Weather Observer

I share the frustration of most coldies that this latest SSW is not looking like it will deliver the last wintery blast . However, all is not lost yet, and just to remind us of what that would look like .......... Also as a fellow New Forester now living away, I would ask Singularity not to worry too much about the wildlife. It is more adaptable than we are. I feel we are the problem for wildlife rather than the weather.

Cluster 2 for me two and I suspect a lot of people on here. My confidence that it will prevail comes from a look at the spaghetti. It's all over the place.

Has anyone noticed how long some of the posts now are on the model thread. Is there a competition? Some of them are up there with the U.N convention on climate change (lengthwise). I also find that when such a post lands on the thread, at least 20 people have already given it the thumbs up by the time I have managed to give it a first scan. My teachers were always telling me to "keep up". Seems they were right.

Faronstream, sorry to say that 2m temp charts are not included in the meteociel archive. But Sweden under -20 uppers at the end of March. One can only imagine. For 1902 read 1901?

Quite by chance, I was looking at past charts for March today to see how extreme the cold could be. Came up with these two. I am not remotely suggesting we have anything like that on offer but nothing wrong in wondering what it was like. If I am honest, it was not by chance. I do this quite a lot.

I signed up in December for the winter cold and snow ride. So what as a seasoned newcomer have I learnt from following the models and comments on this thread as it ends? First, that the weather gods are alive and well up in the stratosphere, hammering away, with chunks of ice ,fire and brimstone raining down upon us, The only problem is we can't predict where and when. Then we have the men in grey suits who follow the anomaly charts and ensembles means. Okay if that floats your boat. Then we have the roller coaster gang who follow every frame of every model. Okay if you are young and fit enough. Last are my old bones, which tell me I will be back next winter.

This winter has knocked the stuffing out of cold and snow fans, with a few redoubtable posters excepted. Charts currently on offer suggest to me more than a glimmer of hope. If we can't get one overnight snow event in the south in early March from Synoptics like this I will have to admit that my old bones aren't what they were. Usual caveats about lack of Artic cold and 192 hours apply. Some of us will wake up to a surprise snowy Spring sunrise.

I am with you on that. Logically we should also be able to debate what the models failed to predict. When Tamara tells us that the strat models called this potential cold spell three weeks early, l have to ask in terms of forecasting, how useful that is? Just a question.

I am not sure that I would rely on memory or statistics in the debate about seasonality. Both can send us round in circles. What I do think is that seasonality is in our psyche and goes back to the time when we had a more intimate connection with the land. We need order and predictability to cope, even if the reality is something else. So for me this all comes down to things simply not feeling right at the moment. This winter has really unsettled me and I won't be the only one.

I live a few miles south of Cromer. I moved here last winter as a great place to live, but also hoping for some cold and snow. Use to live in the Chiltern hills where we always had a day or two of lying snow even in the mildest of winters. Here in two winters seen lying snow once for 12 hours overnight and the odd sleety mix. Now, I know these two winters have been dire, but I am convinced there are very few situations that deliver snow to coastal locations in East Anglia. The first is a January 1987 with very low uppers and an easterly off the near continent. The charts for 12th January show it snowing at Coltishall at -9c. What I would give for that again. The second, which is probably a flight of fancy, is for a polar low to put down anchor in the Wash for a few hours and deliver a period of snow with westerly winds and so not mixed out by the warmer North Sea. Not pinning any great hopes on either next week. Certainly not snow on the beach at Cromer which I think will have to wait for next year.

Woke up this morning to a sparkling hoar frost after overnight low of -6c. Spring in my step, but I still want my winter fix. The latest ensembles flatlining cold look good enough for that to me. At the last knockings of winter, with higher lapse rates and instability, snow could pop up at any time. And it could trend colder. If I can borrow a phrase to describe this winter, we have spent so long with our feet in the gutter that we have forgotten where to look for the stars.

In the light of the winter so far and what the models are showing, I would rate that to be a bold forecast Sorepaw. If it happens, and I hope it does, it is unlikely that us in the south will see the daffodils in the snow, however, as they will be over by then. That's how bad it's been down here.

When I was a boy I used to draw synoptic charts which showed immense amounts of cold and snow. Six checks would be no problem at all

This one was a long time ago but I remember it well. I lived on the south coast. Six inches of powder snow fell as that low moved south east. Brilliant sunshine didn't touch the snow for the first two days with -10 uppers. It stayed in the shade for a week.

I was going to comment on the consistency of GFS recent runs last night. You can hardly separate them up to day 6. And now it's done it again. It is consistent but is it right?. Hope so!

Since mid November I have been trapped in Kafka's castle. I finally get out and what do I see, not one, but three potential escape routes. And all of them are full of hazards. This frustrating winter continues to wind us up. I cannot add anything new in the model discussion, but my weather instinct tells me to hang in there.

Another towel. Might be a good time for someone to start a netweather laundry service

I was sitting on a bench on the farm earlier this evening, musing as one does on the models and when this current locked in pattern would relent. I looked at my now depleted haystack and wondered whether to clutch at one last straw or even look for the proverbial needle when I realised l was being attacked by mosquitos. Mosquitoes in early February, that really is the last straw. sorry mods, when I tried to post in other thread an old quote from Knocker kept appearing.

MWB, I like your analysis of the amateur and the professionals forecasting competence. I know that there are people on here who can give the models a good run for their money. You go on to say that the only thread that has not given false hope this winter is the strat thread where it has been made clear all winter that a SSW was a strong possibility, but would only be useful if it occurred in the right way. If that's the best that the strat thread has come up with then we are all in with a chance?

Thankyou Carlrg. I have hit the bottom and the only way is up

When I signed in tonight I thought I might post something about the models that was either original, or clever or even humorous and if not any of those, at least off topic. After thinking long and hard I am afraid to say that I have failed on all counts.

I can put up with cold zonal in December knowing that the rest of Winter could deliver. When it comes to late January and with no real cold to tap into we will be cutting if fine. But I wouldn't be here now if I still didn't think we could salvage something from the wreckage of this Winter. All I ask for is for on one evening in February after a day of snow showers, to see that last lonely flake fall and with the setting sun firing the retreating snow cloud know that the frost will keep all safe until the morning.

I like to believe that we have a 15 week window in this country for a snowfall to stay around for at least a day or two. That is from late November to early March. November 2010 was the best example of the former and March 1965 the best late snowfall I can remember. Near the south coast of Hampshire, we had 15cm of powder snow on 4th March as the low shown on the chart below moved south east across the country. What seemed remarkable to me was that the snow showed no signs of melting in three days of brilliant sunshine that followed. As the second chart shows we were under artic air with very low uppers. The snow then slowly disappeared but some was still around after a week. When it did go it there was no messy end. It remained dry and settled. Of course the synoptics may not deliver in the six weeks left but we can't know that. There is still hope. There are of course even later Spring snowfalls that we can post to keep morale up but let's not go their just yet

I was wondering what the coldest upper air temperatures have been in this country in the time that it is sensible to hazard a guess. Has it ever been below -20c at 850hPa? We are by now quite familiar with 12th January 1987 and 1st February 1956 when record upper lows of -19c were reached over parts of England. The lowest daily surface maxima I could find for those days were -9c and-6c respectively. When it comes to -20c the two historic winters of 1740 and 1684 come to mind, back in the little ice age. Professor Manley who did some of the work on the CET series, states that the temperature was below 15 Fahrenheit in London at the end of December 1739 with an easterly gale. Circa-10c. So that is a candidate. It so happens that one Rutland family, the Barkers, who took an early interest in the sciences, were able to throw light on just how cold the most extreme days of those two winters were. They had thermometers but people kept them indoors then! Thomas Barker stated in his diary that the severest of the frost was the last 4 days of 1739. He measured the freezing every morning and evening of the water in a trough, and in the daytime it froze an inch thick. That night it then froze two and a half inches in 16hours. He goes on to say that this frost was not as great as some former ones, notably 1684. This lasted 13 weeks and was "so sharp that water thrown up fell down as ice". His grandfather had told him that it froze 3 inches and one third in a night. Manley did a broad brush reconstruction of the weather and Synoptics of 1684. He suggested the cold was most intense on 15/16th January with east winds and temperatures likely to have been below -12c mid morning in London. There were reports that it was cloudy so the diurnal range was not likely to have been large. So not very scientific, but given the broadly similar Synoptics with a Scandinaviah high in each of these four events and the surface temperatures, I would wager that 1740 and 1684 were sub -20c. i live on a farm and my cattle trough has been filled and ready for some time.

While other sane people are out or watching the football results, I thought l might come up with a few phrases that capture the frustrations of current modelling for cold lovers. In no particular order: getting locked in a wax works watching paint dry in slow motion seeing tonight 's episode of Dad's Army for the 19th time and still finding something to laugh about. I could give a more in depth analysis, but I will leave that to those on the other thread