mcweather

It is worth noting from the ecm and and UKMO that the real milder push suggested for next week is beyond 144 at present and is therefore in FI by no means set in stone. Even the meto in their further outlook only say that milder weather will probably push northwards. A little trough disruption and we could be looking at a very different scenario especially with so much bitterly cold air not far from our shores. To my mind the outlook is from done and dusted.

Overall a pretty disappointing episode. The only extreme thing being the temps and windchill. As for snowfall. This has been yet another event which proves just how much the exact track of the the channel low is of vital importance to proper snow chances. Even as I write this the radar show heavy snow pehaps 30 miles to the south of me in the Channel where it is happily melting on impact with the sea. A slightly more northern track and we'd have been talking about a very special event for mid march in southern England. As it is we got a dusting not a dumping and even the met office couldn't get the track right 12 hours before it all happened. ( not a criticism) , which just goes to show how hard it is to get it right. Having had three channel lows in four days back in Feb 1978 that delivered copiously maybe i have used up my lifetime quota of the b*****s.

Guys this is a dynamic and fluid situation you cannot expect the meto online site to automatically update to every small nuance in the modelling. Really all you need towatch now are the met office BBC TV FORECASTS and they have Bmth Poole and Purbeck getting a pasting overnight and into tomorrow.

some flakes in a sleety mix about an hour ago here at Winfrith, temp about 3°C. Just seen the latest bbc forecast suggest that the Isle of Purbeck could get a real pasting overnight and tomorrow . The forecaster mentioned that extremely heavy snow would be dangerously close to the south coast, so even a very modest northwards adjustment could give a really severe event for say Dorset Hants and the IOW. Those looking for a little inspiration should take a look at Philip Edens case history of the blizzard of 1881 when the channel low responsible got to the Cherbourg peninsular and then circled north to the Isle of Wight westwards to Lyme bay and then carried on moving east again. There is nothing to say that our channel low is just going to whizz along in a straight line. A fascinating evening and night let alone tomorrow for coastal Dorset and Hampshire I think.

GFS forecasts earthquake for 16th March shock.

indeed so BA and it wouldn't take that much of an adjustment southwards on that to keep us all on the cold air either.

yes and we all know how much we can trust the gfs with the onset of an easterly don't we

yes even quicker than the ecm

Although I appreciate that there is a good deal of ensemble backing for the change a possibly very wintry spell mid march. The concern from a coldies point of view for me remains. The charts that would genuinely deliver for the UK remain as they did last week very much in FI territory. I accept that they are appearing in the latter parts of high res, but high res is no guarantee of anything as we have seen many time this winter. The golden rule of chart watching remains in place namely that anything beyond 144 is pure speculation on the part of both humans and computer models. My conclusion today is that the background signals are good. But any detail at the range the charts are showing the cold is purely speculative. Along with JH i would give the current extended range cold/snowy output no more than 60% chance of verifying at best and more like 50;50 if truth be told. If the output is still showing the same depth of cold and possible snowiness on wednesday eve then that might be the time to start getting slightly excited. Until then keep the sledge parked in the shed to avoid disappointment.

I know it seems harsh Graywolf and believe me I,m not cocky about it at all. If it was me or or any one I knew or cared about and we knew we only had three months due to whatever impending disaster then I would I,m sure be s******g bricks like the rest of the population, but that doesn't actually change anything. I certainly don't take the existentalist view either. I feel and have a soul etc but in the end that still doesn't make the slightest bit of difference if its going to happen it will and will probably be self ( ie human) induced. My conundrum is that i certainly don't want to seem millions of people die as you say each and every one is just like you and I, but for me the ongoing overpopulation compared to the resources available is a far more pressing problem than the probably overplayed outcomes of abrupt climate change climate change if it does indeed occur. Nature will as you say regain its balance if pushed too far and unfortunately if that means getting rid of us then nature will do so no matter whether we have souls or not and it won't discriminate between those who worried about CO2 or not either. Believe me Graywolf I am not cocky about any of this it worries me greatly that by dint of its inability to control its level of breeding Human life ends up simply being a destructive virus upon the planet that nature deems too damaging to have around. I worry for future generations a lot but just don't believe that climate change human induced or otherwise is as big a problem as those with a vested interest in it being a big problem tell us.

Bitter experience has taught me not to give charts at 240 ( ECM or not) any validity. If the same pattern appeared at t48 and corrected about 200 miles south, I might be forced to raise an eyebrow.

Have to agree with you Quicksilver, the overall trend on the more reliable models including the ecm is away from the amount of retrogression required to get the potent north or northeasterly being shown a couple of days ago. It will be interesting to see what the ECM does tonight but I'm not really expecting it to flip towards really cold synoptics again. I would put the chances of that at no more than 20%.

Bearing in mind how often wonderful synoptics for sunshine and warmth in summer and bitter cold and heavy snow in winter appear beyond 144 only to get watered down to nothing out of the ordinary or even disappear altogether. I thought a new explanation of the term FI might be in order. Instead of FI = Fantasy Island how about FI = Forget it I am also thinking of marketing a device known as the CMW or chart memory wiper which will enable posters whom insist on viewing charts at 240 as having any validity to be able to have those charts wiped from their minds daily. That way they don't have to endure the huge downers when the charts fall away as we get closer to real time after days of build up. They would only remember one days charts and suffer so much less.

Yes I love those GFS tangents don't you. Minus 10 uppers across UK for that range yesterday now at the same range an airstream born somewhere near Nigeria. You couldn't make it up.

Not at all Blue Army I read all posts with interest especially your own. I actually wasn't referring to the current situation but the increasingly watered down potential northerly hence my piece about not taking charts beyond 144 showing wondrous things seriously until they come within a decent timeframe. As for the current spell minus 10 uppers for 84 hours is great and may well be out of the ordinary in itself but it has produced nothing out of the ordinary weatherwise down here on the ground where we all live. I have not recorded an ice day or anything more than a moderate frost (minus 2 at most) I would imagine that goes for the majority of cloud bound England as well. The vast majority have seen no significant snowfall or extreme temps for that matter. Technically interesting though it is as an atmospheric exercise. As a cold spell it is not making any waves whatsoever. I would expect the great majority of people on here wouldn't mind the raw cold with some bright clear skies or the raw cloudy weather with some real snow thrown in for good measure but raw cloudy nothingness seems a complete waste of a cold spell for me and I like winter weather.

Yet again the models(UKMO excluded ) things have promised big only to water things down to next to nothing. As ever the mantra trust nothing past 144 ( even the ECM) holds true. Whether the models go out beyond 144 in high res is immaterial, the fact is beyond 120/144 even moderate detail. positioning and track of systems etc is affected by far too many variables to be anywhere near as precise as needed to make claims of blizzards deep cold or anything else for that matter. Do what I do. admire the pretty pictures for what they are and then forget them until they appear with T120 and at that point give them a 50% chance happening and then wait until T48 before even beginning to get excited. That way much heart ache, nerve shredding, gnashing of teeth and toy throwing can be avoided. Believe me 40 years of serious weather watching have taught me this. I almost wish for the days when the only outlook was the Farming Today programme look at the week ahead. Much less stressfull and far fewer disappointments and more in the way of the odd nice unforecast surprise.

Adapt or die has always been the case for all life on the planet. Humans are no different. We might like to think we are the most advanced form of life on the planet but in reality we've only existed for a gnats fart in terms of the life of the planet. There are far more species that have been a around a whole lot longer than us and at this stage that makes them a whole lot more successful than us. perhaps its the six billion thats the problem rather than the climate doing what it always has done. ie change

Hi Graywolf. Past Abrupt warmings and what do they tell us. History tells us the planet survived them all and went on to create the conditions in which human life could adapt and thrive in various parts of the world.

Thanks as ever for your input Ian it seems even decider can't decide at the moment bearing in mind yesterday the favoured 10-15 day regime was sw.

Yes I seem to remember about ten to fifteen days ago the favoured regime for now was South westerly. I would always give the Meto the benefit of the doubt up to 144 and in that range they have been great this winter but get beyond that and at the moment they are just one of a number of players. Because they are The National Forecaster working against the background of a mainly hostile and uneducated media they have to be extremely conservative. The rest of us have the luxury of postulating on the longer range outcomes, a luxury that they don't really have.

Indeed we do Gimme snow and its about a million times less than the GFS has.

my sincere apologies for getting your gender wrong Zastruga. I just assumed that because you're wrong you had to be a man.

Because he doesn't know what he's talking about perhaps

A great many colder members than the op in the latter stages there Gavin

Although one could look at the current situation as a very boring one with the high pressure not seeming to do a great deal after the initial easterly push later this week. I have a sneeking suspicion that it could turn out to be very interesting in the final analysis. We still have no real idea which way the high will move when it decides to migrate further from our shores There remains the possibilty that it could pull away to the north and introduce another easterly or Greenland or mid atlantic and let in a very cold arctic plunge ( this scenario is not without some support (albeit pretty small) at the moment from the gefs ensembles. How many times over the years have we seen a spring time high pull away and introduce a cold /snowy scenario. You never know March might turn out to be the winteriest month this time round