trevw

Does any one know what's up with the strange radar cone that starts West of Winchester and covers the area? I used to think it was just odd, but today it's clearly showing the weather for somewhere else if you look at the last hour? It's there on other radar services not just nw

Now snowing... And switching back to hail as I type.. Helping to get a covering as long as we get enough snow on top...

Hail in Winchester after a few flakes and heard the thunder of course..

I'd say a couple of inches in Winchester.. Watching a blob of heavier stuff on the radar hoping for a bit more but think it will move beyond us soon

The band heading south southwest looks to be pepping up on radar..

Sleet in winchester hampshire with temp and dew points dropping rapidly now..

It is! very excited :-) Thanks for the above - it looks like we will have a great snow... My kids have been a couple of years running but always with 'old snow' and frozen off piste areas.. not enjoyed the pleasure of floundering around in deep powder - am hoping for a week of 'clear-ish' weather (the odd top up snowfall evening/night would be nice of course :-) ) My only concern at the moment is getting to the resort given the forecast on Saturday! Good point on avalanche risk, I might skirt the edges but don't do much real off piste so should be okay. Looks a bit wet low down on the webcams at the moment, looks like from tomorrow it will be colder.. Have a great week!

Thanks Norona! will look out for that run, have the area passes so that sounds great :-) Thanks for the forecast link too - better than the one I found.. and thanks Blessed Weather too - glad the warmth is calming down a bit!

Heading to La Plagne for the 2nd week of march, slightly worried about the level of warmth at the moment.. Looks like some decent snow currently forecast on Netweather for La Plagne on Sunday? Not sure how reliable that is this far out? (Haven't looked at the charts yet)

Understand the point on angle (although as the melt gets earlier and earlier this is changing to an extent), but as you say heat lost will be to the air/atmosphere in large part and so retained in the system?

definitely some flakes in north winchester - light covering on pavements/cars, not settling on the road as yet.

I have a vague memory that the GFS tends to overdo lows and that the northward motion of the low is related to it's depth in which case you would get both wishes?

Sounds a bit like you are saying that "anyone who believes that AGW is significant is a religious nut. But if you believe in AGW and not God you can't disagree because you are an exception" ? :-) For my part I'd say some of the more uncompromising viewpoints on both sides have more than a hint of 'religious fervour' about them and that rhetoric without scientific proof should probably be ignored.

Agree with some of the rest of your post, though I think you may exagerate the level of some of the unknowns as a lot has been done in these areas.. But what do emotive statements like this one even mean? In what way are you measuring 'Power'? With a bit of actual effort I am sure mankind could sterilize the planet, put the climate back into an ice age or any number of things that would demonstrate a level of significant 'Power' over the rest of nature - on the flip side 'Nature' by which I guess you mean all things not a result of mans activity? Can wipe out populations with tidal waves, volcanoes, disease etc. It's not really measurable unless you narrow down the point of comparison? Fortunately, despite appearances, we are not 'actively' trying to trash the planet, so what is more interesting is to what extent the side affects of our activities are nudging nature in a direction it would not otherwise have gone. Whether the climate system is in some kind of generally stable equilibirum or a meta-stable equilibrium with many different possible 'quasi-stable' states and maybe even some completely unstable states (hopefully not). To me your comment suggests an assumption that 'natural drivers' work to maintain an equilibrium and anything we do has to 'override these' and seems to include some anthropomorphising of our climate system in a Mother Nature/Ghia like direction. There are good reasons to believe that there are alternate less icy 'quasi-stable' states for our planets climate as they have occurred in the past. And no reason as far as I can tell that our activities couldn't (if continued) move us towards one.. That's not to say they will - but they could, and the level of perturbation required to do so may be less than we would wish (or greater than some fear). All the while that the ice levels in the arctic trend towards a roughly linear decline it doesn't seem massively unreasonable to extrapolate? This may not continue for ever - it may accelerate or recover (hopefully). Might be a bit fatalistic, but given human nature and the short termism inherent in all of our government structures I suspect we will see minimal action without some kind of crisis, so I imagine we will get to continue to watch until it goes one way or the other.. T

had always assumed that 12z refered to the time of taking the data sample on which the run was based/time of starting model run - then you have the time to run the model against the data and produce the output..