Lord Grogon

Yay! First 20c of the year showing on my app (WeatherPro). Sadly it all goes down the toilet after that...

Gotta love P13. When all else fails, keep the faith!

Broke the winter record twice in consecutive days. In relative term it felt like a 30 degree heatwave given the time of the year. I agree it’s highly unlikely we’ll get there this year. But we seem to be breaking or close to breaking a lot of max records in recent years so who knows? Some of the model runs this weekend have the 10 degree isotherm covering large parts of the uk from next weekend, comparable to 2019.

Just took the kids to Brentwood for a run around. Still chuffing freezing with the wind chill. Plenty of snow around too. When will C London hit 20 degrees? Well my WeatherPro App is showing 17 for a few consecutive days starting next weekend. Given these apps tend to blend out raw data after a few days, I’m going to be bold. Monday 22 Feb will hit the magic mark.

One telling point today was how much the ground has frozen up. I was able to run off road today on bits of ground that until recently had become a muddy swamp. Ankle deep mud replaced with a solid surface. Such a shame no more snow is on the way. It would have settled so much easier. Back to being a swamp in a couple of days.....

This could be good. Stay on target.......

Rule I heard is 1 inch of rain = A foot of snow (12 inches). So 1mm of rain by the same ratio is 1.2cm of snow. Other factors such as ground temps come into play. These tend to work more against lighter precipitation when it comes to settling. So the actual number, given that 1mm per hour isn’t that heavy will probably be a bit less. I’m a numbers man, but not a meteorologist though, so others on this site may know far more.

My WeatherPro app has -9 for London tomorrow. But I know their London data is taken from the Heathrow weather station. Bit colder there I imagine compared to standing slap bang in the middle.

All these discussions about the ground being too warm. It’s a shame we couldn’t swap tomorrow nights forecast for last Fridays. My WeatherPro app is showing -9 min for London. That would have sorted the ground out nicely prior to the snow

It's a fair point, but I think you are overplaying the sun effect slightly for Feb. It only really becomes an issue as you move towards the end of the month. Something to do with the increasing rate it's angle changes in the sky as you move through the month. There was a lot of discussion about it during the 2018 BTFE especially relating to the second event in mid-March when basically nothing settled. December has it's own problems being early in the Winter. Less of a well developed cold pool to tap into. Plus higher SST's can cause their own problems. That only leaves January as the "premium" month. We've been really unlucky this winter. January was chilly and very wet. That means the ground is saturated but had little opportunities to cool down or freeze. The worst possible combination pre a cold spell. As you say, a few days of sun and frost would have made all the difference.

I think the graph is for Luton Airport.

We do. But they tend to be driven rather badly

Don't Premier league stadiums have heated pitches though? If anyone wants a good hint for where to find the best settling snow, get a trampoline. Our one has twice as much snow as any other surface and it's high Alpine type powder. It is almost impossible to make a snowball with it. Which of course makes it useless for anything practical. Nice to throw in the air though.

Oh to live just south of Derham!

Thank you for your honest and detailed responses. I definitely value the input of Paul S and yourself on this thread who are able to see through the emotional rollercoaster. It's interesting. At the start of the week, the models (well some of them) were showing the low a bit higher with the consequence being the delayed arrival of the cold to the SE. The trend seemed to move away from that during the week with the low gradually dropping south. Funny that it seems to have jumped back slightly at the last moment. I guess the trend isn't always your friend! BTW for general info, it's really ramped up here in the last 10 minutes. Starting to settle on the roads. It looks like we have (finally) been elevated to Defcon 2.

Bit of a frustrating day here really. Been snowing all morning but very light. Small amounts settling on windward facing sides but nothing on the ground. It's simply too wet. The heavier stuff seems to be passing just to the east of here (Southend/Leigh) but moving in a NE > SW direction. I keep looking at the radar for signs of westward movement. It seems to be a little bit, but I'm not sure if it's simply hope vs reality!

I know Darren Bett isn’t a fan of cold. But I love watching old forecasts on YouTube. You could genuinely see some of them getting excited as a big event approached.

I read somewhere that the vast majority of apps use the GFS. does that mean most of yours are showing exactly the same thing?

Oh to be living in Germany now. No worries about being on the edge of the snow band there....

What I’ve learned so far with Tight Isobars posts is as long as does this: , things are dapper.

Spooky timing for me given my weekend reading. With that in mind, I’m keeping my boom-stick firmly in it’s locker for the time being.

I know it's naughty to get excited about Op runs. But if anybody fancies a bit of weather porn, I'd recommend the latest run from the GFS.

Funnily enough, if I recall there was very briefly a Beast number 3 popping up for the end of March. I think it ended up a Northern Hills only event though as the south began to warm up (and didn't really stop until August!).

Part of the problem is that websites and apps simply import raw data directly from the computer models. No other way as they are expected to provide information for locations everywhere. Humans couldn't possibly do it. Text and TV forecasts should in theory should have more human input as a complement to the model data. Although as pointed out, how much of this actually happens with BBC forecasts is up for debate. Models are good but at the moment anyway they simply do not function at high enough resolution or update quick enough to pick up all the short term localised variations in our weather. Especially in the UK which is prone to a greater number of local effects due to where we sit in the world. A good example on this thread were the recent "snow" events with people posting pictures of their apps that were completely different to what they were seeing outside their windows! Therefore I agree that the drive to provide ever more detail in weather forecasting tools such as apps is not always a good thing. Perhaps in the future when the technology improves a bit more.

Indeed. The Met Office 10 day forecasts are far better. They will often refer to other model outputs beyond just their own if they are different.