Magadan

It's just you poor coastal dwellers. I'm 30 miles inland and it's still well below. And I should add, it's still snowing lightly here and accumulating.

That's now an hour of falling snow here today. The quality is all very dry and fine, whereas the density remains light.

Snowing lightly here, but some big fluffy clumps are coming down. That makes 4 falling snow days here this week, possibly 5 if a tiny flurry is included.

River Bann is frozen over in Portadown as well, with lying snow on the ice today.

Don't be so sure. Joe B'astardi (amongst others) is predicting this to become more common.

I have to say they seem to rely too much on models and overlook longstanding patterns (IMHO). I'm guessing that's why Joe B'astardi was able to call the winter correctly and they said it would be mild.

It's now snowing v heavily. I haven't seen conditions like this since I was a child!

Snow starting here now as well, albeit just a few flakes. A wall of white looms in the sky to the northeast.

I measured it at approx 4 cm, but there was around <1 cm lying on the ground unthawed from last night. A real spot of luck for us both then! I can go to bed happy now!

Is that from a different shower than the one that dumped a load on me an hour ago?

Very heavy snow here for the past 30 minutes, lying deep on top of last night's lighter load. This is the heaviest fall here for a few years. I'm hoping other parts get their share too!

Snowing moderately (in terms of density) but very steadily here, and lying well on the sharp frost. Was too warm in bed, got up, looked out and was pleasantly surprised!

Maybe you'll just have to walk in a Windsor Wonderland instead.

Excellent stuff. I only get to view them from a hill above Richhill but they did look very white. The Mournes looked sensational too and it bodes well from some excellent winter walks over the weekend, all being well. On that note, happy new year to all on both sides of the border and let's have a nice snowy white January!!!

@ John Holmes & wysiwyg, many thanks for the informative replies! Yes, with aerodynamics it's non-linear equations that are trimmed down and require massive computing power (Computational Fluid Dynamics aka "CFD"). It's not the most accurate method and gets worse when dealing with turbulent flow, etc. So the weather, being a vastly scaled up version of this, complete with a huge range of thermodynamic factors as well, is clearly not going to be easily modeled with current technology and computing power, which is what got me thinking about a different, more statistical "matching" approach rather than taking fragmented / extrapolated data sets and feeding them into algorithms that essentially consist of non-linear equations that have been dumbed down into manageable linear ones! As things stand, it's low quality initial data fed into necessarily non-comprehensive equations, which is why (it now seems to me) a high level of accuracy beyond a few days is unattainable from the models alone. I may indeed email the Met Office but I think they might be reluctant to let me know too much detail about their modeling as I'm guessing its proprietary information!??

So am I right in this: they take a snapshot, as it were, of the current conditions and then try to mathematically model what it will do in the next few moments and repeat this until they get a prediction? I can see why weather forecasting this way is fraught with so much uncertainty. The equations must be nightmarishly complex (I'm speaking from the viewpoint of being an aeronautical engineer in the past and I know how troublesome it is to model fluid dynamics). This is going to sound naive / stupid, but has anyone ever tried to document and electronically store snapshots of atmospheric conditions going back decades so that the computers can use any current snapshot today to search for a "best fit" from the past and then see what happened next the last time things were setup as closely? It would probably be even less accurate than the current computational modeling, given the lack of in-depth data from the past and the impossibility of two identical weather thumbprints within what is a "chaotic" system.

Just had a look at the Mournes half an hour ago and they've been well pasted from 750 ft upwards (my estimate but I hike (and therefore navigate) a lot there so it's not pie in the sky). So to anyone in greater Belfast or anywhere in the eastern side of NI, head down there if you need a fix of lying snow. The higher Sperrins in the NW are also looking white, but they're too far off for me to be any more precise than that.

I can't ever remember an easterly bringing us anything worth talking about. N or NW, even SW is better for us.

Mate, you're living near the coast so you have to adjust your expectation levels accordingly. Either that or move to Braemar, Chamonix or somewhere else that gets deluged with snow.

All of the earlier snow has long since fizzled out and been washed away plain old rain.

Wet snow here falling steadily for past 15 minutes after short period of sleet in transition from earlier rain. Lying as slush on ground. (Richhill Co Armagh, elevation approx 200 feet ASL).

It's now vacillating between sleet and snow... And I ain't ramping!

It's perhaps been pathetic where you are, but where I am (Richhill) the snow came on Friday 18th, again on Sunday 20th and a good top up late Tues 22nd into early Wed 23rd that saw lying snow right into Boxing Day, the longest period of lying snow here in years. And much of Tyrone has had even better conditions with a blanket of white lasting at least until yesterday (when I looked across country from a high vantage point near here), albeit drizzle and rain most likely has fallen there too, glaciating the snow cover. Thus far today, it's rain but every so often there's the occasional flurry of wet flakes, so the higher levels (i.e. the Mournes) are likely to be getting the white stuff only. The point being, when you complain about it you're being very IMBY in your outlook, when even a short drive (by UK standards) would take you into decent conditions.

Just watch out for people ramping rain to sleet and sleet to snow in some of their reports! Not accusing anyone, just something to bear in mind.