mcboz

Not sure if Reading is South East or not, definitely not Southwest, but it's snowing here at the moment even though the temp is 3.7, not settling though....

Fingers crossed for next week! I'm off to Val d'Isère for new year and then Port du Soleil in Feb. Keep up the good work.

4cm in Reading, quite wet though....

Getting better in Europe!! This is a live link so this will change!

Some fantastic conditions last week in the French Alps. Never seen so much snow... some photos on Flickr below http://www.flickr.com/photos/54921464@N00/sets/72157628558550327/

Just in les arcs conditions excellent, 20 more cm today, base of 300cm at the top, if you're coming out for Christmas it'll be amazing!

Looks great, however, on the mobile version I have the same issue as described above, it goes to the first page then I have go through all the pages to get to the end of the thread (which when there is 20 or so is a little annoying!). Phone is HTC Desire S, am I doing anything wrong? Thanks!

Thanks for the blogs this season - very much appreciated. It’s been a pretty good season overall, let’s hope for more of the same next year!

Snowing lightly in Reading at the moment. That wasn't forecast, BBC weather says sun, couldn't be more wrong!! Getting heavy now!!

WFH tomorrow I think....

just been out and measured, 4cm so far only another 36 to go! That would be ridiculous. Shame my skis are stuck at Geneva airport!!

snow so far in Reading....

much more then that in Reading already!

haha, Sky Breaking News - Heavy Snowfall expected in Reading - that's jinixed it!

where are you in Reading, it was snowing in Lower Earley a few mintues ago...

Stopped now and temp has gone up from 0.7 to 0.8, boooo. Still early days though.

Snowing in Reading now, was 0.4 and 0.7, but still snowing, garden table is white....

GFS has the attached percipitation chart for around now, but it's currently just started to snow in Reading. Tempreature is - 1.1. Looking at the latest GFS run looks as though could be a fair amount of snow this evening / night. The trend for the next few days and into next week is looking amazing, be interesting to see how it evolves!

very very light snow in Reading at the moment, current temp is - 1.1 Tiny flakes but is snow

Hi All, Just back from Val d'Isere. Conditions were excellent and it snowed every day, sometimes with complete a complete white out. When the sun did poke though it was amazing, some runs had over a foot of un-pisted snow. Wasn't massively cold, and did rain a tiny amount on the Wednesday, but was soon replaced with even more snow! Anyone going to Val d’Isere or Tignes in the near future is going to have amazing skiing conditions. Interestingly, the snow rain limit was miss-forecast by the french met office and any GFS based forecasts, for example on the Wednesday it was due to rain all day (and night) with a rain snow limit of 2300 metres + (Val D is at 1850), but eneded up dumping snow after a little rain early in the morning. I've never been away and seen snow falling every single day. Some pictures attached....

The CFS monthly 2m temp chart has changed it's tune in the last few days (most areas had 0.5 - 1.0 above average a few days ago, now most of Europe is blue!). Amazing really, show's how everything can change so quickly. Hopefully it doesn't change back! http://www.cpc.noaa.gov/products/analysis_monitoring/lanina/images/euT2mMon.gif

Thanks for the update, much appreciated. Looking milder next week and then after that who knows, fingers crossed. Val d'Isere seems to have a fair amount of snow, still early in the season though. There is a good time lapse webcam here for the last 5 days: http://www.valdinet.com/images-and-videos/val-d-isere-timelapse-webcam-videos.htm Funny as they keep clearing they keep clearing the snow, but as soon as it's cleared more is comes down.

I never post in the model discussion thread, but do read it every single day. I’ve been a weather enthusiast for a few years now. Although I have a basic understanding of how the models work I wouldn’t call myself a subject matter expert. Therefore I read the discussion thread to ‘top up’ my understanding of what is happening in relation to the latest output. I value posts from forum members who have much more in-depth knowledge than me and I learn something new every day! As stated above I look for expert opinion in the thread, however, the banter, views, emotion and different characters make it a good discussion on many different levels. In fact, as I’d go as far to relate it to a discussion down the pub between mates all with differing views and knowledge levels! When a model is coming out the thread functions much in the same way as the BBC live text updates (which are mainly used for sporting events) which is great for us who don’t have the in depth knowledge as others. I believe one of the reasons the thread is so popular is that it is fast paced, there is always a new post to read! I think the problem with a model summary thread is that I want to know what is happening now, not in a few hours time. It’s a tricky one but my suggestions would be: Have a model thread for each run, with comments made as it comes out and another thread for more in depth analysis which focuses on trends rather than one particular run Do nothing – it works for me at the moment Link more in depth technical analysis to the thread, with only forecasters of a certain knowledge level able to link these posts in Split the thread in to technical and non technical – I don’t think this works as it means there are two places to look for similar updates / discussions Have a chat room!? Have someone do a live model update like the BBC sports website to which users can post comments Overall I think in its current format its good fun with some light hearted humour, but with some real technical knowledge thrown in. Something not related to this subject – I quite often check the forum on my phone, the design and size of the forum means this isn’t easy (lots of scrolling, loading etc), any chance there could be a cut down version for mobile devices? Only has to be text. In concussion I think I’d leave it as it is, for now anyway. Anyway, those are my thoughts. James

In response to Jackone's question there's a comment on Cryosphere Today: "We are recovering from a server disk failure and hope to be updating images and timeseries graphs in the near future. Thanks for your patience." (http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/) Does seem to be taking a very long time to recover, bit like the ice really!

Thanks, Sky +'d so no chance of missing it!