Reefseeker

Quite a rumble across the sky under the bright reds and oranges on the radar.

Hailstones bouncing around all over the place from this lot.

A squall line may indeed have thunder and lightning. This discussion of Storm Ciara from the Royal Meteorological Society covers the complexities pretty well (just an excerpt, they give a lot more detail!): "With 179.8 mm of rain reported in Cumbria and a gust of 97 mph recorded at the Needles on the Isle of Wight, Ciara was a force to be reckoned with. However, some of the most destructive weather was delivered by squall lines; violent bursts of weather that not only bring strong winds and torrential rain but also have the potential to bring hail, thunder and sometimes even tornadoes. A squall line is easily recognisable on a radar image as a line of very intense rain. They can be more than 100 km long and keep their structure for several hours as they sweep the landscape." Squall Lines and Storm Ciara WWW.RMETS.ORG With two deaths, serious flooding and tens of thousands of homes losing power, Storm Ciara has hit the UK hard.

I reckon that's the Harz Mountains in Germany - went there on a school trip when I was a wee teen. Milky grey skies here in SW London but mild, just to keep it weather related.... even if it's not quite in this forum!

Grey, raining and a bit of a breeze here in Surbiton. Happy/jealous about all of you getting in on the back-edge snow. Ah well, we had a light covering that stayed on the ground for a week in December and got to see heavy falling snow in March for a wee while. Am I allowed to say 'winter's over' yet?!

Same here in Surbiton, it feels like it has been raining continuously for hours, grey skies, cold and as you say, puddles everywhere. We even abandoned our usual walk with rucksacks to the supermarket and took the car... which with all the local roadworks, took just as long as walking...

What a difference a short distance makes! Here in Surbiton it's heavy rain:( Seeing your photos from this morning, you also had much heavier snow overnight than we did. Not jealous or anything...;)

Looked out of the window at 5am to see incredibly heavy fat flakes falling. Nothing settled on the roads and pavements but a centimetre or so managed to accumulate on cars, rooftops and gardens. As with others, precipitation has been cycling between snow, sleet and rain. Mostly melted now with drizzle and some occasional strong gusts of wind.

Sleety mix here in Surbiton. A friend in Iver Heath sent a video of it looking heavier there. Fingers crossed for tonight and tomorrow.

Very foggy this morning making for a very atmospheric Richmond Park, but a very cold feeling 2 degrees at 10am. The fog has just lifted to reveal blue skies and sunshine, so presumably the 14 degrees promised this morning by Carol will soon be incoming.

Saw an absolutely enormous bee last week; I don't know my bees so not sure if it was a queen or just a very large one! Muddy at the park today after yesterday's winter wonderland of hard frost and frozen ground, but at least today the ducks weren't paddling through the thin ice that had started to form on the pond.

Thank you:) Apparently feral cats would live around the power station attracted by the heat and be fed by the workers, but said kitties could not cope at all if it went quiet!

Agree with all the posts today - yes please, can we keep this beautiful weather! If snow is not to be, then I'll take this happily. Went to Battersea Power Station to celebrate a friend's birthday and it was glorious.

Thanks for posting the link to Paul Sherman's analsis of the polystyrene balls in 2009 @Tom Quintavalle. I remember reading it in awe... and realising I would never quite reach those levels of weather understanding, but it did make me a big fan of Netweather. The Feb 2009 event was amazing in Surbiton, I couldn't believe our luck to get a Thames Streamer set up so perfectly. Back to the present and the day started with lovely clear skies, sunshine and a cold breeze; overhead the skies are turning milky now with the sun just about making it through as the cloud makes tracks towards us from the north west.

Wouldn't it be nice, @alexisj9and @Tom Quintavalle, if, for once, the British weather could pull victory (rampant snowiness) from the jaws of defeat (I'm thinking the polar vortex, arctic highs, dodgy MJO phases etc)... rather than the other way around! Still cold overnight, sun peeking through the clouds this morning.

Reading everyone's reports with interest of fog and frost while keeping my fingers crossed our flight back to Heathrow from Cyprus this evening won't be too delayed following the low overnight temperatures in London. This is possibly the first time I've experienced 6 days of clear blue skies and daytime temperatures up to 20 degrees in Cyprus in January. A bit sad to miss the winter weather in the UK though. Some snow on Troodos but a lot has melted in temperatures reaching 10 degrees.

Wet, grey, windy... what a joy January has been so far.... Fingers crossed next week delivers some snow to the south east. We are off to Cyprus next Tuesday to visit family and I noticed @Eagle Eye posting severe weather around Turkey. The Troodos webcam from a few days ago showed heavy snow but other than that Cyprus too is looking grey and damp. I wonder if we'll spot a few flakes of snow on the 17th as we take off from Heathrow

I know others have given really helpful responses already, but I thought I would reply as someone who has terrible balance, is rather physically weak and having physio for knee problems.... that yes, it helps to get any sort of ski lessons here either on dry or artificial snow slopes. A lot of it is about learning the leg positions, working on building a tiny bit of strength and working towards mastering the fear of sliding downhill. If you can get even a teensy head start on this before hitting a ski resort, it helps with the anxiety you may feel, especially on that first day! I was the one in the class who literally couldn't ski for the entire week, couldn't get on or off the ski lift (I still find it very difficult) and was frankly an instructor's nightmare. Then I found my confidence on the very last day and whizzed down those slopes. Years later, my confidence remained until a super-icy slope filled me with terror and I was back with the beginners where I have stayed to this day! In my case I love it, am terrible at it and have really had to persevere for only a modicum of success. You will almost definitely be better than me, so good luck, I really hope it goes well for you.

Indeed, snap, we had various interludes of torrential rain driving from Bournemouth to Surbiton yesterday. Just after the first squall line went through the Tolworth underpass on the A3 became flooded I suspect due to sat nav constantly telling us to avoid it; it looked biblical on the radar, glad we were an hour behind it, in the lot that followed....

Same here, I've just taken down the decs, trees etc, although to help me through it managed to eat a couple of chocolates. I always get very sad at the end of Christmas, despite the stress it can bring, and today is no exception. Ah well, the house looks bigger now and the healthy food options are piled up in the fridge... whether they'll get eaten is another matter;) Continuous grey and mild as usual on the weather menu today, although at least it's dry for a while. A snow fix would be wonderful, but given the outlook for the next few weeks, I'll just keep watching the Santa village webcam instead.

A little late, but Merry Chistmas to all the lovely people in this thread, I hope everyone had a wonderful time And yes, true to form it's grey, windy and wet outside. As others have said, I really want the crisp, cold days back. I've been watching the Santa Village webcam all Christmas just to get my festive snow fix, albeit rather in the dark. And @Snowangel-MK, you need to share tips on how to get a choice of mains and desserts prepped in advance - we had 11 to feed on Christmas Eve and relaxing it definitely wasn't. Fun though. Santa's village is rather busy today!

As others have said, snow hanging on even in Surbiton where we had a relatively light covering. Checking the local weather stations, the dew points have remained low, between -1.5 and -3.3, with the temperature ranging from -2.4 to 1.2. The radar does indeed seem to show that 'low pressure system' that caused so much consternation last week clipping the south of the region and as I type, my laptop weather is warning me to expect snow! Edit: actually there is precipitation over Hampshire, with any luck approaching the Surrey borders, so while I'm not holding out high hopes for snow, after the recent run of weather, who knows....

I'm guessing a couple of centimetres is the final total for Surbiton. The main thing is my snow-loving son got snow on his birthday for the first time in all of his 23 years

Small flakes have been falling persistently for 3 hours now with patchy, light accumulations on the pavements and roads, tyre tracks and so on. We appear to be at the Western extent of the snowy airmass. Wind WNW and dew points now a degree below freezing.

Wet snow falling in Surbiton with dew points and temperatures around zero. A bit of settling but I'm hoping it peps up later to get a good covering.