Stratos Ferric

Shuggs, I suddenly understand the rudimentary miostake that a few on here have been making these past few years. Mind you, the easy-to-make-if-you're-a-pilot-doing-it-every-day-for-a-lot-of-money-and-with-a-couple-more-crew-up-there-with-you-in-case-you-louse-up imperial - metric error once caused a major air emergency in Canada.

Bloody hell, you have lamposts there. Given the assurances received elsewhere at the start of the week that lot should remain for at least another two weeks.

Detail with snow is never going to be bang on, even with the best of forecasts. Overall I think the MO did ok with this. I don't think snow has been quite as widespread as forecast, nor has there been as much snow where it was forecast. Out of interest, how much is "far more"? I've had "far more" too, but then I wasn't forecast to get any; as it is I got the dusting to end all dustings.

I did suspect the UKMO were overdoing this one slightly, though after last week they can be forgiven that given their broader remit. The assessment of track, coverage, intensity and magnitude of precipitation has actually all been very good. All that's been lacking is about another degree of cooling to turn widespread rain into more widespread snow. In addition I'm not sure that winds have been quite as strong as they might have been. Overall I'd say they err'd on the cautious side of the corridor of possibility, not quite the same as getting it completely wrong.

This winter is nature's equivalent of the loading of the gambling machine to pay out occasionally: nothing draws the foolhardy in like continuous random reinforcement. Slight flippancy aside, it really is too soon to tell. This winter is wintry by modern standards, but not exceptional alongside events of the 60s-80s. I have also posted in the CET thread stats for Hale winters: interpret those as you will, but they set this winter in the context of others in what seems like a robust and reasonably well established cycle of cold. The genuinely noteworthy event next year, irrespective of the fact that this year is likely to be one of the two warmest Hale winters on record, would be for winter to come in colder than this. Personally I suggest it would be very unlikely at any time; against a background nudging 1C warmer than the 70s-80s it's highly unlikely that next winter will come in anything other than warmer, though I'd love to be wrong. You've succeeded in one brief paragraph to argue forcefully both sides of the argument. If we're warming so that cold becomes less severe, then all other things being equal cold winters will become less frequent. One of the clear patterns in recent years is that cold winters, and cold months, are becoming far less frequent.

WiB, sub 3C this month looking all but a cert now. Mathematically we could easily still breach 3C, but it's certainly going to take a major synoptic shift now for that to happen. Is this month / winter a one-off, or the start of a cooling trend? Too soon to tell, though all of Reef's points are well made, and I may have to dust off the analysis started a year or so ago when Noggin / Jethro started to moot global cooling. I've certainly been very surprised by the persistence of the cold this winter, though with one caveat that I think nobody noticed, at least not that I've seen. This being a Hale winter we might reasonably have expected cold. I was going to respond later in the "how does this winter stack" thread, but I'll post this here now. Hale_winters.ppt So, by any standards this winter is cold, though far from exceptionally. By recent standards it IS exceptional. I guess one could choose to take this one of two ways. It certainly breaches a floor that I had suspected had probably passed us by, but does it represent that such events are now as commonplace as once they were, or is it an outlier? Only time will tell, though I would remain very surprised indeed if we were to see anything even as remotely cold as this next year. Any treatise that talks about warming is never going to be welcome here on N-W, particularly with the cold fans; and alas, it would seem, any treatise from me whatsoever is unwelcome in the eyes of a few. There are one or two on here who might do well, in my considered opinion, to mug up on words mistakenly attributed to Voltaire. I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.

Incessant snow here for about five hours of an intensity so slight that it beggars adequate description. We now have something less than a dusting.

Possibly the most sensible post on here. Something will happen, across quite a wide area. Best guess currently is south of a line from about the Wash to the Mersey, with snow most likely north of the Thames - Severn, but as others have noted, there have been many times in recent years when late developing systems have missed their projected track by a fair margin, usually south rather than north I think in more recent years. As last week, +/- 100 miles, which is very little in the great scheme of things, might make all the difference on the ground.

Been snowing for about 2 hours here, intensity only about 1-2 for the most part, though an intensification in the last half hour when intensity nudged up towards 4-5. In qualitative terms very light / light for the most part, light-moderate recently. Only a dusting on top of what was still there, certainly no more than 5mm. More noteworthy is that this now represents the fourth layer of snow on snow without any complete melt between; although none of it has been particularly dramatic in depth (maybe 5-6cm in the biggest fall last Mon night - Tues) I would have to go back to 1979 for such cumulative layering (that year there were seven distinct main events, with some showers between those, with the snow depth peaking at a level 21").

Very cold here; near still air, clear skies, and a close to ground inversion very evident. Classic stuff above an extensive snow field. Precipitation action looks further west than originally expected, and perhaps moving on a tad faster. Looking at euro radar most of what we're likely to get looks like it's now showing on the UK radar. Main action for snow may well be, as the UKMO called earlier tonight, the hills of Worcestershire, the NW Cotswolds, and the uplands of Derbyshire. Very marginal temps further SE, but at present N of London and E of the M1 snow looking slightly more likely than earlier forecasts suggested. Northerly extent will be interesting to see.

Agreed on all four counts TM.

I think that's right, but for all locations this one was always going to go to the wire, whether because of marginal temperatures in some locations, or northerly extent in others. Ironically this one looks like an either / or: either you get a fair bit of precipitation but with the likelihood of rain, or you get snow but only a little of it. It's doesn't look to me like a sizeable dump anywhere, perhaps no more than 5cm anywhere, but I'd rather be in the Derbyshire Dales than the Yorkshire Dales for this one. The cold front from the north looks likely to fizzle now. Of much more interest is Sunday afternoon, IF you're on high ground. That could be VERY interesting.

RAMP ALERT SATSIGS RAMP Level 4 You had to see the lights flashing, hear the bells, whistles and claxons whooping to believe it this evening. Epicentre MIGHT be SW France somewhere. We knew it was a biggy coming in because the eyes on our portrait of Eye in the Sky (really, we have him immortalised on the wall at HQ, along with one or two other people) were flashing alerting is to an incoming from SATSIGS-8 somewhere up at the level of Tropospheric warming, high above Hastings... ...anyway, watch out for a State of Emergency. It didn't happen during the petrol strike, or the miners' strike. It didn't happen when "Roy of the Rovers" went out of publication. It didn't happen when Renee and Renata got to number one. It didn't even happen when Abdul's corner shop ran out of Lion midget gems the other week, but you herd it in the model thread first... there might even be a State of Emergency. Anyone would think there was some loose talk about potential awards - this being the awards season.

Mmm, Raynes Parks of honesty doesn't really scan.

Heeeeeey, now THERE is an idea! Top Marks Shugmaster! Now we need some categories... Obviously "Best Ramp" should be there, but it feels a tad bland. Maybe 'most restrained ramp in the face of an impending easterly"? Perhaps "most strident call for a no-therly"? "Best transmission of Abingdons"? And the 'Kentimetre award for rampant and preposterous claims for snowfall'?

Excellent points all. There will always be fluctuation about the mean, and statistically, the longer the period you're willing to wait, the larger that fluctuation will be. One thing that will not change, however, is the frrezing point of water at standard pressure. With a rising mean the circumstances for snowfall will, on average, become less and less frequent. The "problem" with winters like this one is that they offer delusion to the ill-informed that there is nothing wrong, just as drinking off a hangover persuades a drunk that he doesn't have a problem after all. I really don't understand why there's any debate on this thread, unless you're a reader holding out that either the climate will not continue to warm, or you're in that group who desperately cannot conceive of a UK without snow and therefore stubbornly refuses to accept the possibility.

It'll be kentimetres Andrew, a mistake we've all made. Well, a mistake that Yeti, Conor, our friends in SW Glasgow... SATSIGS STANDARD UNITS UPDATE In addition to Abingdons of disappointment; Ludlows of sleetiness; Kentimetres of mismeasurement; Harrogateboroughs of urbanisation; Peterboroughs of Easterliness; and Dublins of hopelessness; SATSIGS is pleased to announce two new SSUs; the Brixton, and, the Hudson. Brixtons will be attached to weather events (particularly snow) which exceed expectations, the standard five point scale will apply. Five will be excess sufficient to bring on pant wetting; one is the sort of dribble a girl inadvertently lets out when she laughs suddenly and unexpectedly at a joke. Hudsons will be attached specifically and solely to forecasts that can be seen retrospectively, or in near real time only, to include Brixtons that are not going to materialise. A random example would be last night's forecasts at 18:33, 18:37 and 18:54 calling for "thirty to forty centimetres" (I think that's what he said, maybe he said Kentimetres) of snow across the Pennines. Hudsons must not be confused with Abingdons, though they may lead to Abingdons, or Kentimetres, though they may also lead to this phenomenon, particularly in Harrogate, Telford, Glasgow, Newark, the bottom end of the northern line...

I suppose you can forgive someone living in a location where it virtually never snows. Here in NW Yorks I'm surrounded by people who seem to engage in a bizarre auction. One person, who shall go nameless, lives no more than four miles from my girlfriend, but might as well be half way up a Canadian Pacific Mountain compared to her location which seems to be the Gobi Desert. Maybe there's one of those Start Trek spacetimecontiuum thingys between the two of them. Or maybe the Kentimetre strikes again. Units of over delivery...we may have to go for Brixtons you know, and why not?

I wonder with the SE grinding to a halt in the face of an onslaught from Armageddon it was a case of too few staff on the ground in London. Not sure they would have had the same excuse at HQ in Exeter though. To be fair things did pep up here overnight, but you'd have to be measuring in Kentimetres to convert from the 2-3cm of fresn snow I received to the 30-40cm forecast. Maybe someone had an unlikely "double zero" typo incident?

Ossie, very much agree. Indeed, if anyone wants interesting +suggestive evidence of how infrequent snow, and particularly significnat snow, has become, one only had to watch with shock and awe the way the SE ground to a halt yesterday. I lived in London during the much colder snow of January 1987: on that occasion snow lay quite unbothered, if very churned, in the city for the entire week. I didn't have to take a day off work: buses and tubes ran. Schools, for the most part, stayed open (there was 15-18" across the SE of Essex in particular). Just as there has been a huge over-reaction to the current economic woes - in part at least I suspect borne out of unfamiliarity - so there was to yesterday's weather. Schools in Bradford closed in December, just as they did yesterday. If the same "benchmark" had existed when I was of school age I think I'd have needed to add a term or two on by the time I was 18 to make up for lost time!

It did finally snow here on Stratos Moor, though if that's 30cm then my name is Eye in the Tamara from the Past Blast. The wind clearly eased off, and without so much as opening a window or door I would guess there's 2-3cm, which would be a foot in kentimetres. Maybe that's where the UKMO went wrong.

Indeed...now go and compare the scales. There's a time to be smug, but that time isn't until you've made sure that whoever drew the maps didn't fiddle rather inappropriately. Very careless, and rather mischievious, mapping.

Delta, I'm being slightly harsh on you for the English, but I'm trying to make a point about the often poor quality of argument here on N-W. Sloppy English makes for poor argument (often), and poor argument often betrays laziness, and incapacity or unwillingness to actually expore the facts. There are a fair few cold weather bigots here on N-W, who do nothing but look for cold and snow, and take umbrage when anyone challenges their continual and incessant prospecting. If someone puts facts up to make a case, fair enough, but it's pointless to start a thread with a hypothesis and thyen shoot down in one liners every reason put forward to the contrary. I attach the UKMO's own thirty year averages for comparison. I think it's fair to say that there have been no snowy winters (until the present one) since 2000, so the average will have gone backwards not forwards. Even if you contend that this winter is snowy, the winter it replaces in the thirty year average beat this one in spades, with interest added. In my locale there was snow on the ground every day from December 30th to February 25th, for half the days in March, and for odd days in April and May. Impressive though this year may seem in terms of snowfall to anyone aged 18 or under, to those of us who are 40 or so and up, this is hors d'oeuvres.

Bang on on the first point for my part: I love the cold, but I'd always put honest assessment first, hence why I'#m apt to prod the model thread from time to time. Re the second point here in snowy Stratosdale (it would be churlsih of me to copmlain because I can't recall whether I've had four or five separate snow covers already this winter) this event is the snowiest for no more than two months; as I've said elsewhere tonight today will make a bigger dent on our collective psyche than, stripped to the bare facts, it really merits, other than for extent of snowfall - this may well be the most extensive fall for twenty years, and in some places the heaviest, but it is not the heaviest and most widespread - the "problem" is overnight snow paralysed London and the media, not having had snow in such quantities on their own doorstep for a long time have had a field day.

Today's forecast has been pretty poor, and I routinely defend against any such posts, so let me clarify. I was always rather doubtful, as evidenced in various postings over the past 2-3 days, as to the quantity of rain forecast, and the marginality at the back of the front was fairly widely touted, and to be expected from a system coming in with the trajectory of today's. Finally, precise whereabouts when a system is overhead can make a huge difference to who gets what, and how much. All fair enough: what has been staggering today is the length of time for which the UKMO has carried on about the prospect for a foot of snow across the Pennines; it was never likely to be this much, but to continue on long after the early echo traces showed precipitation to be widespread but very light IS rather poor. Forecasts can be hard; nowcasts really require quite some effort to get wrong. Hedon should consider twinning with Abingdon, the spiritual home of the unit of disappointment.