mackerel sky

Off topic but my flat mate at University many moons ago married the weather girl on BBC London. They just had a kid.

Wow, just had a rain shower.

Almost an ice day here, temperature only got above freezing at 6pm. Very foggy throughout. Even icicles formed on the spoiler of my car!

Light snow here. Had heavy wet snow about tea time then got up to 4C, now 0.6C. Knew it was going to be a close call. 40 miles north and it's a winter wonderland.

Heavy wet snow in Rushden now!

Heavy wet snow falling here now!

Heavy sleet here on the Northants/Beds border.

It has just turned to sleet in Rushden after an hour or so of rain. Temp 2.7C falling, dewpoint 1.1C! This looks good to me!

Hold on!

Yes if you look at say xcweather.co.uk then it looks more on track, can't see it going further north.

Dewpoint has dropped here to 0.9C! Radar says something should be falling from the sky but nowt.

Strictly i'm in the Midlands but hey, right on the border. It is a knife edge here. One thing that does bode well is that although the weather radar says we are under precipitation we aren't. Dewpoint is now down to 1.1C. With these sort of events that is the usual precursor, that drives you mad - something should be falling from the sky - but it isn't. And the temperature is also starting to drop away a tad now, didn't even make 3C max here!

A good sign here I would say, that we are meant to be under light precipitation and nothing is falling. Dewpoint of 1.2C. Usually this sort of thing bodes well.

Don't remind me of just before Christmas 2010! The front stalled about 10 miles to the south and Bedford got 10 inches of snow, we struggled to get 2 cm! That was a last minute 'southern adjustment' of the models. It really is fine margins - I think alot of people will get some snow later on in the night, but albeit lighter stuff. For the action you really need to be in the perfect spot. And that could be anywhere in the East Midlands. We might just get heavy rain then some slush later on. Dewpoints look okay from observation mind, mine has dropped to 1.1C - I only changed the batteries in the wireless sensor from my weather station today - didn't even bother with it last year. Bloody old ones had leaked - I thought batteries stopped leaking years ago. All my toys from the 80s were usually knackered. Operation, the board game when you got it out after 3 months of not playing usually had battery acid leaking everywhere. Anyway I digress.

This reminds me a little of three similar setups in February 2009. The first two were all snow events, the third and final one was a rain to snow event - despite some heavy rain during the day it didn't really thaw much of the lying snow (there was quite a lot of it from the first two events) - then it readily turned to snow after dark and continued most of the night, dropping about 6 inches. But it wasn't the nice snow that had fallen previously. Very wet stuff. That then froze. Temperature here is 2.7C with a dew point of 1.2. Overcast, feels damp. We have done well out of similar setups here before, where the triple point passes through will dictate - 50 miles north of that will be the sweet spot as the uppers won't get higher than say -2C/-3C which is enough to support an all snow event. Not if you live a big town or city mind, but I think somewhere like Rutland, lets say Uppingham at about 170m elevation will get the biggest dump. Cheers!

Forecast has been well off the mark for here today. Gusty winds, swirling drizzle late this afternoon, and now chucking it down. It was meant to be dry.

Clearance coming through now. All done!

Gone a bit mental here. Flashes every 10-15 seconds and the constant growl of thunder, one of top of another.

If the BBC graphics are to be believed on the latest News 24 forecast, looks like a line east from the Wash down to Portsmouth looks like getting little in the way of storms. ESTOFEX says the opposite.

We had a decent storm here lasting a good hour when it was directly overhead - mix of cloud-to-cloud and cloud-to-ground strikes - wasn't expecting anything until the small hours. Anything is possible. The early MCS import from France has died a death, which is a good thing for those disappointed further east. Lots of homegrown activity cropping up now.

Good storm here at the minute, lightening every 30 seconds or so.

Thunder and lightening very close by now here.

Plenty of lightening and audible thunder moving up here from Milton Keynes direction.

Couple of houses hit by lightening in Rushden apparently this afternoon with some damage. My wife said it was pretty continuous at home from 2pm-4.30pm with some decent sized hail thrown in. At work in Bedford it we only really had significant thunder and lightening between 3.15-4pm. Still freaked out the Norwegians in the meeting. Told them there was a lightening rod on the roof. Assume there is, given the amount of IT infrastructure (over 2000 cpu cores) in a 4 floor building.

Just starting to spit here, but nowt on the lightening detector. Put my son's stuff that has been out in the garden in the garage to stop it getting wet. Rock and roll.