eddie

6.3C for me please.

I just noticed that the using 7 day forecast for Leeds it reckons the avg. Temp at 15:00 today will be 7C! That isn't what the GFS is showing for that time today so I was wondering if there is bug in the software?

Hmm and back to snow again. Snow rain snow rain snow. The roads are going to be a nightmare when this lot all freezes tomorrow morning.

Raining here now.

Small flakes?

Snowing here again too after a short period of rain about an hour ago. Very light snow at the moment though.

Between around 5pm and 6.30 there seemed to be some rain mixed in.

Back to proper snow here now with no rain mixed in. There isn't massive amounts of it falling though. However, the latest BBC weather forecasts are very ecouraging so hopefully it should kick off again soon.

Just got back from work (which must be well over 200m ASL). It was snowing very hard there and the roads were getting to the point where it was dangerous. The snow was covering the whole road despite of extensive gritting. Now I am home (70m ASL) there seems to be a bit of rain mixed in with the snow and the roads are just covered in thin wet slush. There is about 4-5cm of snow on the pavements and grass. Hopefully temperatures will cool down a bit as the night goes on and we won't get wet snow that doesn't accumulate. The Met Office are still going for 12 hours of heavy snow from 18:00h in this area if you drill down through their web site to the local forecast so I am quite optimistic.

It is looking pretty special! Thankfully I brought all my hiking gear including water proof trousers and hiking boot to work so I can walk the 4 miles home if it gets too bad to drive. For some reason I didn't fancy cycling in this morning.

Still at work (Just south of bradford). Heavy snow falling here now.

No falling snow here at the moment and we have about 1-2cm on the ground. Looking at the radar and the Met Office 3h forecast for Bradford and Huddersfield I expect more white stuff in about an hour or so. Cancel that. It's snowing heavily again!

Using the power of random I will go for 3.6C.

Clearly January 2009 isn't going to end up colder than Jan 1963 and that wasn't what I was trying to suggest either. However, this has been a proper cold spell whatever baseline you measure it against.

It's the 22nd coldest first week to January since 1772 and the coldest start to January since 1997 (1st to 7th Jan 1997 was -0.8C). In fact the first week of January 1963 was warmer than the first week of January 2009. I certainly didn't expect to be writing that a month ago.

2.9C for me please.

I have looked at the anomaly from the previous 10 year mean for each year since 1700. The distribution looks like this: A fairly normal distribution although skewed slightly towards the warm end as you might expect. The standard deviation for the anomaly data set is 0.6C 70.5% of years fell within the range +- 1 standard deviation from the previous 10 year mean. 90.2% of years fell within the range +- 1.645 standard deviations from the previous 10 year mean. 12.3% of years were more than 1 standard deviation colder than the mean. 17.3% of years were more than 1 standard deviation warmer than the mean. 4.2% of years were more than 1.645 standard deviations colder than the mean. 5.5% of years were more than 1.645 standard deviations warmer than the mean. If this year comes in at 10C then the rolling mean for the period 1999-2008 will be 10.42C. On that basis there is a 70% chance that the Annual CET for 2009 will be in the range of 9.82C-11.02C. There is 12.2% chance that the Annual CET for 2009 will be colder than 9.82C. There is 17.3% chance that the Annual CET for 2009 will be warmer than 11.02C. There is <4.2% chance that the Annual CET for 2009 will be colder than 9.22C. There is <5.5% chance that the Annual CET for 2009 will be warmer than 11.62C. My actual prediction for 2009 is 10.3C. PS - I'm still trying to learn about statistics so if any of you experts out there would like to comment on this I would love to hear your feedback.

The Hadley CET (1st-10th) is 2.7C.

The Hadley CET is now 1.1C to the 2nd. The coldest first 2 days of December since 1978 and the 20th coldest start to December since 1772.

The coldest start to December since 1978.

You have to remember that there is a financial cost associated with the Met. Office forecasting any kind of unusual weather. Councils, gas suppliers and any other organisations that have a financial interest in what the temperature is going to be will make their plans according to what the Met Office say. If they said another 1963 was on the way then milions of pounds would be spent preparing. On that basis they have to be fairly conservative unless they are very sure that exceptional weather is on the way.

1.9C - The coldest December since 1981.

More records are always broken during the early years of a data set. There are less other months to beat. As the data set gets longer, if the climate was stable, the time between records being broken should get longer and longer as each new warmest or coldest month raises the proverbial bar. It would be interesting to run the same analysis but with the climate data in reverse, i.e. make 2007 the first year and 1659 the last year and then compare the shape of the two graphs.

The 2001 CET was 9.93C. If October finishes at 10.2C then November and December would both need to be 2C below average for this year to beat 2001. It's not impossible but very very unlikely.

With the Hadley September CET finishing at 13.5C that means the average CET for the year so far is 11.0C - The coolest since 2001. 41 years have been warmer than 11C by this point in the year. 9 out of those 41 have finished below 10C.