pinball wizard

The Met would know that with low probabilities there is NO point in feeding a pre-christmas WALL OF SNOW media frenzy. And rightly so. Their job is to provide reasoned forecasts not speculate as to longer term, we can do the latter here for them

No offence but anyone could post a chart from the JMA and make case for cold!!

I'm sure there'll be opportunities to come Lassie, at least another 87 days of winter to come!

Hi Lottie My reading of Matt H's post is that there had previously been a strong signal for low pressure to be the dominant force behind our weather, however, he is now observing that signal to be much weaker and for there to be no particular pattern to be dominant. That could be the start of a trend away from a +nao pattern towards more of a -nao pattern, and usually the , -nao is one associated with a blocked Atlantic and cold for us.

Hmmm if the fog clears it could mean the surface cold is mixing out and warm air coming in, be interesting to see if under clear skies your temps change at all

Certainly is very cold and it's not often to find an iceday on the second day of winter. Hopefully bodes well for winter as a whole

@Methuselah any snow your way?

I been following a shower tracking down through Norfolk into Suffolk on an Ipswich bound trajectory only for it to run out of puff and disappear 15 miles away. Doh!! These sort of setups are always lucky dip so not moaning and got to see some falling and settling first thing this morning.

It actually feels warmer now than this morning though not sure it that's because I'm acclimatised to it now!!

And parts of Essex possibly extreme south east of Suffolk too. Not sure if it would be sleety though given the onshore element to the wind

Having some good showers here in Ipswich VID20231201064724.mp4

ECM model showing possible snow Saturday night into Sunday for parts of EA

Anyone else got freezing fog? Good sign the wind is on the turn and some moisture starting to feed in

UKV still supportive of streamer tomorrow and again Friday. Lamppost watch mode activation on standby!

I notice gfs is maybe interested in a streamer friday and also has this for overnight into Sunday

Which day?

Totally agree, the behaviour and reaction to things on there is often very odd indeed

Looks like more to come too

Yeah I think where cloud cover existed temperatures may have been just above freezing. When I got in the car at 6 this morning it was covered in a glaze of ice, one of those occasions where you hear that crunching and cracking of ice as the doors reluctantly open. Was very glad of the heated windscreen this morning, nice watching the ice melt rather than being out there with the scraper

Well we've had a hard frost and also some sort of wintry shower overnight. I'm not sure I'll be needing any snow shovel though

Perhaps more importantly (only as its higher res) the UKV is still showing signs of a streamer, perhaps the north Essex area most favoured but as I said earlier today lets see what the evenings charts tomorrow show..

Sight of that chart has made his hair fall out! Pretty striking that so much of northern europe is that cold though with a bit of anomalous warmth in southern europe. If only that thermal gradient could spawn a euro low pressure pattern it'd be of good help to us.

Ok so I've started to look for any signs of streamer potential for Thursday using the UKV model run today at 3am, this run goes a bit longer than the 50hrs of other UKV runs. Of course this is all academic but that run is suggesting max temps at 3pm Thursday of around 4/5c on suffolk, essex coast, going down to 2/3c a little further inland. What is getting my attention is a look at the predicted wind directions. Increasingly between 3pm and 6pm there are signs of wind convergence, with northerly winds blowing down across inland east anglia meeting easterly winds coming in from the sea. Where these winds converge you would expect sufficient lift of moisture to see ppn development. At the same time, aided by onset of nightfall we see temperatures falling. This means there MAY be a window of opportunity for streamers to set up through late afternoon and into evening. Of course no certainty in this and IF it did occur then it would likely only bring ppn across a narrow strip likely along coastal areas from thames estuary up to essex/suffolk border. Something to keep an eye on over next 48hrs but low chance and even then it could be a sleety mess. Fingers crossed though

It is a possibility, however odds have reduced overnight. There is still a lot of volatility in model outputs even in close range when looking for the diner details which we need ironed out before a call on precipitation. I'd have thought by tomorrow evening it will be clear enough, personally I'm not confident of seeing anything from this spell other than some frost and the sun, which given the gruesome weather of the last two months is a bonus of sorts in itself. Winter is a long 3 months and hopefully this is the appetiser to a winter very different from last.

Nice kink in isobars over southern north sea in the last of those images. Could be one of those features that we all speak of...