met O. I think something along the lines of Serious, Severe, Life-threatening rather than the (meaningless) colour codes would help. In general, the Met Office should take the rap for over-doing warnings. In other words, better to err on over-warning than under-warning. I agree about the scaremongering amongst the media. The Daily Express is the worst culprit for this. The timings of the warnings were awful, however. It was blatantly obvious what was coming. Issuing a red warning the morning of the event: at 08.05 is negligent on the part of the Met Office who should have issued red 3 days before and then hammered it home at every single juncture. This is the only way to get people, who don't understand such conditions and who live in blissful ignorance, to pay heed. The problem arises when too many degree-educated people are huddled in the same building without contact with every day folk who are, frequently, pretty ignorant.

It isn't quite that simple. They also aren't experienced with cold conditions in this country, so it came as a shock.

Still snowing heavily in Hook Heath, Woking.