Just Before Dawn

Drizzle in Grantham.

If the GFS 12z run comes to pass, it's certainly not happening on Saturday.

I'm not sure anyone cares anymore, but the 12z is coming out. Hello? Echo!! To anyone that cares - GFS 12z out to around T+90-odd hours - Saturday's event looks the wrong side of marginal to me south of about the Tees Valley unless you're way, way up in the clouds and more than 20 klicks from the sea

That event gave us around 30cm of Level snow along the top of the Wolds - the drifts piled up to window height along the easterly facing side of our house at the time (which was in a pretty exposed position). Ahhh - the contrast

That's the north sea and her accursed way above average SSTs - same problems here - unless we get very cold air the modifying effect of the North Sea and the relatively increased sea-track for E & NE will do for our chances. Unlikely to get better IMHO and will probably do for Saturday's 'event' just as it's done for this one (here at least)

Spot on PP - another snow event, another that passes us in the north East (alright pushing it a bit for my location, but in weather terms we've more in common with the NE than East Anglia) without incident. Saturday may be a bit more promising, but frankly with higher than average SSTs I'm not particularly hopeful. Since the turn of the millenium, only the late december 2005 event gave lying snow for longer than 24 hours.

Somewhat bizzarely, we've just had a brief hail shower!! Sky darkening rapidly from the SW, so could be creeping in here.

Hurrah! Someone on the East Coast N of Norfolk has snow. Can we live vicariously through your success, please? Looking pretty grim for us, TBH.

Well the 18z and the 00z runs have been consistent in bringing the 'snow' event further north with all the associated implications for the south and for any cold event into the weekend. As this one creeps out, it'll be interesting to see if this trend continues or whether it moves back towards the METO fax outputs. I know which my money's on.

Not recently we haven't! Three days of lying snow in four years - thats in a county supposedly favoured at as close to altitude as we get and only 10 miles as the convection shower travels.

Paul Hudson has just done the weather forecast for our region and was uncharacteristically coy about the events on Thursday, which does suggest how uncertain they are about the northern extent of Frontal snow on Thursday. Normally he's a bit more effusive when snow's in the air!

I've got to drive from Northampton to the Lincolnshire Wolds on Thursday afternoon..... How long's it going to take me to get home? (Rhetorical question BTW - no-one's likely to know until much nearer the time!)

I think you're right upon recollection - the downgrade of that low-pressure system began around T-60 hours but I still remember receiving UKMO fax charts at work up to 48 hours out that still had a LP system of some (though reduced) concern - it then dwindled to nothing as we continued to receive updated warnings. It was a fun night at work too - much wailing and nashing of teeth.

True, but we've had significant changes in the models within 18 hours of the event this winter - the Early winter southerly storm that was progged until 24 hours out and never really happened being the best example I can think of off the top of my head. As I said earlier, we still don't know where this run lies within the ensembles - until then it's all rather academic.

Good point. We probably wouldn't have seen them - the weight of numbers would have crashed the server

I think West would be the first to admit that he's strongly influenced by the fact that the majprity of our weather is strongly influenced by our default temperate maritime climate and tempers what he sees in the models with this as his baseline. Contrary to popular belief he does call cold when he sees it, it's just that he also recognises that model outputs are just that, the outputs from theoretical models with a little 'real world input'. Seems emminently sensible to me. Back to the models - it's a little early to be throwing in the towels yet, we don't even know where this run sits within the ensembles yet. It's a little dispiriting to see it move towards (actually beyond) the ECM output, but most recent UKMO is still considerably better for cold-lovers, so why not wait to see what the ensembles say about this run before undertaking the computer equivalen of pet-kicking!

North Sea SST's still high for the time of year VP, so with slightly higher temps on this run I'd say the wrong side of marginal unless you're very lucky and a fair distance inland.

06z starting to crawl out - and so the circus begins.....

WiB doesn't say that though does he? What he actually talks about is lying snow, and I'm with him, I think the 00z is unlikely to resulting in lying snow south of the high ground in the Midlands. There may be some snow falling in the heavier precipitation but it's all very, very marginal and bitter experience does tend to suggest that, in scenarios like this rain/sleet usually wins the day. Not saying that will happen, it's called marginal for a reason, but I similarly don't think WiB is saying anything outlandish. All that said, experience also suggests that pinning down precipitation from events like these is best done 6-12 hours before the event because of the nature of the intangibles. All to play for, then.

Certainly for Eastern counties SSTs in the North Sea are still above average which makes low-level snow in these areas marginal at best - though obviously cooler temperatures this week will help a little bit. I remember February 2005 and am yet to be convinced that a re-run of that event won't be the end result from this. I accept that Inland areas could do well though.

I'm 15 miles south of you Nimbus, and a few of us up and down the east coast did suspect, even before this thing started, that the wind direction and SSTs would result in a pretty marginal few days for snow, and so it proved for us. Indeed, it looked very much like a re-run of Feb 2005 - we did a little better than that, but not much.

Woke up at 7am this morning to a beefy snow shower that left a light dusting. All melted now with clear skies.

Question for the Authorities - is there a measure for the distance some posters travel from a Ramp to an Abingdon in the same thread - for example - on the back of the 18z - "The even larger teapot is nonsense and the 20-30cm of snow we'll get on the back of this will prove it ." to, within 5 pages on the back of the 00z - "Well, Winter's over - We'll never see another snowflake in this country ". It seems to be a growing trend. May I humbly suggest the measurment unit between ecstatic highs and deep lows as 'a prozac'?

SATSIGS authorities may wish to investigate the claims made on the model discussion thread relating to GFS 12z run. Seems to me to be multiple posts worthy of further investigation up there......

There's no such thing as bad publicity, just publicity. The problem is that when the representatives of The Street of Shame and Local Radio start repeating predictions like this, your average punter picks up on it. We've had 'phone calls this morning about this 'so-called' cold snap and we're in a no-win situation. If we tell people it's all a load of cobbleros, they think we're not properly preparing. We're now telling people to watch the BBC weather forecast and look on the Met Office website (or here ) for a more considered forecast.