Stratos Ferric

I think this event is going to make a bigger impression on the colective psyche than it warrants; London has been close to the epicentre, and at an hour that makes for day long coverage from the London based media. Certainly an extensive event, but not generally notable for depths W of a line from the Humber to the Portland (or so). Also looks like a bit more of a thaw in the wake than forecast.

Hard to disagree with those sentiments. Driving no here all evening. 18" drift outside my back door offering a lovely abstract alongside a yard blown all but bare. And still the main news is full of reporters blathering on about 12" still to come, and a reporter as I write talking about a blizzard and a white out whilst behind her the motorway stretches quite clearly as far as the eye can see. And now we have Fiona Bruce "we can see it's still snowing there"; reporter "actually it's raining". This forecast is going t*ts up at the moment. It also looked a bit more marginal than the UKMO were making out, and quantities further north of this system were always over egged (12" of snow needs 1" of rain; we'd rarely get that of a warm front in spring or autumn, let alone midwinter), and, as ever with the system overhead, minor movement against forecast location and alignment make for dramatic changes in outcomes.

With extensive snow cover for the first time in years, IF air falls at all slack later this week there's a chance of some very low daily values. Two things in particular have conspired to keep monthly temps above 3.0C in the recent past - the failure of cold air to persist, particulary in terms of night time minima; and, the failure to return exceptionally low individual daily means. The coldest individual day since the turn of the century in the released Hadley record was -1.85C, on Jan 1st 2002 (this was finally surpassed on New Year's Eve last year). In the 1990s this level was breached on the downside 9 times. In the 1980s, 43 times. In the 70s, when winters used to be seen as being relatively mild for much of the decade, 24 times; and in the 60s, 38 times. Not getting such an exceptionally cold day will not rule out a sub 3, but getting one or two would certainly help.

I'm dubious about the forecasts for tonight, but certainly expect to see probably the largest drifts in the ten winters I've been living here. Won't be seeing anything to match the drifts of 1995 though, above Hebden Bridge, which left "mother of the children" cut off for two weeks.

Andrew, It would appear that much of the country has taken its lead from "The Indy". Today's snow in these parts would hardly have raised an eyebrow in the late 70s and 80s; it would certainly not have been the stuff of closure to half the schools in the metro district, nor would it have rendered the journey to work as problematic as seemed to be the case for many today. BLizzards aren't what they used to be, 'clearly' in the case of The Independent! By the way, I assume that S London came close to getting the seemingly implausible quantity of snow mooted last night.

Apologies Solar, I lost track of who was replying to who there in my incandesence about the futility of the quality of some of the argument on here.

I think you mean "hear, hear". WHy might anyone accept the thin view on the robustness of models of someone whose command of English is limited? Sauce for the goose and all that... You don't have to use models to see that the climate in the UK is nowhere near as snowy - in either frequency, average extent, quantity or persistence, as it used to be. Days like today will distract the stupid, just as the chronic gambler is teased by the occasional win from realising that it is the bookie, not he, who is banking most of the money, but an event that would not have been extraordinary through most of my chilhood (60s - 80s) is being widely hailed on the news as the biggest snowfall in around 20 years.

Solar, I really don't see why you started this thread - you've made your mind up as to the answer already. If you want a debate, have a discussion, but if all you're going to do is post "that's rubbish / that's wrong" type responses to anyone who does bother to reply then you'll pretty soon find that people, certainly the ones on here worth listening to (and TWS is definitely one of those) will just ognore you. Perhaps you might take half an hour to go find some FACTS to buttress your arguments. You might go seek Bonanica (sp?), although not particularly thorough, and certainly nowehere near as exhaustive of the Hydrological series that the UKMO used to maintain, it does attempt to map the snowiness of UK winters.

I await being amazed and astonished, but I have to say that I continue to think that this is being overplayed a tad up here. Paul Hudson isn't the most objective forecaster in these circumstances, but I think even he was guilty of potential excess suggesting that we might get another foot tonight. It's been snowing here since around 4pm, but my observation is that the snow is more persistent than intense. At times last night, albeit briefly, the intensity got up to around 30 on my cursory scale: I think I've known it get above that on two or three occasions at most. Right now, and for the past hour, it's been hovering around 4-5, no more than light-moderate. What's there is very dry, so it's getting blown around into some sizeable drifts, and I came within a very few minutes of not being able to get up the hill out of town - as it was the ASC nearly burned the clutch out - or back up the track. There's going to have to be a pretty big development in the flow for us to get a foot of level snow.

I agree with the general tenet of your argument G-W, however, Jethro is not unreasonable in suggesting that an apparent cause should not negate a continuing search for other reasons. Down the years science is littered with "best guesses" at the time that were superseded and improved only when our ability to sense, assess, and measure improved. I think what is rather daft is going too far the other way; to act as if there is absolutely no chance whatsoever that man is impacting climate, perhaps even in the majority amongst driving causes, and to seek manically any other cause but the apparently most obvious.

These events always require "nowcasting", but even so I suspect Roger is overplaying things a tad. Main risk areas at present have evolved slightly since I last posted on this. I think the risk is now further N and E than previously. S of a line from the Solent to around the Lleyn Peninsula the risk of anything significant currently looks small. My yardstick is the big storms of 1979, that dumped 9-12" fairly widely: they were more intense than today's feature, and much slower moving than this is projected to be. On that basis a more likely accumulation today might be around 4-6" - on top of anything already there of course. On the upside, the heights are looking a bit better than they were, with a reduced risk of snow turning to rain, but I'd still be slightly surprised if this didn't happen in some places, particularly close to the coast and further S. There ought to be an orogrpahic effect further N, so the Pennines, the mountains of Wales and the hills of Shropshire and Worcestershire might see some enhancement. Certainly the best looking frontal event for a few years, probably since the millennium, and perhaps as far back as the early 90s.

Hard to get a level measure here: the yard has blown clear, but there are small drifts elsewhere. Level surfaces in the shelter have about 2-3cm, drifting upto about 30cm where the snow has piled up.

Only about 1cm three miles down the road in Rawdon. Cookridge is in danger of being twinned with Telford - lol!

Very tough call at the moment Andrew, and I'm b*ggered if I'm going through all the threads looking for rampant claims. I have posted on the NE thread (once I'd ascertained exactly WHICH thread I should post on) that the BBC might have been indulging in a tad of ramping calling for 40cm on higher ground. Widespread cover looks likely, but how much, and whether it turns back to rain (come Tuesday), are in the balance. Might be a few Abingdons towards the SW.

The airport (LBA) or Bingley are the closest stations with near real time feeds.

Well, never say "never", but I'd be very surprised if we got that much, level. Even the blizzards of 1979 didn't produce that much in a single fall, and on two occasions it snowed for more than 24 hours non-stop, two of the very few occasions in my life when "blizzard" was not rampant hyperbole. I'd guesstimate anything from 5-15cm at low levels, with the chance of this turning to rain below 200m or so; maybe 15-20cm on higher ground.

Hats off to you OP, you pretty much nailed the ending point with your spread there, lol.

A few grains o the track when I went out running at around noon, a few grains blowing around early afternoon, mainly light and fairly fleeting showers since, though a couple of more moderate ones at around 3:45pm, then 6:30pm, giving a dusting on all surfaces.

Persistent no widely across the south after Monday. Typically 2-3cm of snow in places in the E; 10-15cm of no across the south by later on Tuesday with widespread wailing, post-mortems and disappointment. Wise man once said: "hope for the best, expect the worst".

Tamara, you think it's humbug because you like the snow. I like snow too, but I am also a slave to the facts. I would love to "keep the faith", but, alas, faith doesn't enter into it. The unprecedented run of annual - and particularly winter - warmth, may be distasteful, and inconvenient to you, but for all that you spend each and every winter on here hoping for something genuinely cold, and like many others in the model thread persistently looking east for any glimmer of hope, the real world in the UK persists in not returning a winter month sub 3C. With each passing year, what you would have as a "cyclical" event rather starts to appear, in fact, as something more persistent.

Certainly looking like continuing the Hale pattern. This appears to be the last bastion of generally accepted short term patterns - in the UK at least. As to this month: being shorter it has the best chance of landing low, and sub 3; we pass through what is, on average, the coldest part of the year, even though by month's end the sun is starting to get well up. Certainly an interesting and, at the moment, enticing looking month for snow fans, but I suspect the PFJ will back by mid month, if not before. Cold start, though I suspect not quite so cold as January - unless we get extensive snow cover and settled air following - but I doubt staying cold throughout. In the 3's again seems most likely outcome to me. 3.7C

Very sensible post. I remember the sister of a friend of mine years ago coming back from the chemist and mocking the fact that a spotty girl had been stood at the counter gushing about how effective her spot cream was. All Jess could see was that this girl had spots: ergo the girl's claim was a nonsense. I wonder what her spots would have been like without the cream? One winter, one season, either way proves nothing. Trend and pattern are everything, and any one event's true place in the greater scheme of things can only be seen a few years downstream. Unless this year comes in BELOW 9.43C the climatic rolling mean CET will still rise. The winter that disappears from the same series came in below 1.6C: no matter what happens in February the thirty yer rolling mean winter temperature wiull still increase this year. For sure, this winter, this year, may come in cold by recent standards, but what we'll never know is whether the same set of drivers would have produced something more or less cold thirty years ago. Tuesday's synoptic continues to look juicy for a number of reasons, not least because it reminds me very much of the sort of synoptics we got in 1978 and 1979, and as you suggest, this set up in 1979 would have had very little "marginal" about it. We shall see.

In Abingdon, cold no is a distinct possibility.

Paul, I'm sorry but that's one of the most silly posts I've seen on here in ages. Your opening sentence is daft beyond reason: you might as well say that if house prices hadn't risen so much upto 2007 the current falls wouldn't look so great - yes, take those early years out and things will have levelled out but, to be honest, they haven't got that far to go in many places in the UK now because in lowland areas we're probably below 10 days falling per annum; less a case of levelling out and more a matter of flat lining. The whole point were discussing here IS the trend, so to remove the pattern and say "look, there's no pattern" is actually to commit precisely the statistical error of which you fallaciously accuse me. A mean is a forced smoothing and betrays any rapid movements in trend that MIGHT be occurring. And the criticism re my use of the thirty year mean (how else to form a view of change whene there is so much inter-annual variation) is particularly ill-considered. I take it that the UKMO are being equally selective then? Before you answer recheck the UKMO charts Yeti originally referenced and note the period that THEY use to determine an average. The simple fact is we get far less snow nowadays than we used to. It doesn't matter how slavishly you desire snowfall, 'facts is facts'. I attach the figures for Bingley for lying snow that I first produced about eight years ago. Alas, the data for Bingley are no longer on line so I can't update readily, but you'd have to be fairly churlish to try to claim that there has been a remotely snowy winter in the last seven. The jury is still out on this year, but it could possibly reach as high as 10-15 days by the end of the year: notable by recent standards, but not significant when you look back twenty years or so.

SATSIGS are always aware, but there is a need to remember the acronym which is our moniker. When there's a legitimate claim for potential snow then there's no need to sod the science.