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I wouldnt know about the pm thing, new to nw cos i got annoyed at beeb prats in their forums, still post occasionally over there though.

I think im a colde and warm ramper, love extremes of each, hate general mildness though, it should either be warm or cold, not anywhere in between. I.E. today would be classed as a crap day, no cold or no warm

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What are your opposing views then???

[RJS Weather Theory (intro)]

Just wandering through and this point about snow cover -- I think the general flow pattern might develop regardless of the snow cover, but the surface layers would remain colder then deposit more snow if snow remained on the ground from a previous event. Then I think this could eventually prolong and deepen any given cold pattern within limits that would be defined by some definite future condition, if you "catch my drift." Something like a second-order variation that might reduce a temperature curve by 3-7 C degrees for a week to ten days, and 500-mb heights by a much smaller relative amount of 2-3 dm.

I suppose you could point to last February and early March as a case where snow cover failed to materialize on a large scale and a potentially quite cold pattern lost some of its bite because as I recall the 510 dm thickness contour made a close pass with the southeast and temps fell to -9 C over some local snow cover but it probably never fell below -2 C wherever snow had failed to accumulate.

In a climate like southern Ontario you can get long periods where the ground freezes without any real snow cover and the upper level flow is just so well established that this feedback fails to dislodge a cold pattern. I'm not sure if this is possible in the more delicate radiation balance over the British Isles. Perhaps you can think of a case where the ground froze and temperatures managed to reach low values for a period without snow cover. I don't know of any but that's not surprising, I just know of the more celebrated cases of snow and cold.

The problem here, or shall I say the fact here is that a prolonged spell nearly always follows a wet spell, whereas in Canada you can potentially have a warmer dry spell and then a cold spell with less moisture. In such that it takes less energy to freeze all the soil moisture tht is present. I cant help but feel here that the larger amounts of moisture in our generally porous soils results in a much greater volume of water to freeze and an increased release of latent heat to combat the maybe -4 celcius temperatures that we reach in extreme cases is southern england. So whereas the top surface A0 horizon may freeze, the b's and the c's will remain liquid for a long time before freezing. Then you have to consider that the long time before freezing is less likely, because a new depression or front will track across the country before the lack of radiation heat from the ground, begins to cool the air.

The biggest spell of frozen ground I can remember is the winer of 1998. had some snow and frozen ground foe about a week