Interitus

I'm in southern edge of Warrington, none here either. Looking at the motorway cams and various others shows that the showers are giving coverings roughly level with central Manchester northwards - in some parts looks almost as heavy as in southeastern England. http://www.keepmoving.co.uk/home_jamcams.aspx Interestingly, I know temperatures a below zero in many areas of the country, but not so low that gritting wouldn't be effective. However, there doesn't seem to have been much done judging by how easily an inch or two of snow is able to settle. Poor effort considering the notice given, I think a lot of people will be having the day off tomorrow.

In Rossendale, I think you may have to be digging yourself out.

As I see it, temperatures aren't going to be a problem for the next couple of days for all altitudes though increasingly marginal for low ground later in the week. I expect Pennine and Peak District areas will get a pasting from the showers and the frontal snow, simple. Further west on the low ground a heavy fall is in the balance. From experience, if the showers are purely convectional we normally get very little so they need to be more organised with troughs. Then with the front from the south, there is very often a hole in the snowfall where the easterly wind over the Pennines subsides enough to dampen uplift. This can often be seen on the radar images when the precipitation appears to 'bifurcate' with heavy snow to the east, and over north Wales and Irish Sea, while for those like myself in the middle it stays mostly dry. This seems to happen too often! The main exception I can remember was February '94. That is such a long time ago!

No, the irony was the phrase "intellectual caliber" (the accepted UK spelling is calibre)

If it's any compensation, even those heavier areas would only equate to a couple of cms. Later on into Tuesday looks potentially more interesting.

SW fohn wind is creating very mild temperatures in the Bilbao area - 0z temperature 18 degC compared with average January night minimum of 5C

It was an even bigger near miss on the other side of the Pennines where for Manchester westwards there was no snow accumulation whilst Leeds etc. had over a foot. I can remember Thursday 1st Feb, afternoon rain turned to heavy snow which settled in no time at all before returning to heavy rain for the rest of the evening and night. Temperatures were so marginal that the early half inch of snow partly remained despite over and inch of rainfall. The reports of snow depths in West Yorkshire confirmed what we missed. I think the warmer air also meant surprisingly little snow for the usual spots such as Buxton and the Peak District.

IIRC Eskdalemuir peaked at 30 inches - 75cm I await the pics from Cumbria because I know many of the passes such as Hard Knott remained closed for some time after the general thaw.

Satellite radar altimetry

Eutrophication was my inspiration predating this Lohafex experiment.

What is interesting is that people continue to look solely at ice extent and fail to grasp the actual lack of ice volume. TN9 posted a blog from wunderground.com and while it is well worth absorbing the content, even more compelling is the follow-up blog entry which specifically answers the critics with a concise overview - http://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMaste...l?entrynum=1178 An important concept is that the winter ice extent is largely IRRELEVANT.

Interesting to see people acting on my ideas! Well obviously I cannot take sole credit for it but have long suggested that farming the oceans would reduce atmospheric CO2 - forget Kyoto, Rio etc the Mauna Loa dataset shows that it is rising at an ever increasing rate and as a species we are seemingly both unable or unwilling to tackle this purely at point of production. With a little imagination we could also create vast new food sources in otherwise more or less barren marine 'deserts'. edit: Just a comment of justification - what is the worry with our meddling? We have meddled already - if it has had no impact as some believe eg. AGW myth, then reducing it won't make any difference. If it has had an impact then it supports our efforts to reduce CO2.

That is a poor attempt to put a positive spin on the facts! It ignores the actual article, but with regards to the link to the northwest passage, it's clear Amundsen didn't simply 'sail' through but rather managed to pick himself through it.

This appraisal is quite sobering - http://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMaste...l?entrynum=1177

Just had a light flurry of snow in Warrington, Cheshire - lasted a couple of minutes. Don't know if it was because of the fairly thick stratus overcast, or induced by some input such as Fiddler's Ferry power station.

Almost 12 years since what? I'll be surprised if the upcoming cool spell is a match for the exact same week only 8 years ago.

Of course not in isolation, but we do use it along with other creditable data worldwide to make informed opinion rather than what journalists deem to be newsworthy. A tally of news articles is merely interesting, no more than that.

This is far more conclusive than any study of media reports could ever hope to be. Whilst the media may be perfectly truthful, they are likely to be far from comprehensive as they obviously focus on stories of interest. For example, snow in unlikely locations would receive attention - above average winter temperatures in those same places would probably not merit mention. Essentially the media reflects the adverse affects of weather which in terms of temperature concentrates on winter cold and summer heat, and it is arguable that winter weather may have a greater impact and hence more reports.

On the contrary, it is based at an agricultural research institute and the Met Office has weather data since 1959.

According to the Met Office review for July, the 29.7 at Kew Gardens on the 27th was surpassed by 30.2 °C at Cambridge NIAB on the 28th.

Maximum and minimum temperatures aren't recorded at 'standard' times as they would most likely be missed, they over a period of say 6 or 24 hours.

Nice photo

It's not necessarily melt. Remember that much of the ice pack is mobile and can ridge up or move apart out to sea. These help to alter the apparent ice concentration, the measurement of which in itself is prone to a margin of error.

Not sure what the Mohe, China graph is doing there..

The latest update from the NSIDC released today touches upon this very subject http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/index.html A new record minimum is looking quite likely now.