osmposm
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Posts posted by osmposm
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Thanks for that - the last 15 mins are amazing, and it's hard to believe how differently things were handled just a few decades ago. Men (dare I say it) were allowed to be men, then - physical strength, bravery, initiative, quick-acting no-nonsense practicality. A bit mad, perhaps...but I agree with marksp when he says he can't help thinking we've lost something along the way.
I hope those qualities still lie within us (of either sex), however deeply buried by modern sensibilities. If not, when the internet completely crashes one day, along with all the things dependent on it (which by then will be literally everything), and people have to live once more by their own wits, knowledge, courage and physical capabilities, we really will be completely stuffed...
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A webcam view of Cairngorm from Loch Morlich on Sunday afternoon.
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Well, I'm nearly 67 years old, and I have NEVER seen and heard anything remotely like that in the UK (and possibly anywhere) before. Quite extraordinary - for the first SW London hit we had (as well as some pretty torrential rain) 35+ mins of intense activity from 11 pm or so, with continuous thunder and almost continuous lightning during the middle 15-20 mins. And then a shorter-lived action replay about an hour later - a mere 40 strikes a minute during the middle of that one.
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Freezing rain falling here in Wandsworth (inner SW London), though showing as snow on radar - temp still @-1C.
In answer to someone above mentioning snow falling but not showing on the radar, it can take surprisingly long for very small snowflakes to fall from radar height to ground level - for the same reason the radar often shows snowfall overhead, but nothing's happening on the ground.
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...there must be something in the air at some point in feb
The Queen said, "The rule is, jam to-morrow and jam yesterday – but never jam to-day."
Once again the cold eastern air's promised arrival has been pushed back to an eternal "tomorrow"
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22 hours ago, Surrey said:
So Heathrow outside of the warning areas takes seconds place last night with a gust of 63mph. I'm finding that hard to believe unless it was associated with some kind of shower. Have seen a fair few branches down on my way to work, did a 2 mile drive from the village I am in to the nearest town and stopped and moved 2 branches out the way. Nothing major damage wise from this one I don't think, just the usual branches and fences fallen down
I can confirm the Heathrow gust subjectively. I'm 10 or 11 miles almost due east of Heathrow, and just before 4 am yesterday the wind suddenly strengthened dramatically for a few minutes, with a huge amount of noise from the trees and the smell of mashed leaves - loads of them on the ground when I was up later, plus twigs and a few small branches. The noise and smell reminded me of the great Oct 1987 storm (though nothing like as strong and shorter-lived), when I was also up and about in the small hours. As in 1987 there was no accompanying rain at all, so presumably not a squall line or anything - quite surreal, actually. But to put it in perspective, in '87 London recorded gusts well over 90 mph.
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Unbelievably the absurd Nathan Rao is now getting the Mirror to pay him for his b*ll*cks: http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/theres-every-chance-white-christmas-9468502
Note the first sentence, apparently written by a computer: "Britain is set for snow in the run-up to Christmas as a bitter blast sweeps in from the North Police." EH???? The 'bitter blast' will consist of night time mins of, um, 0 to -2C. Wow, that'll threaten some December records...or would do in Lisbon.
Aha...rant on **
[**in case you didn't spot it, an anagram of you-know-who!]
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Nice Thames streamer at the moment, pumping a long string of heavy showers in from the estuary - if only this were mid-Jan instead of mid-Oct!
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A perfect Thames streamer here overnight - unfortunately a month or two late, and 5oC off the money. Grrrrr.
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L'Indépendant de Perpignan souligne la température exceptionnellement douce...
My translation – if it is in error, perhaps the French speakers will correct me - I had to change it round a bit to get what I considered to be the right sense:
This independence at Perpignan underlines the exceptionally mild temperature...
V intereresting report, Mike, thanks, and most of the translation is good...but I strongly suspect that L'Independant de Perpignan is a newspaper!
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Yes, here in the foothills of the Jura (at about 500m, the other side of Geneva from the Alps) we had much more settling snow than had been expected by the authorities. Most - but not all - forecasts, including the official Meteo Swiss site, suggested that below 700m Saturday morning's snow would be transient, and turn quickly to heavy sleet/rain around 7 am, dying out by 10 - then the temp would dip below freezing again after 4 pm with a bit more light snow. In the event significant snowfall and temps near 0c continued till midday, by which time we had at least 20 cm (8") lying. Temps then rose well above freezing, with sleet/wet snow showers of varying intensity, and stayed above zero well into the night. Later on it finally cooled, and we had a further 5 cm in dribs and drabs during the early hours and into the morning. It just goes to show how even in places thoroughly used to snow, it is incredibly difficult to predict marginal snow events accurately.
P.S. As the last of the flurries fade, the skies are set to clear as some seriously cold air moves in from the NE this evening. Earlier predictions of night-time temps below -20c in the next few days have now been moderated, but -11c to -13c still seems very possible tonight into Monday, and Wed into Thursday.
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Extraordinary example of an inversion as my plane descended towards Geneva a little after 9 this morning (local time).
According to the video screen (which unfortunately up to that point had been showing Mr Bean, not the weather), at about **5200 ft the outside temp was +12C, despite a heavy frost visible everywhere between the Jura mountains and the lake. I thought at first it was an error, but as we dropped so did the temp - to 10C, then to 8C...and by the time we landed the reading was -2C (later confirmed on the ground).
Perhaps this is a commoner set-up than I realise, but I had no idea it could be so warm at that height during winter-time.
(**I presume this was above sea level - if so, Cointrin airport being about 1400 ft ASL, our actual height above the ground was probably more like 3500 ft.)
The tops of the Jura, incidentally, had as little snow on them as I can remember on any of the eight or ten occasions I have flown in to my sister's for Christmas.
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Actually, no, I didn't mean Ireland, that's why I didn't mention it. The UK extends much further north than Ireland and therefore is probably the most "snowless" location in the world for such a high latitude. Anyway, we're going off topic here.
Thanks for your concern, though.
In which case, my apologies, MB.
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I'd say the UK is possibly the most northerly country in the world that can go an entire winter without much/any wintry precipitation/temperatures, at least at low altitudes...
If I were Irish I'd get so irritated by being continually lumped in with the UK by lazy Brits. If you mean the British Isles, do try and say so. And most of Ireland is even milder and less snowy than most of the UK at the same latitude.
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Err, it's his company's address. He is selling forecasts to the public from his website, therefore he needs to provide a company contact address.
https://www.gov.uk/online-and-distance-selling-for-businesses/overview
This should be on his website, but it isn't, so I've provided it here ;-)
No, what that government website says is that he has to display the business name and contact details, which he does - an email address. The company's "address" - and even then it's not quite clear that it has to be postal - only has to be communicated to the buyer after an order is placed.
I suppose you thought it was required to have his photo on his website, too, and were kindly providing that as well to help him comply with the law?
Whatever the man's failings, like others I do not find giving details like this very amusing.
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Some strikes now showing up in the SW London.....
Yes, 5 or 6 strikes with thunder in total here in Putney - four of them very close - accompanying sheets of torrential horizontal rain for a few minutes. Wish I'd had my camera to hand...by the time I had it sorted it was all over.
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I was making the point that our coldest winters can be mild at times ,not that December had been mild.You cannot write off this winter just because of a mild December.
I'm not writing it off - look at February 1991. Just pointing out that in 46-47 the situation was markedly different from this winter, in that very cold continental air was already lurking not far away in December, and had made it into the country for a week before Christmas (with a repeat in the SE early in the New Year) - see here and here - before it returned with a vengeance much later. So far this year there's been little deep cold air to be found even on the continent, and that's a worry. It's not impossible (as '91 shows) that some will get here eventually, but its absence anywhere makes it rather harder to achieve.
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... seeing as 1947, 1986 etc etc are seen as big winters which only featured a concentrated couple of weeks of cold (not until nearly Feb in the case of '47).
1947's severe cold lasted a lot longer than a couple of weeks - essentially the last nine or ten days of January right through till a week into March (later in Scotland), a total for most of six to seven weeks. The CET mean was below 1C for 45 consecutive days, all but five of those below 0C (and usually well below). Even Kew in outer London had air frosts every night of February but two, despite not seeing any sun at all for 20 days of the month, and never saw the temp rise above 40F (4.4C). The Met Office says snow fell somewhere in the UK on 55 days in a row, though I can't quite make that add up - I guess they include Scottish mountains.
in 1947 it was basking in a mild 14 deg in mid January,they thought spring had come early!......plenty time yet!
There is a widespread misconception that there had been no cold weather at all in 1946-7 before the bitter cold arrived in the later part of January. In fact - unlike this year - there had been a cold period for much of the country, including widespread snow, for over a week from 15th-22nd December. My parents were married in central London on 20th December 1946, and snow was lying on the ground - the CET mean shows 8 consecutive days <1C, three of them <0C. There was then another, albeit brief cold snap in early January, with two days' CET mean <0C, before the mild period of the 11th-18th. Things then progressively cooled until the real event arrived around the 22/23rd.
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only 150 years ago cross fell used to hold snow for 10 months of the year!
Every year, most years, some years, or occasionally? I'm not denying it, but as an avid studier of historical weather I'd just like to know what you mean, and what your source is. Actually, if the Wikipedia article is to be trusted, it may not be so rare even now: "Snow can be found in gullies on the north side of Cross Fell as late as May in most years. In some years, lying snow has been known to persist until July and fresh snowfall in June (mid-summer in the Northern Hemisphere) is common."
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I'm not sure if the light blue on the image correlates to the dark blue on the key or the grey?
I think they should have a light blue addition for 0.01/10 to 0.5/10 or something along those lines. Good stuff.
No, the ranges in the key are continuous, from 0/10 to 10/10. The blue may be a slightly different shade, but it's still the blue - i.e. 'open water - 0/10 to 1/10', the lowest category with any ice present at all.
It obviously couldn't be the grey, which is 'fast ice', and is seen in the fjords - you can't have a ring of 'fast ice' on the seaward side side of a variable density ice-pack, mate...'fast ice' is by definition fixed 'fast' to a landmass (or sometimes the bottom in shallow water)!
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I want to see the prolonged cold of 1962/3 combined with the massive snowfalls of 1946/47.
I suspect if you lived through a 62/63 (as I did) you might change your mind! Both of those winters just went on and on and on...and however enjoyable it is for a while, eventually even hardened snow fans long to see the grass again..
Actually, I think we usually have it ideal in this country (apart from those many mild and snowless winters in the 90s and 00s): periods of cold and snow, but usually relatively short-lived. A week or ten days of real cold is enough at a time for me...though I don't mind an action replay later on, as long as there's been something warmer in between!
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Torrential rain for 10 mins here in Putney, preceded by nearby thunder and lightning. T&L has now stopped, and rain has eased off a bit....no, I tell a lie, it's just coming on strong again now as I write, and a bit of more distant thunder...um, no, now the rain has eased off again....but another long, rolling clap of thunder to the east. Great entertainment for night owls...and I won't need to water the garden tomorrow.
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Three rumbles audible from here, further east over London or beyond - one, with a distinct flash well before, was 20 or 30 mins ago...yet nothing visible on the lightning detector.
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What a great month, am glad to have lived through it. When people remember Winter 2012/2013, they will remember March.
Not so great when you're touring a play the length and breadth of Gt Britain for twelve weeks from late January, and imagined that at least the second half of the tour would see some spring weather! The experience is in grave danger of turning me from passionate 'coldie' into a man desperate for warmth - I seem to have been feeling cold continuously for as long as I can remember. Not over yet, either - the tour or the cold - I'm off to Glasgow tomorrow.
Great Festive Blizzard of 1927
in Historic Weather
Posted
My late father was born in 1920 in London, and lived most of his life there. He was always convinced that White Christmases were the norm when he was young - quite untrue, of course, they were rare in the south even in the earlier 20th Century. I'm quite sure the reason was the 1927 blizzard, which must have made a huge and indelible impression on a 7 year-old's mind and memory.