garylaverick

Over the next 24 hours.

Latest visible satellite showing the convection between the coast and the influence of the low over Germany. You can see as the low pulls away the sea track becomes much longer allowing the showers more time to build before hitting us. You can see the flow to the top of Scotland is out of the lows influence, which is why the radar is picking up stronger showers up there.

Yes there's a temperature inversion at about 1000m until early afternoon, once that clears deeper convection will occur.

Latest fax for midnight, Teesside might just be the place to be!

Guys we need to relax, we've literally just established the easterly flow and the convective cap hasn't even lifted yet. To be honest the radar is showing much more activity than I'd expected at this point. I personally never expected much accumulation to this point. Rule number 1 is get the cold in first.

Still patience needed, you can see the low clearing through Germany now and it'll start to head west, this is what's preventing the snow machine firing up proper at the minute.

This is the area to watch, it'll become increasingly clear as the easterly sets in, and then we should see it filling with showers.

That low that's brought the current precipitation is still too close to allow the convection to kick off properly. It's moving away slowly and surely but there's a cap on convection while it's still in the vicinity. Keep an eye on satellite, you'll see the showers forming off Denmark well in advance of them appearing on radar.

From midday tomorrow looks more likely to me but anything in the interim is a bonus.

The problem is the system that is generating the current precipitation is the same system that will drag in the cold air as it moves away. It was always going to be staggered unless you've got a lot of elevation.

I've just done a little comparison of 850 temps on the latest GFS vs what it was showing for the same time 3 days ago. It's pretty much exactly as forecast, if anything the cold is slightly advanced. 12Z 3rd Feb for 7pm 6th Feb 12Z 6th Feb for 7pm 6th Feb

Patience needed guys, the weather will do whatever the weather wants to do when it wants to do it, no matter what the best supercomputers in the world predict. The main low is a little slower sinking through France that forecast which is holding things up slightly but its important to remember that all of the key pieces are still in place and heading in the right direction to establish a bitter easterly flow.

People in the Scotland thread saying the radar shows it should be snowing and it's not, whereas others are saying the radar has indicated nothing all day but its never stopped snowing!

Need to get the easterly flow going before we'll see showers forming. The low slipping away south is the trigger that starts the flow, so until that's clear don't expect to see anything other than the frontal stuff we have now. Patience is key here, remember this was never forecast to be "prime time".

Basically showing that the conditions in the North sea look conducive to convection going through Sunday afternoon onwards.

A recording of the ECM sounding forecast through to Wednesday. You can see there's very little shear (shown by the flags pointing east up to 3000m). There's a temperature inversion that clears through Sunday morning (shown by the kink in the red line at 1000m straightening out so that the line moves from right to left), this is what will allow convection to pick up properly. Screen_Recording_20210206-155909_Windy_1.mp4

Yep, it's slowly clearing south.

First 16 hours of the 12z ICON-EU showing the remnants of this front quickly followed by streams of showers setting up.

There will be a period of sleet to get through but shouldn't last too long and snow thereafter.

Definitely on the turn in Gateshead, a good old rain to snow event.

I've prepared a North Sea Snow Machine startup checklist. - Polar continental airmass blowing over the North sea with a temperature differential of 13c or more (forecast to be -16c) ✔ - Low wind shear (forecast to be near 0) ✔ - Decent inversion height (forecast to be 8-10km) ✔ We just need to knock the rust off first as it'll be 2 years since it was last fired up!

Early signs look good with convection picking up in the Skagerrak Strait already. I'd like to see a webcam to the west of Vänern lake.

6z GFS precip through to Wednesday evening.

Definitely 6-7 in our neck of the woods!

Just a quick one to illustrate the current state of play. We're waiting for the low to sink south (red arrow), which will pull down the area of precipitation currently over the east of Scotland (orange circle). This should be close by tea time, and with the colder uppers arriving at the same time it will turn wintry, particularly over the hills but to all levels as we go through the night. Once this feature clears its all eyes to the satellite and radar for signs of the easterly flow establishing. Current sea temps are 6-7c, and with -10c uppers in place by tomorrow morning that's a differential of 16-17c. This should be more than enough to activate the snow machine.