Barb

If someone offered me the 18z as reality I'd snap their arm off... The cold just does not want to go away. Showing undercutting low and southern blizzard in FI.

Yes very uncertain at the moment, we could easily get nothing - no time to get excited yet. Some nice POTENTIAL though, but thats all it is at the moment. Fingers crossed though.

More fun on Sunday night/Monday morning: Very uncertain yet, but fingers crossed.

Snow upgrade for us in Wales on the 18z GFS, could give a few inches on Saturday night/Sunday morning!

Blizzards... Big if though of course.

Yes that was very memorable that Feb event, one of the biggest forecasting cock ups in history. I remember the BBC forecast at 10:30pm showing nothing but a bit of patchy rain in Cornwall for the following day when in fact we had a big dumping. A typical battleground scenario was that, hope we have another and the cold wins...

The Northerly looks interesting for us in Wales, I remember the last potent Northerly we had where BBC and Met Office forecast us a "dusting" at bes, when in realtiy we ended up with 3-4 inches of lovely powdery snow. That was from an unexpected trough and there can be lots of troughs in these Northerlies that can spring up surprises. The other area of interest is next week from the Atlantic nudging into the cold block over us. Potential very significant frontall snowfall from a situation like that, one that has been very productive for us in recent years. Well the cold spell hasn't really started yet. The past week has just been the build up.

500's: http://91.121.94.83/modeles/gfs/run/gfs-0-180.png?6 Wow, just look at all that cold to our E/NE. The only thing we need is to tap into it and with such strong Northern blocking it's difficult to see how we could not (knowing this country it'll probably find a way). Once that cold is over us then we're in business. Any atlantic incursions such as what UKMO +144 is showing will not move that mass out of the way - the likely result would be megablizzards. So much potential showing, of course it's still just potential I'm not going to start planning for my igloo construction just yet.

As I said earlier at this range it's not about looking at a chart and basing all our hopes on it happening but looking for potential in the big picture and I still think there's lots of potential for something great. Lots of uncertainty, but the potential is there - you don't get situtions like these very often.

Bit dissapointing, this would just bring drizzle and murk - the uppers just aren't really cold enough as the cold easterly supply gets somewhat cut off.

I'm liking the look of this run... more cold to our east and a better feed already. Going to be a good un I think.

The thing people need to remember is that at this range we should be looking for POTENTIAL - looking at the big picture and looking at the trends and trying to find potential in them. If you pick a chart in FI and base all your hopes on it happening as showed then you will be dissapointed every time. It's the potential that matters and there is still LOADS of potential in these charts. Now if there's massive conclusive agreements among all the models for just 2-3 days away, THEN get excited. Til then, it's just trend and potential watching.

This Feb was pretty epic indeed here in S. Wales, snowed almost every day for a over week I think and was on the ground for nearly 2 weeks - over a foot in the hills near me. Brilliant. Had a similar amount of snow in Feb 08 too over 2 days but the difference was that it melted pretty much the next day. We've actually done very well here in the valleys over the past few years, can't complain at all. And yes, for us we need to be looking for those sliding lows - both the Feb 08 and Feb 09 blizzards mentioned came from them. Sliding low colliding with a cold easterly block = bingo.

Man the igloos!

Horrific weather again overnight - over 2 inches of rain in total, some localised flooding. Now dry and pretty calm with some blue skies.

I would think there is some concern of flooding along the Severn too over next few days, lots of rain has already fallen in the Welsh mountains and loads more to come tonight and over the weekend. Also lots of potential next week too.

Very windy, lashing it down with rain, very mild at 12.1c. Another inch-and-a-half of rain overnight and yesterday evening. Looking at the charts I might have to build me an ark.

Agree, seems only the far south got really hit. For here the January 2007 storm was vastly more windy. Rain was impressive though, around 3 inches.

Wind wise this event has been pretty disappointing considering the earlier forecasts. It's been windy but nothing of note at all, was windier last week. It seems the pressure gradient was further south and the low was slacker in the centre than originally forecast. Had a lot of rain though at least, almost 3 inches and lashing it down again now.

Yep we've had a lot of rain from this system, over 2 inches now and still piling up. My area is a bit of a rain hotspot though so we're used to tons of rain. Hasn't really been anything unusual really, we had more rain from the storm last week and similar winds. Those ahead of this squall line batten down the hatches, its pretty nasty in here.

Big crash outside, somebodies fence or something got blown down I think. Torrential rain now and very dark. Pretty lively squall band this.

Lashing down here, winds getting increasingly squally too.

Pressure currently 987mb and falling and temperature 12.4c. It absolutely lashed down for 3-4 hours earlier giving us a good 40mm of rain but dry now. It's breezy outside but nothing much at all, it's calmed down if anything. I expect the real fun is to come later though, probably plenty more rain too.

After the first 2 days of September I've already recorded ~100m (4 inches) of rain.

A forgettable and dissapointing summer here in S. Wales, completing the trilogy of The Three Years Without a Summer. I think it was better than last year, but that's not saying much, considering last year was the worst summer I remember. I'd actually say it was worse than 2007. June: A pretty good month. Generally dry, settled and with some very warm weather. Not spectacular in any departments however - just your average decent summer month, with some unsettled weather too. Around 60mm of rain in total. July: Absloutely horrific. Started off well but rapidly deteriorated into probably the worst summer month I've ever seen. Almost constant wet weather from start to finish. Around 250mm of rain. August: Started off good with some settled and dry weather. However, never particularly sunny or warm and there was almost constant wind. After starting promisingly the weather gradually deteriorated throughout the month and it ended up like July with relentless rain. Around 130mm of rain. The only really memorable thing about this summer was the incredibly wet July, which sort of sums it all up.