Upgrade

because it isnt cold enough

anyone know when the "event" is likely to finish?

Disgusting weather today. Streetlights have been on in East London most of the day sleety and horrrible. when is it due to clear - i have to cycle home in this desperate muck around 6

Yes, December 2010 is undoubtedly up there with "the greats", those cold months of your grandparents' stories. We beat December 1981 for cold and snowyness. Fantastic. Loved every minute ( nice to have a few days now where i don't need to wear 3 pairs of socks and 2 pairs of gloves though ). 2 big dumps and 12 (at least ) days of lying snow in London - pretty special, with the powder snow, "pisted" pavements and roads, and the buildings plastered with icicles and snow for days on end. Seeing truly breathtaking sights of a foot of snow in the southern suburbs, looking like lapland, and great and unusual sights throughout town really. Cycling across the snowy parks to work every day was magical. Drifts on the North Downs still there on 1 Jan. Wonderful stuff.

Yes - checked my book and there's been 23 days so you've had a week or more snow cover as a result of being just a couple of miles and 50+ metres in altitude within a small part of a city. It just demonstrates how marginal and localised snow situations can be in this country and partic when you start getting into London and also explains a lot of the fretting that goes on when snow is forecast! I bet the number of days with snow cover for St James Park in the centre of London are probably less than half mine or yours.

I've had 23 days with snow cover in 2010 which is astonishing for fairly inner suburban (6 miles from centre) London. More than the previous 13 years combined!

-1 January for me!

have seen kids sent to school by their mums in the flimsiest fashion shoes (usually the girls), no coats and short skirts. I know the young don#t feel the cold as much ( i never did - its not that long ago!) and need to look "cool" but i always had a thick coat, wellies etc in the depths of winter. its like this X Factor "crush horror" story. Most of the 35 people that got injuried in Brum were stupid tweenie girls who went out in "inappropriate dress for sub zero conditions" according to the local ambulance crews who had to pick up the pieces. Many of the girls had not eaten or drunk anything all day and were surprised when they became borderline hypothermic, in their short skirts and coatless, sleeveless outfits, stood in -7 degree temps for 3 hourse - leaving the emergency services to pick up the pieces and presumably the girls and their families to blame the organisers.

it could beat 1991 in the north east, i'd imagine. this is quite locallised though, so far (in terms of extreme depths). in west yorkshire, which got 30 inches in 91, there's only been a couple of inches so far. coldest end of Nov i can remember in London & i've been here 15 years. it's more like a February spell. strange when some leaves are still on the trees here!

in my day in the winter we walked all along the wall tops to get to school, there were 10 foot drifts...... we sat on top of lampposts warming our bums the snow was so deep... was a favourite of my granny.....

we are what, 4 days away. another day of runs and we should start to get a clearer picture of where this is headed. if i had to stick my nose out , i would say it will track south of where it is progged and we will draw in more easterlys with more convective merging snow showers. or maybe that's hopecasting!

temp is already only 3 degrees here and the mist is starting to form, quite cold for the time of year. last couple of nights have also been cold, 3rd night of ground frosts coming up , and 2 back in October, so 5 so far this year. Not shaping up bad so far, and with this easterly coming up, perhaps we are going to get a cold and snowy winter to remember!

coldest so far this autumn , living room down to around 18 degrees now. some of you live in very cold houses! having said that if we have another few days of no sun, rain and wind i think the heating may go on for the first time fairly soon.

very sad if Rob McElwee is going as he is a great forecaster, really knows his stuff, always seems genuinely interested and makes others interested in the weather. And in winter, he gives the most accurate forecast of any of them, being a real snow fan. PS I think there's already a Facebook save the forecasters group up and running.

Either people must live in some really badly insulated houses, or i live in an incredibly warm one. Temp hasn't dropped below 21.5 degrees yet inside here. Ok, i am in a city apartment with others above me, but we do open windows for fresh air. I guess modern structures (although we don't have cavity wall insulation, the building is from the 1970's) and smaller properties cool down more slowly. The idea of needing central heating in September..... ours won't go on for another couple of months.

I was in Ibiza, and otherwise pre-occupied... so didn't know a thing about it til i got on the plane to come home and someone passed me a newspaper with the headline " 10,000 MAY HAVE DIED IN US FLOOD NEW ORLEANS INUNDATED". I nearly jumped out of my skin!

Some great footage - the awesome power of nature.

Raining a lot here now. It has been very humid for several days, it was like being in Singapore this afternoon at Wakehurst Place amongst the trees - clammy , warm and wet!

I also think he's a good weather presenter, he explains in detail what's going on, always seems genuinely enthusiastic and "on it" when doing the forecast. Unfortunately the gaffes add up. And "this is the BBC" is a factor in meaning that he has to be careful. They demand gold standard professionalism. Maybe he should be made to pay a penalty by doing the weather dressed only in his Attitude...err. outfit. I'm sure there would be many people keen to see that.

There was also the controversy over his pics for a magazine : http://www.queerty.com/does-bbc-weatherman-tomasz-schafernakers-stunning-secret-have-anything-to-do-with-what-hes-hiding-20100113/

Was up in my native West Yorkshire this weekend and it certainly felt like a different country. On Friday the temperature didn't get above 13 degrees - 13 , in August! - and it poured with rain all day long. At least it is green up there, but god, summer, it certainly wasn't! Beutiful today though - had breakfast sat outside.

the first really poor day this summer here, cool and rainy, nearly all day.

I love late "heatwaves" in October, we've had a couple here in the last 10 years. 20-25 degrees in mid October feels wrong, but so nice at the same time. I remember picnic-ing in Kew Gardens in mid Oct a couple of years back, 2008 i think. Glorious warmth and all the great colours of autumn, such a finality to the warmth - you know you won't see it again for 6 months, makes it so precious. A real "St Luke's little summer" is what i'm looking for this autumn.

South East London has similar weather to the rest of the capital but with a few differences. We tend to be a little drier than the rest of the capital, strange though it might sound, there can be days of drizzle in west london , whilst we remain dry with some broken or low cloud. Temperatures are often a little higher. Good - we have warm summers, with 22 degrees often the base from June -Sep. Very strong winds are rare. We can take advantage of streamers in the winter, but they are nail bitingly elusive, but when they do happen, can be spectacular. Damaging frosts are also rare so a wide range of plants can overwinter here outside compared to many other parts of the country. Figs and olive trees and grape vines can thrive. We generally only need central heating from the beginning of November to the end of March. Bad - the dry climate plays havoc with gardening on clay soils in this area in the summer. More often than not the ground will dry out in late May and not re-hydrate until September, meaning regular watering is needed if a lush garden is required - sometimes the effort to get enough water into the soil is enormous - several hours of the hosepipe each day. The urban heat island effect can be a mixed blessing in winter and summer. Nights are warm in summer. London is a humidity magnet. In winter, we can be pushed the wrong side of marginal. Its amazing, reading these posts, what a large variation in local conditions prevails in a small country, isnt it?

First day with appreciable rain here for a couple of months, but still been a great summer. Spectacular rainbow in South London this evening - feels good to be alive!