Thundery wintry showers

I'm more with Bottesford on this one- if I had to cite a least favourite winter weather pattern, it would probably be those dry cloudy east/south-easterly types with relatively mild air at the 850hPa level but surface cold off the continent, resulting in stratocumulus underneath an inversion, unrelenting greyness, temperatures between 2 and 5C by day and night and a bitter wind. Similar conditions can arise in association with anticyclonic gloom but without the cold wind. Only if they are cold in the upper atmosphere (see above). I'm guessing that the 4 days of snow lying would have resulted from the brief easterly incursion at the end of January 1972- the trough that formed on the 31st would probably have helped to deliver a fair number of snow showers to eastern Scotland:http://www.wetterzentrale.de/pics/archive/ra/1972/Rrea00119720131.gif http://www.wetterzentrale.de/pics/archive/ra/1972/Rrea00219720131.gif I can't deny that I often get quite bored with some varieties of Atlantic-driven weather, particularly the type with persistent high pressure to the SE and belts of grey drizzly weather interspersed with dry bright interludes and the ridging high preventing any sunshine-and-showers days, but it still contains more of interest than those cloudy south-easterlies, and the milder temperatures make it possible to go outside without having to wrap up excessively.

A good summary by Gibby there- I may add that there is a chance of the frontal system on Friday/Saturday hanging around for a while over East Anglia and the SE, possibly giving a grey damp day on Saturday in those regions, but otherwise the weekend is looking bright, with some showers in the west. There is strong cross-model agreement on the tropical maritime-dominated regime for next week, reflecting a slide into a progressively milder zonal pattern. I can understand the focus on FI as the upcoming week's weather looks about as ordinary as it gets, although with Atlantic-driven westerlies in charge there will be more 'weather' than if we were sat under a cloudy anticyclone. The Russian/Siberian high, although a potential source of easterly incursions for much later in the month, may well help to keep us in a mild south-westerly pattern at the 7-12 day range as it will prevent low pressure systems from getting east of the Greenwich Meridian.

That December 1997 easterly was a non-event in Tyneside- three dull days with a bit of drizzle, then a belt of rain and sleet moved up from the south. The south was colder though, presumably due to the shorter track over the North Sea.

Dry and sunny at Sandhutton, some showers visible to the north-east coming in off the North Sea, which will probably pass just to the east of here. Temperature of 2.4C following an overnight minimum of 0.1C with a white ground frost. Yesterday got no higher than 2.6C which is lower than I recorded in the first half of November at Cleadon (Tyne and Wear) in 19 years of records- it does seem that inland N Yorks is more prone to notably low temperatures.

An unusually cold day for early-November here at Sandhutton- it started off cold, bright and frosty with a minimum of 0.3C but freezing fog has rolled in and the day's max so far has been 2.1C.

Re. Millhouse's post, I think that the popular desire for winter snow is matched by a popular, but less fanatical, desire for a hot dry sunny summer (essentially the opposing extremes like Winter 1963 and Summer 1976). I think the amount of traffic on this forum, and the prevailing desires, strongly reflect this. There are some who like it cold all year round but they are fewer in number. There are essentially differing degrees of "weather lovers". I feel that the above reflects an above-average interest in the weather, and when I first got interested in the weather, I was much like the above- I always hoped for a good snowfall in winter, while I always hoped for summer to be consistently warm, dry and sunny (inspired by one particularly dry sunny spell which I'm guessing would have been May to July 1989). Instead of 1976/1989/1995-style summers, thunderstorms are also a common starting trigger for such an interest in weather and this is reflected by how busy the convective discussion threads get in summer. I've also seen some people mention strong winds as a factor. However when one's interest in weather passes above that sort of level, I think one tends to appreciate a wider range of weather types. My present-day interest in convective weather events, and to a lesser extent fluctuating temperatures and strong winds, didn't start until around 1993/94, after I started taking my own weather records and started to develop a wide-ranging interest in the weather as a whole.

I was in Exeter during January-June 2009 and there was an unusual snow event on the 2nd/3rd February- on the afternoon of the 2nd snow showers made it all the way across from the North Sea and a stalling low pressure system sent further snow showers in around its circulation despite north-easterly winds. Then on the 3rd, I had heavy sleet, snow and hail showers from a south-westerly (in effect, the continental air accumulated over the English Channel and then got redirected back north-eastwards as lowest pressure relocated to the west). The lying snow melted during that afternoon in Exeter but it remained intact further inland. Then on the 6th we had a "channel low" type of situation. Exeter ended up with two inches of slush which subsequently turned icy, but that was the event that produced 55cm at Okehampton. Exeter had a further brief snow event on the 4th/5th March 2009, as a showery westerly brought showers of hail and sleet and then a southerly-tracking trough brought organised sleet and snow overnight. I agree with the general consensus; a stalling frontal system over the SW tends to give the biggest snowfalls but often with lowland snow confined to a narrow belt, while a showery north to north-westerly flow will often bring heavy convective falls but it needs to be a pretty potent blast of arctic air for the snow to settle widely over low-lying parts of Devon and Cornwall. Perhaps the best recent example was the 17th-20th December 2010 when a showery north to north-westerly was then followed by a frontal type snowfall from a southerly tracking low on the 19th/20th.

Here was my forecast for October 2012: [quote]October 2012 will start off changeable with low pressure dominating, but high pressure over the Azores and mid-Atlantic will often influence our weather, particularly around the middle of the month. After a showery spell during the first five days of October, with some longer outbreaks of rain on the 2nd, the weather will dry up from the west on the 5th/6th as a ridge of high pressure pushes in from the west. The night of the 6th/7th is expected to be cold, with a widespread ground frost inland. There is then some uncertainty over the track of a southerly-tracking low, but I expect wet and windy weather to sweep in from the south-west between the 8th and 10th which is likely to produce high rainfall totals in some places, with the Midlands, Wales, Northern Ireland and northern England most at risk from the heaviest and most persistent rain. Northern Scotland will stay mostly dry, while southern England will be brighter with showers once the initial rain belt moves through, where it will also become warm with highs of 17-20C in places. High pressure sat in the mid-Atlantic will settle the weather down towards midmonth but it will still allow weak Atlantic weather systems to penetrate around its north-eastern flank. Thus, the period 11th-16th is likely to be mostly dry, particularly in southern areas, but sunshine will be variable rather than plentiful, and some belts of light rain will crop up from time to time, particularly over Scotland, Ireland and northern England. Long-term teleconnection signals keep pressure high in the mid-Atlantic around midmonth and this high pressure will most likely start to extend its influence further east in the third week of the month, which will promise a few days of dry, brighter weather with some cool nights and widespread ground frosts. The high pressure is then expected to pull out into the North Sea during the last third of October which will allow Atlantic weather systems to increasingly influence the weather, particularly over western areas, where some belts of heavy rain and strong to gale force winds are expected at times. Eastern England will hold onto the driest weather during this period. With southerly winds expected, temperatures will rise above the seasonal average. Overview October 2012 will have close to average temperatures for the most part, but the last third of the month will raise the mean slightly above average. I envisage a Central England Temperature of 11.1C, with mean temperatures set to range from 0 to 0.5C below the 1981-2010 average over much of Ireland and western Scotland to 0.5-1.0C above in eastern England. Rainfall totals will be above normal over much of Wales, the Midlands and northern England with excesses of 20-50% likely, bolstered by a wet spell between the 8th and 10th. Conversely it will be a dry month in East Anglia and the south-east, and also in northern Scotland, with rainfall shortages of 20-40% expected. Other regions of the UK will have close to average rainfall. Sunshine totals for October 2012 will be near or slightly above the long-term average, with an excess of around 10% taking the UK as a whole. Southern England and eastern Scotland are likely to be sunniest relative to normal with excesses of around 30%. Forecast issued by Ian Simpson (aka TWS) on the 3rd October 2012.[/quote] This wasn't one of my more accurate forecasts. The first week went as expected but the wet weather on the 8th-10th in reality passed away to the south with only the far south seeing any rain at all from it, and then an Atlantic-driven regime took over midmonth with a flattening of the expected mid-Atlantic high. The weather temporarily moved into line with my forecast around the 19th-25th with an anticyclonic interlude followed by warm southerlies, but an abrupt change saw an unusually cold northerly outbreak on the 26th/27th with snow for some, and the month ended changeable with below-average temperatures. As a result, temperatures were over a degree down on what I had predicted, while sunshine totals were mostly lower over the southern two-thirds of England although similar to what I had predicted over Scotland and northern England. Rainfall totals weren't far off what I forecast. Overall, though, after a series of forecasts which I felt were quite accurate, September and October's forecasts were rather wide of the mark and illustrate how hard long-range forecasting really is.

The latest shower at Sandhutton unexpectedly turned to hail, but not as dramatic as some westerners are reporting!

A fair number of showers firing into North Yorkshire this morning- most of them have been to the north of Sandhutton but there was one earlier this morning and one is overhead right now. The overnight minimum temperature was 3.4C but it has been around 8C for most of the morning.

I think of myself as a "weather lover" as I enjoy quite a wide range of weather types and can find something of interest in most types of weather, bar sheets of stratus/stratocumulus. However I do have two main "passions"- convective events and snow events- and thus you'll often find me joining in with the excitement over snow events in the winter, though I sometimes find myself wishing that there was more overall interest in other types of weather as well. In the summer half-year the cold/snow lovers largely vanish and we get a lot of convective/storm lovers populating the convective discussion threads, while the model output thread tends to reflect a strong desire for persistent high pressure, so in effect a split between desire for two different kinds of "summery" weather, but in general there is less interest in either of those than there is re. snow in winter. Often the transition between the two takes the form of an abrupt switch which happens around early to mid March and again around early to mid October, when the level of contributions changes and so does the prevailing desired type of weather, although I recall that this year's spring saw more of a gradual transition.

Instead of moving permanently to BST, one idea would be to shift traditional living and working patterns back by one hour, so the most common working hours would be 8am-4pm and evening parties would typically start an hour earlier. Achieving that, though, would require a significant shift to the UK culture, something that is always difficult to achieve due to social inertia.

My preferred solution would be to change the Earth's axis so that our daylight ranged from 10 hours in midwinter to just over 14 in summer (like they get at around 30-40 degrees from the equator). Approximate sunrise and sunset times of 8am-6pm on 21st December, increasing to 7am-9pm on the 21st June, while maintaining the 1-hour clock change between GMT and BST at the back end of March and October. I feel that the extra evening daylight would make a big positive difference in the winter, while I wouldn't miss the daylight between 5 and 7am in the summer. It's really the length of darkness in winter that gets to me after a while and I don't think moving permanently to BST would make much of a difference to that. However, no change would be ideal for everybody and that particular change wouldn't suit those who make heavy use of the summer daylight between 5 and 7am for example.

The really changeable, low pressure-dominated weather looks set to arrive on Tuesday/Wednesday as a belt of rain will spread south-eastwards- Tuesday looks like being a wet day over most of Scotland and Ireland while Wednesday will be wet over most of England and Wales. For Thursday and Friday, I can't help but feel that the synoptics would have provided a good example of "cold zonality" had it been later in the season, as we get 850hPa temperatures just above -5C coming right over from the west. As it stands, showers will fall as rain at low levels, with snow confined to high ground, though temperatures will generally be down on the seasonal average with highs of 6 to 9C by day and possibly some frost in central and eastern areas if winds fall light as suggested by the GFS. It is hard to pinpoint whether secondary lows will bring spells of persistent rain towards the weekend- the GFS shows quite a vicious low on Saturday but the ECMWF does not. A northerly outbreak is likely when the low pressure complex eventually drifts away to Scandinavia but it probably won't be as potent as the one that we had last Friday/Saturday.

East Anglia is one of the UK's driest regions due to being heavily sheltered from the Atlantic, but it is far from immune from big rainfall events. Slow-moving low pressure systems in the southern North Sea can generate spells of heavy and persistent frontal rain, while East Anglia is also one of the UK's most thunder-prone regions and sometimes picks up localised torrential convective downpours. Historically many parts of East Anglia have also tended to pick up heavy snowfalls with winds from the north-eastern quarter of the compass, although many recent easterly and north-easterly incursions have seen a comparatively dry slot establish over much of East Anglia with streamers over the Wash and the Thames. The Midlands are, as others have noted, quite well protected from both the west and east. I think the Midlands can still get notable big rainfall events though, e.g. a frontal system aligned from west to east stalling over the region, and the average summer thunder frequency is higher than in many other parts of the UK (though not as high as in East Anglia), leading at times to heavy thundery downpours. The 8th December 1990 had large quantities of sleet and snow.

After my previous reports, there were a couple more snow showers at Sandhutton, with some graupel mixed in, between 2 and 3am which left a more significant dusting (most of the grass couldn't be seen) but it warmed up after that, and sleety showers washed away the snow cover by 9am. It's still remarkably cold for late-October though, and the latest shower started off as rain but soon turned to sleet/snow. It seems that Sandhutton and Cleadon have scored roughly equally during this northerly, which is pleasing to see as I thought the showers would be confined to within 5-10 miles of the east coast after sunset yesterday.

3.6 at South Shields now and rising rapidly. Meanwhile, as expected, a light snow flurry at Sandhutton, with a light dusting of snow still on the grass, cars and rooftops, though not on concrete surfaces.

South Shields has shot back up to 2.8C with a NNE wind. Meanwhile another snow shower is approaching Sandhutton, though it looks as if this one will only be light. After that, it's probably for the best if my location dodges subsequent showers as I feel that the warmer pool of air may be approaching, hence the report of rain in Newcastle.

Looking at Neil Bradshaw's site, the temperature picked up to around 2.5C at South Shields when the surface wind veered to the N/NE, but it is now back around to the NW and the temperature is back down at 1.3C.

It happened quite widely in the Tyne and Wear area in 2001/02- following record-breaking warmth in October and early November without any hint of frost, a northerly outbreak on the 8th/9th November brought a mix of sunny intervals and showers of snow, sleet and hail, with overnight temperatures mostly holding up above freezing, especially near the coast. Both mornings had a covering of snow quite widely, even at Cleadon near the coast there was a dusting on the ground. Then the night of the 9th/10th produced a widespread air frost. I can't recall any other occurrences since I began recording in 1993. The snowy spells of 20-23 November 1993 and 24 November-2 December 2010 were both preceded by frosty interludes (there were some sharp frosts around mid-October 1993, and mid-November 1993 and mid-November 2010 both had frosty spells). Here in Sandhutton this autumn will achieve the "snow before frost" distinction if you use air frost rather than ground frost as the measure, for although we've had a fair number of cold nights with minima below 2C, none got below 0C here.

I remember the 30th October 2000 well- at Cleadon we had "cold rain" with a temperature around 3C and I remember thinking, "wow, this is a low temperature to be accompanying precipitation in October- nearly low enough for snow!", and then hearing that it did indeed snow further inland. Lancaster (not normally a snowy location) had a two-centimetre covering at 9am according to their record, while Manchester had wet snow. A fairly heavy snow shower now in Sandhutton, though not really adding much to what's on the ground (a light dusting on most surfaces now)- but of course I can hardly complain! Being this far inland I may also be well-placed to have some of it survive through to dawn tomorrow in spite of the advancing pool of milder air.

A strong "arc" of snow showers just coming out of the Tyne and Wear/Durham area- will they keep up much intensity as they approach Sandhutton? I sense a chance of getting a rather more significant dusting if they manage to do so, as the temperature is slowly falling (1.4C last time I checked).

A slight dusting of snow on some surfaces at Sandhutton following the latest shower. The wind has got up considerably recently- some pretty strong gusts against my north-facing bedroom window. I really wasn't expecting this- I thought that showery activity would be largely confined to within 5-10 miles of the east coast and of rain/sleet at low levels! Meanwhile, Neil Bradshaw at South Shields is registering a NE wind for the first time; it will be interesting to see how the temperature responds.

I have a feeling that snow cover at low levels inland may be washed away by any showery activity after about 3am as a warmer pool of air moves down from the north (it is currently -6/-7C at the 850hPa level and is projected to increase to around -4). As per my previous post I suspect that this will happen earlier nearer the coast- probably around or just after midnight. On high ground though I expect that showers will generally continue to fall as snow.

I can report that despite having moved further inland, I haven't missed out completely- one of the showers penetrated as far south as Sandhutton about half an hour ago and produced snow here too! Not heavy enough to provide accumulations, but it's the first time that I've seen proper snow in October (beating my previous record of sleet mixed with rain at Lancaster on the 20th October 2002). Amazing to see that South Shields has been having snow. I expect the surface wind to veer NNE'ly in the next couple of hours which may cause the temperature to jump somewhat near the coast, but clearly prior to that the weather has got cold enough to deliver the South Shields its first October snowfalls since before I started recording from Cleadon in 1993.