Timmytour

Agree TEITS and I always look at the posts of just a few posters, yourself included, as wheat amongst the chaff. And those posters are not restricted to the ones who only push the prospect of cold. It's amazing how it seems people can be happier, using your scale, on a mark of 4 having been at 1 the day before, then they are at 6 having been at 7 the day before. But c'est la vie

True....it's only the same weather I'd long for.....not the same way of life!!

All the to'ing and fro'ing......one can imagine how it must have been back in the day...... (Sorry Mushy )

SSib...it's just my way of saying that, for all the moaning going on, actually not too much has changed in the way of what should be looking forward to!

Sound like we were promised caviar only to find out all we're getting now is fish eggs

What happens in really good cold weather spells is that the South East breaks away from East Anglia in the regional threads!!!! i sense that might be happening soon

That's a fascinating and exciting prospect!!! <fingers crossed> I have to ask....why no mention in your signature about us living through the coldest March for over 100 years as well

Hi LtaH I should clarify my earlier post, in referring to the "winter of 1916" was in the context of talking about the February and March of that year in relation the the first ten days of January 1916 being warm. Indeed the winter of 1916/17 featuring the months of Jan and Feb 1917 was a belter and one I'm sure many of us would love to see repeated one day

Dammit....got to start all over again..... I should get one chicken out of that one, another chicken out of that one, one more chicken out of...................

2010 saw stubborn heights over Greenland......we can't yet be sure that we have the same thing here. The hope is high, but the certainty is far from it

With reference to this being the coldest spell since March 2013.....I'm a little disappointed April 2013 gets ignored.....the mean CET for the first week didn't rise above 4c. tbh I'm not sure we are going to get seven consecutive days where that's the case coming up although it certainly will be colder on some of those days

1916 was a very late winter kicking off in the last week of Feb with a fair bit of snow and continuing in the same vein into March. !917 in contrast had a February that was cold throughout, but for the most part dry

Yep...thanks WH missed that......though it was quite as cold as 1902 and 1983 :-) Overall the average February CET following these Januarys is pretty much bang on the 1700-2014 average. But with an average anomaly of of nearly 1.25c I guess it's a case of either one thing or the other

I'd normally take some comfort from this...but in this instance I'm not sure there's enough resistance in the east to prevent the break through from the west along the lines that GFS is suggesting. Crossed fingers I'm wrong

There's not been too many Januarys looking back at years since 1772 where the aggregate mean CET for the first ten days has been 75c or greater, as I'm sure must be the case with this year. Here's the previous ones and where the mean CET finished... YEAR - AGG MEAN CET - FINAL MEAN CET 1873 - 78.6 - 5.2 1902 - 75 - 4.7 1916 - 83.3 - 7.5 1921 - 81.5 - 7.3 1950 - 79.1 - 4.2 1975 - 78.5 - 6.8 1976 - 75.3 - 5.9 1983 - 76.2 - 6.7 1992 - 77.9 - 3.7 2005 - 76.7 - 6 2007 - 80.9 - 7 No real pattern of what goes onto happen, but I guess 1902 or 1983 would be nice years to follow from here for fans of cold. They didn't end up the coldest Januarys of the selection by any means but the ensuing Februaries were both under 2c whereas the next coldest Feb was 3.8c in 1916 Here's how 1983 developed...From Jan 10th To 3rd Feb

Suggest you refer to SM's subsequent explanatory post. Suffice to say exposure to wind coming off the sea as opposed to off the land at this time of year has a marked effect on surface temps

Dammit....my 6.4c was looking good but now the models seem to have turned against me!!!!

After the Charlie Hebdo incident, there was almost a sense of admiring and wanting to be protective of journalists Unfortunately then you realise that Nathan Rao calls himself a journalist and that feeling very quickly evaporates!!

Cheers IF..... I note our friend in the Express is claiming that "The Met Office this morning has issued heavy snow warnings for much of the south" You'll never get through to some people :-) I must admit I for one have been very impressed with the little hints you have provided about the longer term outlook all through this winter. Sounds like some very impressive models are available to you guys (not to mention the individual skills in the interpretations of what they show) Should things change in the next 10 days it will also augment the already considerable amount of respect I have for JH. Sometimes reading his thoughts isn't the most exciting of things.....but that's principally because he's telling me what going to happen, not what I want to happen! But through a large part of this winter I've noticed that he hasn't been on board, except perhaps recently, with many of the apparent changes that were coming. From hereon in, without his support, I shall be even less inclined to jump on the "here comes the cold" bandwagons

We take the relentless mick out of the like of Madden and the Daily Express in this thread. And no wonder because the rubbish they come out, which could worry the bejesus out of susceptible folk, with is soon disproved. But one day, they will be right just like the broken clock However, I've seen a lot of scare stories connected with climate change come out. They are not so easily proved or disproved. So, apparently the Independent article, claiming 15 years ago that our kids would not know snow and using Dr David Viner, a senior research scientist at the climatic research unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia and David Parker, at the Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research in Berkshire as sources, was ill-founded? Well I never read any criticism of it from those within the "we must act on climate change" brigade UNTIL reference was made back to it after successive winters with snow. Now, not to deny climate change or ponder about its causes, but the media report "likely consequences" of it the same way that the Daily Express will report Madden's beliefs about what the short term consequences of a certain weather pattern will be. We ridicule the latter. Just because those who speculate on the consequences of climate change over a longer term, (but in some cases with a similar degree of panic instilled in the susceptible), are they, and those in the media who report it as gospel, not fair game to be subjected to the same kind of ridicule?

I agree that the the world is always undergoing a change to its climate. There's no question that the UK has been much warmer of late in general terms. Whether the world's climate is on a path to unstoppable upward movement in warmth, and what the reasons are for it....we shall see. Personally when I see articles such as one recently that said that volcanos might be the reason for the current apparent hiatus in warming, it makes me wonder how much emphasis was previously given to the extent volcanoes may have keeping things cooler before....ie have we been through a period of unprecedented low volcanic activity? But anyway....back to the media!!! And my point is this.. Today, with some many means to publication aligned with an obsession to know WHY things are happening, all kinds of crap gets put out there. From 2001 to 2007 the UK had a record seven years without the monthly mean CET for a month coming in at 3.5c or lower. As the "kids won't know snow article" came out in 2000, it did seem for a long while that the scientist in question (as latterly it only seems to have been one who was thinking this way) might have been onto something. It's only in the latter years that the consensus among other "climate change experts" seems to have become dismissive of him.....i can't remember reading much criticism of him before that. But I think it goes down well with the media. Here was a long time with mild winters and there's a reason put forward and it's a "man is to blame angle" so it all gets lapped up. However we've had runs of six years before......one from 1970 to 1975 and one from 1910-1915. In those days I'd say that there wasn't this same obsession to have a reason why, and there wasn't such a widespread means of publishing things, so what was published was held upto greater account and scrutiny, before it was published. Obviously, in 1915 there were other more pressing things that the UK press would have been concerned with!!! Lately it seems that the press has to put out a reason for every storm, heavy snowfall, or period or hot sunny weather as an when they happen, not even a frequency in a short period of time!

I was more looking at how the media handles telling us that we are living in a time of climate change and how it's showing itself

I can imagine the Daily Mean CET yesterday will end up being one of the warmest ever for the first 10 days of January So just as a comparison.....one of the previous warmest was this from 5th Jan 1957 To me the current set up has more potential than what is shown above. But the progression to northerlies that year undertook does have a familiar ring about it with where the models are showing us heading to. I hope that's not a sign of things to come.....any cold was short-lived, February was unremarkable and it was in the top 10% of warmest winters over the last 300 years!

Of course we all remember the "our children won't see snow" headlines of the past http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/snowfalls-are-now-just-a-thing-of-the-past-724017.html That article came during a run of 12 successive winters with above average temps for the UK Then, from 2008, we got 4 winters in the next 5 that were below the average...so we got the explanation for that and how it related to climate change...due to a weaker jet stream apparently... http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2012/sep/14/arctic-sea-ice-harsh-winter-europe Now, to my admittedly inexpert eye, the Jet Stream was pretty strong last winter and is not performing so very differently this winter....so I'm wondering how long before we get an article linking the strength of the jet stream and the winters the UK is getting as a result to Climate Change?

Liam Duttonâ€@liamdutton1 min1 minute ago Remarkable... At 7pm this evening, the temperature is 17C at Finningley, Doncaster, South Yorkshire. Yes, 17C!!! Is there a fair chance todays mean CET could be over 10C?