TonyK St Albans

Snowing steadily in St Albans now and the MO radar suggests we could be in for an hour or so at the equivalalent rate of around 1mm/hour Now I remember when I was a kid being told that an inch of snow is the equivalent (roughly) of a tenth of an inch of rain. Don't know how reliable that is but it begs a question. So, need your help please guys! Does anyone know what 1mm rain per hour would translate into in terms of snow mms?

Not a single flake all day yesterday but woke up to light dusting this morning.

Photos?

At last, the first few grains have arrived in St Albans.

Nothing so far in St Albans but radar showing light ppn about 5 miles to the east and creeping very slowly ever closer.

Not looking at the apps, only MO updates. It's kind of compulsive once you know tsnow is on the horizon.

This is getting beyond a joke. It's just gone even further back to 6pm Sunday evening. At this rate we'll not see a single flake all week.

Same here. Snow was originally forecast to start in St albans at midnight and last all night and most of the follwing day. Now it's changed to rain at midnight, then dry from 1am. The snow is now expected to arrive at 8am. So no doubt it'll get pushed back again as that time approaches and maybe we'll be lucky to see a couple of flakes floating around at 4pm!

Not in St Albans it wasn't. Snow was predicted earlier in the week to start at midnight, by yesterday evening it had been brought forward to 10pm, now it's been shoved right back to 3am. At this rate I'll be waking up to a starly snowless rainsoaked scene.

Sorry to rain on everyone's parade but, much as I really love to see the snow, I cannot say I'm looking forward to this coming event. Why? Because of the extremely harsh north easterlies that are expected to accompany the snow from the off on midnight Sunday and through most of Monday. Winds are forecast to gust at up to 40mph inland and over 50mph near coasts. That alone will take a lot of of the fun out of it for me. It's going to be brass monkeys with bells and whistles all the way through. Fine if that doesn't bother you but it's not really my cup of tea.

Such was my excitement at the time I remember it all quite vividly to this day. I was living in a flat in Hornsey North London at the time and stared outside watching it fall all day Boxing Day without let-up. It must also have continued most of the night because next morning It was 14" deep. Going downstairs I was aghast to discover thick snow lying inside the front door! It had penetrated about a foot inside. We had no central heating and the fierce winds had blown the snow through the cracks. It was that cold indoors the snow hadn't even started to thaw inside. But even more of a shock was when I went outside and discovered it was RAINING heavily. Only there was something different about this rain and at first I could not could not make it out. Then I realised this wasn't ordinary rain, it was freezing rain. It was all very weird, because I'd never come across such a phenomenon before. A short while later it turned back to ordinary rain, but even that froze the instant it landed on the thick snow, creating a very crusty sheet of ice on the surface. Later again it turned back to snow, but by then it was fairly light stuff. What followed was two months of bitterly cold but mostly sunny weather. The temperature often stayed below freezing all day, sometimes way, way below, and it very rarely rose more than 2F or 3F above. It seldom snowed again either, but there were occasional heavy showers, including one when the flakes were incredibly huge, such as I've not seeen since. In fact the closest it's come for me was just last week when once again the flakes were huge, but still not quite as large I don't think. The downside to it all was that the lying snow hung around and got compacted into a treacherous sheet of ice. Sometimes it would turn to slush only to refreeze overnight. It all got very, very mucky. There was no general thaw until towards the end of February by which time we were all mighty relieved to see the back of it.

Still rain in St Albans - just 15 miles south. And the Met Office have now caught up and change their forecast from heavy snow to rain. Must have looked out the window!

Met Office forecast for St Albans is heavy snow between 5pm-6pm then turning to sleet. So far not a flake in sight, only plain, unadulterated rain.

ince rain turned to light snow at 9.25am in St Albans it's mostly been white rain (aka sleet ).

Turning to light snow now,

After hours of heavy rain a sudden flurry of sleet in St Albans just now.