[Snow & Cold Spell General Chat Part XI]

Its actually raining here in west Manchester.

I know the GFS temp charts are a bit dodgy, but for today the 06z seems to have been pretty much correct then, with the coldest air over Wales and the West Midlands (around 0 degrees), but around 3 degrees for NW England, dropping back to around 1 degree over the Pennines, then rising again for eastern England. Judging from reports of snow/rain, this seems to be about right

[Snow & Cold Spell General Chat Part XI]

It does appear that the very heavy snow that's through Central parts of Wales just now is heading in a NNW direction. Wonder if it will cause any disruption to the North West, or if will fizzle out by the time if/when it gets here?

According to the radar you should be seeing snow/sleet/rain by now - is nothing happening ?

[Snow & Cold Spell General Chat Part 10]

Well I'm not holding out too much hope for any decent snowfall amounts here. It's making very slow progress and we all know what that means for people to the north. It will be like after the lord mayors show, and it will probably fragment to the extent that there won't be much left in it when it does turn up in the North West.

Also although there was a frost this morning, it wasn't an hard frost, and it was a lot easier to scrape off the car windscreen. That suggests to the me that milder weather is on the way.

Well, I'm not so sure, looking at the radar this front has moved about fifty miles northwards in two hours, and its northern extent is now into Cheshire. Added to that it seems to be pepping up. As such I'd be surprised if the Manchester area and Western Pennines didn't see something reasonable out of this in terms of precipitation. The big question will be what will fall - rain, sleet or snow ????

[Snow & Cold Spell General Chat Part 9]

GFS 12Z is certainly a downgrade for Saturday for the Midlands, but I don't think it's really any different to the 06Z for Scotland or northern England- the main differences are later in the run, as northern blocking holds more firm.

TWS, looking at temps over the weekend, even after the first band on Saturday morning, there is the possibilty, (for higher ground at least), of a snow to rain event on Sunday morning, and possibly more snow again Sunday night into Monday morning ? (or is that pushing it a bit ?)

[Snow & Cold Spell General Discussion Part 8]

Well, rather surprisingly we now have enough snow here to be described as a 'covering' ! It will probably peter out fairly soon, but to be honest half an hour of reasonable snowfall is about half an hour more than I expected today !

[Snow & Cold Spell General Discussion Part 8]

Are you getting any PTFD? you must be surely as your only 8 miles from me. So do you think we could get a bit more?

Sorry James, I'm at work now, which is E Leeds, where, unexpectedly, it's just started snowing, but looking at the radar it won't last. And looking at how things are developing over the last hour, I reckon the 'M62 corridor' is going to end up about 50 miles too far north, (but too far south for anything memorable on Saturday).

[Snow & Cold Spell General Discussion Part 8]

I agree it will stall, but I don't think that the 'stall point' has necessarily been reached yet. The only reason I say this is that northerly progress, from radars at least, has probably been a little more progressive than had been forecast.

[Snow & Cold Spell General Discussion Part 8]

Well, looking at the few radars which are accessible, it looks like the front is actually moving north-eastwards more quickly than expected at present. Precipitation is clearing now from S Wales and S Midlands, and at this rate will pretty much have cleared Birmingham and London within the next hour (or less).

It's already reached Manchester and Sheffield, and is still quite active, so perhaps there will be higher falls further north than looked likely a couple of hours ago. Perhaps the cold air isn't proving quite as stubborn as predicted ? (which I think doesn't bode well for any repeat performances on Saturday).

[06z model discussion - snowing now and what after?]

Well I'm just looking at Saturday a repeat event?????

Do you think this is a possibility Pit ?, it looks so marginal as to be heading into the 'unlikely' category at present, except perhaps for the highest hills in N. England, (and of course Scotland !)

[18z model discussion - all aboard the snowlercoaster!]

Everything turning back to rain very quickly on this run as the low sweeps north, wheres the blocking gone? Also major bye bye time for the South...Of course the Knock on effect is that the 10th Feb event will now probably be RAIN for everyone!

It might not be rain for absolutely everyone

[12z model discussion - snow or sleety rain?]

I think there will definatly be snow, just where? remains the question. Most probably on the northern side of any precipitation moveing in....

Hey your at an alltitude of over 900ft, no need to get greedy now! :lol:

I must admit I'll be quite disappointed if I don't see a decent fall later this week (if I'm honest, just don't let the weather gods hear !). But I remember a similar setup from New Years Eve a few years ago where the models were promising loads of frontal snow, but, whilst we got about two hours of snow, it turned to rain and was just about gone by morning - a very chastening experience in terms of model predicitions vs. reality, and the models have been so inconsistent in forecasting this week so far that I'm still very reluctant to take anything more than likely trends from them.

[12z model discussion - snow or sleety rain?]

Man, what Id give for to be another 500ft higher in this situation! :lol:

I remember the easterly last year give us heavy wet snow that accumalated one hour and melted the next At most we had 2" of lying snow but heights of 900ft recieved about 10"!

I heartily agree with you

But again, given the way things are going just about the only thing that can be reasonably sure is that it'll be pretty quiet and cold (especially overnight) for the next two days. And there seems to be reasonable agreement that something will happen from Thursday onwards (!), but whether this is snow or rain, and where, and when, is still completely undecided. I honestly think we won't have a clear picture until Wednesday night, and maybe not even until Thursday when we can actually view the precipitation radars and the actual temperature reports ! - it is that uncertain at the moment

[06z model discussions - wet and windy soon?!]

Yet another over ramped event.

WIB is about the only one on here who gives realistic forecasts.

The gfs has obvious flaws that are becoming more obvious year by year

What is 'ramping' ??? All I have seen over the last few days is people discussing the model output as it has looked at that time, and it is only human nature to respond to that output accordingly. I haven't seen many posts talking about how much snow we were definitely all going to get at any specific time or location - in fact generally speaking it has all been very circumspect.

The fact the models are now showing a different outcome does not make the discussions of the past three days invalid. If individuals have chosen to build up their own hopes too much then that is their own look-out !

[18z Model discussion - snow but how much and where?]

From a purely selfish point of view the 00z is perhaps the best so far, but I guess in general a rather disappointing run compared to the last few days.

[12z model discussion - it's gonna get cold...]

Blimey - no post for 13 minutes. What is this, model fatigue ????

[12z model discussion - it's gonna get cold...]

Great, what an afternoon, Wales lose then all the precipitation heads south

Just a question, but what are the chances of the following scenario ? :

Scandi high stronger than progged so fronts either stall in the Atlantic without really getting to mainland UK, or they are deflected south into France. High slowly weakens and eventually lets the Atlantic back in without much of a battle at all. So the majority of the country may well get very cold, but in terms of snowfall, there is very little ?

[GFS 06z charts discussion]

Much prefer this run again. I think there has been reasonable consistency so far that there will be a breakdown to milder by early next week (i.e. in seven days or so), so I would have thought a more progressive set of events is what we want so more precipitation can come up against what cold air there is next Thursday, Friday and perhaps Saturday, rather than a stronger (but still transient) high stalling the fronts to our west until the warmer Atlantic air overcomes the block, which would mean cold and dry followed by milder and rain.

[The GFS 18hz Discussion Thread]

QUOTE(Paul B @ 3 Feb 2007, 10:02 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>Thanks Toppler, kind of you to say so.

18Z out to T+90 now, and pressure is starting to rise over Scandinavia again. And the whole general pattern is ever so slightly further west I think.

EDIT: Indeed its looking better for chances of the cold weather persisting with pressure now progged to be at 1025mb over Scandinavia by T+96, and the heights are also looking better.

Indeed....but at the cost of significant snow?

We shall see.

Exactly, it's starting to look like a possible scenario is that the fronts are stalled to such an extent that they hardly get over England to any great extent, until of course the milder air actually does win, so what we end up with is dry cold air hanging around for longer , but any proper precipitation only arrives with the milder air, later.

[Glimmer of hope model discussion]

It's also known as a whopping outlier - 'whopping' being probably an apt word. (Chris - snap!)

The ECM is very zonal, so not sure why the excitement there? There's no height rise to the NE. Instead there's a stonking jet pattern which blows away any hint of a proper Scandi high. The best thing is to enjoy whatever you get next week, because beyond that looks pretty grim for cold prospects at the moment.

You mean in FI then ??? We have had 48 hours now of reasonable consistency on the GFS in terms of next week, with a cold HP followed by a possibly snowy initial breakdown, (and I think the other models agree in general on this pattern). So in other words we have a pretty strong probability of a proper winter week of weather coming up, and as such I don't see any point trying to dampen that possibility by banging on about how mild/zonal FI looks !

To be honest, whilst normally I respect your 'realism' posts, especially when everyone is getting excited by cold possibilities in FI but the immediate outlook is poor in terms of cold, but the situation now is in reverse, so I would really appreciate your views on how you see this coming week panning out, as opposed to (what appears to be) trying to dampen people's excitement for next week by reminding them it'll breakdown to warmer weather pretty quickly. We live in the UK, so I don't seriously think anyone is expecting two or three weeks of blizzards !!!!!!!

[wild weather!]

Here's another interesting one -

http://www.break.com/index/icy_roads_in_portland.html

I hope it doesn't get this bad next week !

[Poll: Has this winter changed your view about human affect on climate change?]

Any nay-sayers convinced by this ->

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/6321351.stm

or is this just another bunch of enviro-nazis out to impose their hidden agenda sandals and flowers version of human existence on us all ???? (I don't think so)

[Honestly now: who has low-energy bulbs, and how many? Poll]

Just as a point of interest. When you start a car does that not kick out more Co2 than when you leave it running on idle? Or is that tosh?!

Is this only true if the engine is revved heavily immediately after starting ? (as a lot of us do however), and also that the automatic choke will increase the mix (fuel to air ratio) only when the engine is cold. In theory, in a well maintained engine that is already warmed up there should be a minimal difference in the amount of fuel delivered to the cylinders at ignition compared to at tick-over I think

With regards to the rest of the post, I just feel that, because there is a reasonable possibility that GW is to some extent being exacerbated by human activity, it is not good enough to not do anything because 'it doesn't make any difference'. There are two levels to this - if it is eventually proved beyond any reasonable doubt the human activity has contributed, then every single one of us has a responsibility to do whatever we can, however small and insignificant that may appear. And if it turns out that human activity was not a contributing factor, then making those changes won't have harmed anything anyway, and in many ways a lot of the measures which can be taken on a small scale are worthwhile anyway from a cost perspective and from a perspective of reducing needless resource usage and reducing needless waste.

[Honestly now: who has low-energy bulbs, and how many? Poll]

Just one or two left now. I'm not sure of the wisdom of waiting until normal bulbs go before replacing them with energy saving bulbs, but it just go's against the grain to replace something which still works.

I do however find it incredible that when a conventional bulb fails people don't replace it with an energy saving one, like I find it incredible people leave lights/appliances on when they aren't using them, that they don't bother seperating waste/recycling, (often because 'the council doesn't collect', or even worse 'the council expects them to seperate different wastes into different boxes which is too much trouble' !!!!!!!!!!!!!), like people will sit in their cars in jams for many minutes at a time without switching off.

Is it really so hard to take recycling to the nearest disposal centre yourself ?????, to turn a car engine off and on ?????, to take a moment just to think about personal responsibility - clearly for many people it is. And why is that ??? - it must be a mixture of selfishness, laziness, ignorance and probably too much money, which is what I find most depressing. I look forward to the era when the cost of energy consumption much more accurately reflects the impact it is having, because I'm sure when those energy bills really start to bite then things will start to change !

[Poll: Has this winter changed your view about human affect on climate change?]

Are you convinced therefore beyond any doubt? Did you reach such a conclusion by studying the evidence, or by listening to someone who you trust?

That mankind's activities of the past 200 years have been the major contributory factors to the GW we are now beginning to witness ? Absolutely, and this is the result mostly of reading/listening/watching then analysing/digesting/considering. I am old enough to know that in order to get anywhere near the truth one must consult many many different sources, (as many as possible but definitely not the media, or such patronising dumbed-down rubbish as the recent programme fronted by David Attenborough).

But the weight of evidence is becoming so overwhelming now that to argue against is prompting responses like my previous post.

[Poll: Has this winter changed your view about human affect on climate change?]

As is usual in the debates on here about (A)GW, all the lucid points are being put forward by the 'For' camp, and the counter-arguments increasingly sound, to be honest, rather desperate. And this is from someone who doesn't really care one way or the other because as I see it in five million years, (which isn't very long from the perspective of the lifespan of the earth), this will all have been a minute irrelevance, (probably a bit like the human race will have been ???).

But here and now, what drives people to refuse to accept the obvious ? Is it a kind of 'King Canute' complex, or maybe more of a 'Nero' attitude to impending difficulties ?. Or perhaps it's the idea that if, by accepting the principle of AGW, one then has to accept some responsibility, and then consequently feel some obligation to change one's lifestyle in order to try and do something about it ? And when I say change, it would probably mean making some personal sacrifices. As I see/hear/read more and more of these debates it is becoming increasingly clear that one of the main underlying reasons for refusing to accept that mankind is in any way responsible is to thus avoid the blame, it's a bit like the kid in the playground who threw the stone then denied all knowledge and tried to blame it on a passing bird. In other words a deep-seated fear of taking responsibility, (Miss, miss, it wasn't me miss !)