Stratos Ferric

Yep, the frequency of snowfall has, if not quite fallen of a cliff edge, certainly dipped markedly in recent years. The thirty year mean has a huge skew in it due to the relatively snowy period from 1977-1986. One of the problems with long running means is that they give a false perception in a changing climate. Using a thirty year running window Liverpool are, by some distance, the second most succesful team in English football's top division: not something that anyone under the age of about twenty would appreciate.

Still looking like 3.2C, before adjustments, from where I'm sitting.

Yes, but did either December or January (short of an astonishing turn around in the next week) produce a sub 3.0C month? We've had this debate umpteen times now, it's harder to produce a calendar month at sub 3 than it as any given run of thirty days. That's one of the reasons behind my whole contention. Sustained cold would need to be sustained and continuous. December, like January, will not beat 3.0C because the cold is NOT sustained. The forty day average works because it brings in two distinct cold periods with a mild sandwich. Nowadays, with the PFJ further polewards, we are never far away from mild air. With the jet stronger on average, blocking is less persitent.

...for the benefit of those at risk of getting a bit ahead of themselves, and trying to spar with the person, rather than engage in the debate...

I'd love to be incorrect in my projection, but let's look back at this month. Ten bitter days by any standard that would bear comparison in pretty much any winter, and still we look like being well clear of 3C, clear by, say, 12 cumulative C. Against the mean that's another 3-4 days close to zero to return 3C. On the assumption that we can no longer sustain a cold period longer than a couple of weeks, and accepting that mild when it comes is milder than it used to be (up at 5C days on average - the second and third terciles this month will both be at around 5C or more, and this hasn't been a month with any notable mild days), then it's easy to see why 3.0C presents a hurdle. By late Feb nowadays we can start to see springlike days, you don't need many of those to b*gger things up. The caveat is that Feb in recent years has tended to herald late season HP: not always cold, but relatively reliable. It would be easy to extrapolate that to this year, and assume colder than normal, but the risk in that would be the assumption that a colder background would provide the same drivers - it probably wouldn't. Anyway, that's next month. As to this month, WIB's 3.5C isn't totally outlandish. I certainly agree that the recent trend in GFS has been topside of projection, but today, suddenly, and in addition to this factoring, the model has broken clear topside of recent forecasts. I still think 4C is way out of reach, but 3.5C before adjustment isn't out of the question.

As I've been saying for a few years now, and despite the fact that cold fanatics don't like it, we STILL HAVE NOT had a sub 3.0C month since 1997. For sure we had a fortyish day spell below that mark, but it was punctuated by some warmth that scuppered the calendar average. All that does is ratehr align with my contention: sustained cold, as sustained and as cold as it occasionally used to be, is now a thing of the past I think. When I run I don't like the fact that I can no longer get down to 37' for 10k. Age adjusted norms allow me to compare my times and adjust for age, but the sad fact is that as the body ages it becomes less athletic. With training I have good months, but the trend in absolute performance is inexorable. Just in case anyone hasn't noticed, it would be remarkable indeed to have a warming climate but cooling winters. Quite why my assessment is treated - often by the same people who are the last to let go of any real prospect for cold - as if I have taken leave of my senses is beyond me. Every year the same people rail, every year we do not get a sub 3C month: in fact it is now 35 winter months since our last sub 3. Can anyone tell me when we last had a run that long? That might be a freudian slip Tamara, or it might be careless English, but it had me hooting. My point of view is based on the facts as I see them. There's a not too subtle difference. EITS, read again CAREFULLY what I wrote. I didn't mention specific threads, or suggest ALL posts. If you want to over react so be it, but you would have to have Nelson's eye to believe that every post on N-W that calls for cold is objective. If that were the case, if it were even halfway the case, the UK would be located at around 75N not 53N! I don't recall saying anything about the CET in December actually. IN reference to January my punt was 3.2C: clearly the act of a madman. Can I enquire what you guessed at before we start making judgments regarding the inherent bias of posters on here...

Can't speak for any of the other you might have been referring to Tamara, but for my part this winter, far from blowing a hole in my personal hypothesis (sub 3 is no longer possible), does nothing other than cement it. As to February looking cold, I'm not seeing any evidence; I am seeing plenty of wishful thinking on one or two of the threads though, still, if that's all people can cling to when all they're inetrested in is cold then so be it. Not sure anyone else said this sort of winter was not achievable (I didn't), but it would seem to be at the limits of what is...you only have to read back to the satrt of this thread to ses that most of the movement in expectation this month has come from those hollering originally for a month that wouldn't have looked out of place in the 60s-80s. Like it or not the background rise in inexorable, and just as 3C looks like it's about the floow now for a calendar month, in a decade or so that will likely be 3.5C or 4. Charlotte, I suspect your pondering re strange increases is probably down to marginal rounding at the second d.p. Like you I've been a bit surprised at yesterday's increase. Perhaps one of the last we'll ever have, save for the type of 1:500 event that freakishly arrives occasionally out of nothing - though I'm suspecting that the the necessary enablers of even that (on a downside event) no longer exist.

Snowing at Stratos Moorside at about 01:00, rather wet and melting readily on contact. Cover of snow above about 1500' this morning, but of the variety that has had a dousing with rain and is now melting.

Very good points. I know I have often remarked before that our cold is nothing like as intense as it used to be. There have been frosty nights, and by recent standards a few very cold ones, but it's still the case that where on occasions we used to reach -3, -4, -5C widely, and sometimes over several consecutive nights, we often seem nowadays to think -1 or -2C is worthy of note.

I think it's for Reef to say whether or not there has been snow in HIS location, which if you read carefully is what he's saying. Here in Stratosdale this winter has been fairly snowy by modern standards, both in terms of frequency of snowfall, and also in terms of snow lying. Quantities have been fairly impressive, but we haven't surpassed the March fall of 3-4 years ago. Compared with the pre-christmas pudding, however, this is nothing. Though worth bearing in mind that your car can be frosty even at +4 or +5 in the right conditions. The main thing that's been outstanding this winter compared to recent winters has been the number of clear nights. It will be interesting to tally official stats for air frost because a chunck of this year's perceived frost is, I suspect, ground frost.

Power cuts the most likely problem. Same happeend in the NW of France in late 1999 (or was it 2000).

Careful, you'll have a certain member opening a thread about catastrophically incorrect forecasts...6C plus widely across CET land. And you're projecting within 4-5 hours of it happening!

The average for 11-20th Jan (WiB said middle third, not last ten days) was about 5.3C (for what it's worth the mean for the last ten days is around 5.1C); the thirty year rolling mean for Jan is 4.5C. The average to the 10th was about -0.1C. Some of what WiB has said regarding projections to the month end is a tad, shall we say "gassy", but as to the undisputed facts his qualitative assessment looks spot on.

Sleet and snow around 7am this morning. Haven't a clue how long it continued for; alas I had weightier matters to trog into Bruddlesford for...

Very slow drift up in GFS projections continues. Average error at t-24 is around -0.3C, which if continued would mean around 2-3C upwards correction by the month end on top of the current projected running mean (3.1C). WIB's suggestion of 3.5C or higher doesn't seem so outlandish on that basis, though much now depends on how far north the milder warm sector passages get over the next week.

My rough reckoning is that today falls between 2.5-3C, not going to make much of an impact, if any, on the running mean at that rate. Looking forward my latest projection for month's end is continuing to zero in on 3C. No change since yesterday from my perspective. Jet still well S of the norm, though starting to suggest potential instability towards the month's end. That might make the final value +/- 0.3C from here, but the trend is definitely locked in at around 3C at present. EDIT:..by the way, the sun is certainly going down well below the horizon so far as the coldest month in the even larger teapot is concerned, and at best we're in the twilight re the coldest January.

A touch of the Telfords in Strasdale as well. Sleeting from about 100m up. Mix of complete snowflakes and rain.

Maybe, but remember at this stage of the month the daily mean needs to be 2C (2.5C by the weekend) above the running mean to add 0.1C to that value. None of my projections over the past four days have breached 3C. Even agreeing with the point that GFS is slightly underplaying temps I'm not sure we'll be above 3C by the end of the w/e. Doesn't look too warm once we're past Thursday. All of that said, given my own wildly speculative punt for the month, I'll happily be wrong - up to a point (or two!).

A dusting of snow / soft hail this evening at around 8 pm. Nothing below 250m.

The issue isn't mild sectors, in a mobile set-up they're unavoidable: it's the source of the mild air that matters. As I said a day or two back, I certainly agree that GFS underplays temperatures in the current set up. It doesn't underplay them to the extent that would be required to take the mean for the month up above 3.5C by the month's end though, not without a major shift in pattern. I see two things for the reliable future: a jet that lives up to the moniker - just look at the 300s - it's a while since I saw whites shown! It's straight, it's broad: very, very stable. On top of that the alignment is at around our latitude or equatorwards; that favours air being drawn more from the polar side, even if it has a very long return on it. I don't see a pattern shift before next week, if then. By that time we may be up around 2.8, and would require 7s for the rest of tme month to reach 3.5C. I suspect this year that's a big ask. Anything higher than that is all but out of the question. 3.0C still looks interesting.

Moderately heavy showers passing through now, with a stiff breeze. Too dark to put an intensity on but fairly big flakes, so I'd guess up around 15-20 on the Stratos scale.

Rain turned to snow, even at low levels, later this afternoon. Back on Stratosmoor about 5-10mm cover of snow, with the snow level about 225m. Merry old mix of soft hail and snow this evening, just sporadic showers really. Third distinct snow cover of the season: can't recall a even larger teapot where that's happened.

"slack" and "low" don't normally sit together, and certainly not in winter. I think I know what you mean re sources of cold, but there's a more basic principle than that: nothing beats an air mass coming from a cold source, with minimal modification. The record book for the UK begs to differ re continental origin however. The record breaking cold of December 1981 came from a maritime feed.

Yes, yes, yes: had lots of those last night. WInd gusting comfortably 8-9, with some of the heaviest no I've had for a while. The upside is that I can still get off the moor through the nodrifts, and Yeti needn't worry too much about his third-party only insurance.

I suspect he's overplaying it slightly. I don't think 3C is easy from here, I still call it around evens. I attache the various running means this month based on a random choice of daily (most days) GFS run. Two things to note: the models persist at present in holding us slightly poleward of mean PFJ latitude: we're more in the cold sector than the warm, and that cold sector is cooler than in recent years. Second, the outcome from that is tending now to be in the high 2's. On the flip side, as mentioned a day or two back, anyone looking at the GFS surface temps will probably be lulled on the downside. Repeatedly at present the outturn is around 1C higher. That means we could easily add around 0.3C - 0.4C to these projections. Still more than enough time for a more significant change in pattern (in either direction), thought if that happened it would most likley be right at the month's end from here. Attached chart shows daily outcomes, and associated rolling mean projection, for CET based on a random selection from each day's GFS runs.