Jack Wales

Astonishing 18z GFS this evening, probably a massive cold outlier but I'm going to save the charts for prosterity!!

All the best people are born on Feb 9th!! I can recall numerous occasions where snow has fallen on my birthday too. I don't think it will happen this year though, as I interpret the medium term signals to be fairly mild with any cold being derived from inversion/anticyclonic type synoptics. I also believe there is a chance of a colder spell towards the end of the month but certainly not as notable as the December/January cold spell. Therefore a Predict a CET of 3.9°C

Rapid thaw today, only snow patches left on the hills and on the streets where we had to shovel into mounds. Apart from a couple of days after Christmas we've had snow lying for almost a month! It seemed strange this morning waking up to everything being green outside.

Goog balanced post there teits, I agree it is on a knife edge for next week, 1060 mb siberian high against 955mb atlantic low. If we're talking about instincts, I think it will be a near miss with the cold staying just to our east. I believe prospects in the longer term could be better though, the AO is forecast to trend negative again after a brief neutral phase... AO (CPC)

TEITS, is this just not a case of dismissing the models because they do not produce what we want to see. I agree with you that human input very beneficial for the short term forecasts but I'm not sure if 'instinct' has ever been used by the meto etc, all forecasts must be underpinned by science regardless of how tentative the understanding of it is.

Bizarre post, can you please attach links to the 'gathering evidence' please? At the moment, according to the models there is a chance of an easterly at approx T+120, but this appears transient at best. The strong PV/jet mean that the atlantic appears unstoppable on most of the output.

I agree with NS, the models indicate more mobility and milder synoptics but no Bartlett. Bartletts tend to hang around for longer periods and often result in 850's >10C No offence but I think you need to visit the learning area and better understand the models yourself before making quips like that against experienced members. F1 lol!

Astonishing snowfall here in Tonyrefail. Took me 3.5 hours to get home from cardiff today. Must be about 8" lying now and still snowing hard.

Yes, it does tend to be a bit Cardiffcentric, I was also surprised that there was no mention of the snow event in west wales today. Anyway, it appears that there has been an upgrade on the NEA 18z output, the centre of the low is positioned slightly more west (about 10-15 miles) plus whereas before the vast majority of precipitation was forecast in the band to the east of the centre, on this run there appears to be more activity on the western side too, where the band wraps around. Should make interesting watching, I was going to have an early night but not any more!

It's started snowing heavily here, the snow is sticking as the groung is so cold and temps currently -2C. I'm not sure if it's a rogue shower or if it is connected to the main system. I have deliberately not looked at any of the outputs since midday as the constant tooing and froing was driving me insane. Oh well, over to the radar!

Yep, all the best people joined on 1/11/06 lol! Thanks for your comments about the chart but I fear my skills on 'paint' are somewhat tentative at best! If i had to choose a location to be worst hit by this event I'd probably go for your area.

Well, it's a quite a barmy night here, -3C at the moment (compared to -8C last night). On that note I'm going to bed for about four hours sleep in preperation for my first day back in work tomorrow! Hoh Hum.

Yes quite possibly but I also believe that it could also be down to the orientation of the precipitation band, and how much the system strengthens in the next 24 hours.

Absolutlely intriguing to have such uncertainty at this timeframe. Will the ukmo come on board with a more westerly based event or will the south-east come up trumps again. One thing the models do agree on is that the amount of precipitation attached to this system is quite considerable so although I think there could still be some changes in the modelling tomorrow, my predictions of who will be the hardest hit are as follows...

Fingers crossed for you SMS! PS can you pop your location into your profile

There should be at least a dusting of snow for most parts tonight as the weak occlusion moves south over Wales. The tricky bit is forecasting the exact position of the low pressure and how far west it will track before moving south into the channel. 50 miles variation each way of Dereks forecast could result in significant snowfall to the whole of south wales or it missing the country altogether. At this range of forecasting the UKMO fax chart will be the most accurate and provide the required detail. Interesting times!

-8 here, thats the coldest night for a while surely.

I'll plump for 3.3°C please

Still 2.1 here in Tonyrefail, plenty of time for this to change but this is going to be very marginal here in south wales.

It only makes the news if it affects London or the South East! Anyway, woken up to 3-4 ins here this morning.

Cheers Shaun, here goes...

Good covering here in Ton after a heavy shower about half an hour ago. I'll add a picture once I work out how to

Yes I agree, it's the shortwaves that were always going to throw spanners in the works, it'll be interesting to see how this pans out at around T+96. I think every run will be a rollercoaster until then.

And right on cue you can see the warming just starting to show its hand...

At this stage it looks as if arctic heights will be centred over northern canada / alaska and northern russia. With the jet as powerful as it is at the moment, nothing will be coming back westwards. We will be in the funnel between the two so all we can expect out of it is more severe storms, mild and rain.