Frost HoIIow

Indeed. If that breeze drops off & sky remains relatively clear it could be a very chilly one.

Poor effort last night here in the east of the region.....woke up to.....puddles. A similar thing from people in places higher than where I am looking at twitter. I think with a W/NW'y you have to get the cold in first before snow. The air just wasn't cold enough last night for that to happen. As we go through the day today the cold air should now be embedded so any snow that comes through the Cheshire gap should stick and stay for some in the region. It will just lay there and freeze with the cold nights and days coming up. Could have a rare occasion where lowland southern parts of the region have snow cover and other higher places won't.

Yes anything from the west is so bl**dy marginal - everything can and often does go wrong...the temps & dew are both higher from the west. Late January 2013 was great with that easterly. Dew points were fine as was the temps when the snow came.

I get the feeling that this Winter has only just started proper so plenty of opportunities for the region from now into March, fingers crossed. Things look a lot better than just a couple of weeks ago.

Even at close to 400m it is only just settling on the M62 summit. For now lower ground can forget it in eastern parts of the region. http://ichef.bbci.co.uk/traveluk/ha/31751/large

Agree, March can certainly be cold - not just 2013 being a cold one in the last 10 years. Early March 2006 was pretty damn cold as well with snow falls, Manchester airport got down to -8C http://www.wunderground.com/history/airport/EGCC/2006/3/3/DailyHistory.html?req_city=&req_state=&req_statename=&reqdb.zip=&reqdb.magic=&reqdb.wmo=

No, it won't. Not here miles inland, but unfortunately where you are much closer to the coast it possibly will.

Temp and dew point here are still too high for proper snow. In fact the dew point has crept up very slowly the past hour. Should start dropping again later though.

Yes their "symbol" forecasts are not always spot on. Just it would be more encouraging to show snow or sleet rather than plain old rain.

My local forecast for morning on met office website saying rain not even sleet. It's gone from snow to sleet and now rain. Pretty much been downgraded the closer we've got to tomorrow. Will probably be bone dry on next update

Despite the very mild start to Winter and a few hiccups like Winter 2013-14 I do think since 2009 we are still in a cycle of colder than normal cold spells with more cold/snow potential than we had in the late 90's and most of the 00's. If this cold spell projected carries on like it is supposed to do then this seems even more believable.

Never had a snowless Winter in this area either in terms of at least 1 covering, even the awful Winter of 13-14 we managed a brief light snow cover one evening in February. And I very much doubt this Winter will be snowless either. We had a snow cover in November just gone but that was just favoured surfaces.

Compared with the euro4 WRF-NMM tends to over do things with snow but this is nice to see. http://modeles.meteociel.fr/modeles/wrfnmm/runs/2016011218/nmm_uk1-45-36-1.png?13-00

Slight downgrade with the latest euro4 snow fall map for my part of Oldham - disappointing. Then again these snow fall maps are not always 100% correct. Still looking good above 200m though I'd say.

They're testing out the secret snow deflector ready for Thursday, think I heard the thud earlier of it switching on

Yes the Irish sea can give us streamers but push in slightly milder air. Either way you should get quite a bit as you have good elevation, here it looks like possibly a covering but not much, I could be just about in the snowline. Probably only favoured surfaces. Anyway we'll see as snow is always a nowcast situation as you say.

Looking at the euro4 most of the eastern part of the region gets a covering. Probably east of Manchester city centre would be a good bet, closer to the coast is looking marginal. Of course the higher you are generally the better it will be, but also this depends on where the bands of precip are and wind direction. A few miles down the road could make a difference too rather than just height.

I'm fairly sure high ground above 150m in our region will see some snow cover before the weekend is out. Lower areas may get a dusting, obviously the closer you are to the coast the more marginal it'll be.

Yes that would be correct. Given Oldham town centre is between 200-230m asl dependant on what street you are on it's easily high enough to get into the more marginal situations like that day. I remember looking at the dew points that day and here in Failsworth we were incredibly close to getting in on that. Also the sleet & snow just wasn't heavy enough down here to give evaporative cooling a kick start either.

Yep it looks like it could be marginal for low ground. A bit like mid January last year when I missed out on a snow fall purely for being 40 meters too low. Literally just up the road and there was a decent cover above 130m, could be a repeat performance this year, the only saving grace was we had a decent fall at the end of the month last Jan..........overall it's been quite disappointing since Thursday after the stella 12z runs on Wednesday which were reminiscent of 2010. Looking like a bog standard cold spell, nowt special but will feel colder because of how mild early Winter was.

Snow wise north westerly are better for our region, especially the more southern parts of the region. But northerly's tend to favour North Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland & east coasts. However there has been instances where a northerly has brought decent snows via a cold front/polar low pushing south. But more often than not it's north westerlys that are better.

Big differences between west & east Germany right now. 7C in Dusseldorf but -10C in Berlin.

That is some rain shadow over Manchester the past couple of days. Like someone has turned on a machine to stop it raining lol

A shame Ian feels like leaving. But I understand quite a few knowledgeable members have left over the years purely because of aggro from others on here.

It's because of the SE wind. That wind direction gives Manchester more of a rainshadow than any other direction. Below is rainfall accumulated over 24 hours, you can clearly see the gap over the Manchester area. 22nd/23rd March 2013 was an example too when quite a lot of areas even low ground in NW England got battered in snow yet most of Manchester got hardly anything, it was because of that SE'y wind. Tomorrow is looking quite dry too because again the wind is coming in from the SE. Other areas of the region should get a bit more wet.