Magadan

Agreed, that site has been "pinch of salt" material for quite a while. Is there any snow cover on the high ranges there?

Yes, the drizzle and sleet have "glaciated" the remaining patches of lying snow cover, making walking and driving perilous. You'd need crampons just to cross the street in some places! Looking at the cloud formations, a lot of pearlescent white higher up with rainy gray underneath, so I'm cheered that the cold white stuff isn't too far away.

Light rain here and temp just surged past 1C... I'm hoping it will turn to snow quickly.

I sometimes think if the time spent on analysing models was given over instead to learning German or French, and then one just moved to the continent, it would get rid if a lot of misery / disappointment!

It's been exceptional here for a week now. But surely you have some snow now over the high mountains in Kerry?

Going to be a white one here in Richhill too. The past two days of subzero temps have kept the snow cover in good condition. I can't ever remember a Christmas period so snowy and cold here. When will the media - and the model gurus - twig that this is not a normal winter situation across the entire northern hemisphere?

A nice top up ongoing now as I type here in Richhill thanks to easy wind and downy flake on this the second darkest evening of the year...

I see Northern Ireland has been left out of that. :-(

Interesting. It's always good to keep an eye on winter conditions across the continent (I'm interested in trends, you see).

LOL at the terminology! That would be bliss for a snow-loving ice man like me... My wife can't even sleep in the same room as me, because I have to be cold all the time and she's the total opposite.

I did a Scottish snow chase myself, at the start of March 2008. What was odd about that was I had spent 3 weeks in the unspeakably cold and endlessly snowy Kyrgyzstan just before the Scotland chase... Anyway, the snow was watery and mushy in Skye, dry and spindrifty in the high passes N & S of Braemar and huge and fluffy in the central belt and Ayrshire. And at some stage in between I even slept with the window open in Blairgowrie while it snowed overnight, just to cool down a room that was insanely overheated by the old codger running the guesthouse. Ah, the memories...

@ SnowJon: I took some pics of the Mournes yesterday afternoon from afar:

Yes, it's a conservation village, whatever that means! The Mournes have some of the deepest snow in NI for years - you could do worse than take a drive down the coast to see them today (blizzards permitting).

Snowing steadily here (Richhill), lying and accumulating well.

A tiny feeble flurry just 20 minutes ago outside Richhill, near Armagh.

Moderately heavy snow here near Armagh. But it's wet-ish at the moment, albeit lying well. It's falling as rain lower down, near Lough Neagh and no doubt as the real thing in the high Mournes.

It's good to see the South getting some snow for a change - it's usually NI that gets the white stuff when it's around, not that that's a regular occurrence by any means. I'm hoping some will arrive up here later today too - I will be driving to a vantage near where I live to check the Mournes for snow every few hours today.

@ Jemtom: My own view is that as long as the basic sequence of long range predicted weather events takes place, then the method is basically sound, even if they fail to materialise on schedule. So I'm not ready to administer a verbal kicking to these chaps just yet.

Sleet now near Armagh city. Light dusting of pellet snow was left lying overnight.

Increasingly heavy snow here just east of the city of Armagh. Lying on the Sperrin hills to the NW and in the high Mourne mountains to the SE.

The weather does impact enormously on my happiness (or lack thereof). I like my seasons to be "seasonal", that is, I want winter to be cold and snowy, summer to hot and sunny, spring to be showery and muddy, and autumn to be leafy and windy. What I really hate is the stress caused by a sudden arrival of snow in the winter, only to realise that I've got maybe less than 24 hours to make the most of it before the rain arrives to wash it all away again. I tend to flap around like a headless chicken, cramming in walks and drives to the mountains with camera in tow. For this reason (among others, admittedly), I have been working on a move to the continent where the weather will be more predictable and Christmases will always be white, or white within a short driving distance.

Yes, as easterlies in Ireland generally mean nothing more than envious glances at eastern Scotland and eastern England.

Drive down a few miles south of where you are and have a look at the Mournes.

No snow in central Co Armagh, just some wet sleet last night, but snow lying over Mourne Mountains in Co Down 30 miles away.

I'm not an expert, but I am interested in the stratosphere, blocking, and many of the matters relating to our winter climate in the UK. Almost everything I know on the subject has come from reading this forum, so I wasn't totally lost listening to the discussion on the video. Great stuff, really fascinating!