Polar Low

Things just got alot more interesting here, much heavier falls now adding to the dusting we have already seen in the last half hour.

The simple answer like many have stated is that noone can make an accurate prediction this far out. Even at the beginning of December, forecasters will only be making educated guesses. Quite frankly though, it's October the 2nd. I can't believe Xmas is already on people's minds!

Just had a beefy hail shower pass through here.. hoping for this cold snap to be short lived so we can get right into Spring. :o

A mixture of any lying snow likely to thaw quickly at lower levels, and the fact that at this time of year even a good majority of snow lovers are hoping for milder, more seasonal weather.

It's Spring.

*sigh* I'm in the high risk area but doesn't anyone agree that some consistent milder weather would be better? I like the weather to remain seasonal, and while I enjoyed the snow we got during Easter - I think it would have been a nice way to end the winter.

Final report: Just under 3" fell Sunday morning but this suffered a speedy thaw and was gone by mid-afternoon (apart from my snowman who is still holding strong ) Then we had 6 snow showers today, the last one around 6.30PM which left a sugar dusting. That looks about it for this winter.. but it was a nice way to open the doors to Spring.

Quite a variant..

Approaching 3 inches of lying snow now.. some of the roads are really covered too. I think the front is likely to clear me within the next hour - but hopefully we can reach the 3" milestone before that happens.

Just got back from walking the dog and had to come back early as it really was coming down thick and fast. A good 3cm's or so has fallen.. and at the peak for me I'm expecting to end up with 6-7cm's.

Light snow now given way to moderate falls.. with much heavier set to hit here in the next hour or so. Everything covered, expecting at least 5cm's out of this..

Light snow just begun falling here at 4.25AM - expecting a wonderful 3-4 hours of snowfall now. Pics to follow of course.

Mix of heavy snow/hail showers and sunny spells throughout the day. Very little in the way of settling.

Local forecasts suggest anywhere between 5-7PM for my elevation to start seeing showers turn readily to snow. Furthermore, the precipitype radar on NW shows showers falling as sleet around 40 miles North of me. Don't know how reliable that feature is, but I would seem to agree with it due to the reports of snow around 100 miles North.

Expecting my first showers to arrive in the next half hour or so.. probably will fall as rain until 5pm onwards but hoping for something a little sleety beforehand to get me in the mood.. :lol:

Shower activity really starting to pep up now in Northern England around 50-60 miles North of the wash. As the day wears on these will turn increasingly wintry, falling readily as snow on the hills.

Eastern areas say 40 miles North of London will certainly see snow over the weekend and perhaps into the early part of next week. In the far south, this event was always likely to be much more marginal than further north. I would personally be surprised if within the next 72 hours, most eastern and some central areas of Scotland/England hadn't seen at the very least slight accumilations.

Lack of PPN on the Eastern side was always going to be the case this morning I feel, with shower activity pepping up throughout the day with showers making their way a little further inland. I think showers in England today will be a real wintry mix, with a tendancy to turn more readily to snow at lowers levels into the evening and overnight.

Beautiful start to the day, bright blue skys, sun is shining, and it's bitterly cold. B) I'm expecting to see showers from mid-morning onwards.. gradually turning wintry in nature throughout the day.

This weekend was never geared up to be a big event in the West. Wintry showers however, will be present in both Eastern and Western areas over the weekend. If one thing is for sure about this cold snap, it's that the biggest accumilations will be more widespread in the East.

Your missing the point. The amount of snowfall is only one factor the MO have to consider when issuing warnings. "Severe" weather can be prolonged, but a 10 minute shower which provides a covering coupled with gusty winds must be classed as severe too. Warnings are issued for the safety of the public, and for the older generation especially, 2-5cm's widespread is more than enough to cause problems and be classed as "severe". The depth of snow is generally determined with how prolonged the snowfall is, unless the snowfall is extremely heavy. However, if someone is driving down a motorway at 70MPH+ in the middle of a 20 minute heavy snow shower which accumilates around 2CM's - during that 20 minutes the weather would be considered severe.

Check again this time tommorow - I gaurentee it will have changed (even if it's only slightly). There 5 day forecasts are awful, mine has changed everyday for the last 3 days.

Just awoke at the end of the thaw here at Newark. Obviously nothing much fell, but you can clearly see something did overnight.

Sleet, hail, and snow showers throughout the day, becoming more frequent & wintry as the afternoon has gone on.

I'm actually tempted to buy it.. pretty cool. Maybe I'm sad. B)