du_snow

Current Conditions: Mostly Cloudy Temperature: 1°C Feels Like: -4°C Dew Point: -1°C Humidity: 87% Wind: From the East Northeast at 23 km/h Visibility: Unlimited Barometer: 1,016.9 millibars and falling UV Index: 0 Minimal

Current Conditions: Cloudy Temperature: 1°C Feels Like: -4°C Dew Point: -1°C Humidity: 87% Wind: From the East Northeast at 23 km/h Visibility: Unlimited Barometer: 1,017.9 millibars and falling UV Index: 0 Minimal

Well its really sweltering here.... Current Conditions: Partly Cloudy Temperature: 4°C Feels Like: -1°C Dew Point: -2°C Humidity: 65% Wind: From the East at 32 km/h Visibility: Unlimited Barometer: 1,028.1 millibars and falling UV Index: 0 Minimal

Had very, very heavy hail adn rain here last night for about 10 mins, a huge storm. It occured about 4am, but I was up anyway!

Hail and freezing rain here in S.Wales, been havign real problems today, had to call the AA (at 4pm) to try and unblock the locks to my car which wouldnt work with the key. Turned out the locks were frozen solid, and there was a lot of ice on the car itself. Freezing rain.

Ditto, Im having trouble with everything, very slow today, for broadband anyway :lol: Max of around 6.7-7c here today, and expecting a good frost tonight. Cant access WXpulse atm.

Some very heavy hail/rain here, no thunder as of yet.

Glad you liked it guys I havent got anyone lined up atm, but Im working on a few. ChaserUK has got Gary England for an interview, but he's busy atm with other things

Posted by Marksledgerholic:

Thanks Ry! The cold spell is still affecting us it seems. Thos maxes are pretty puny and those night time minima are well below average :shock:

Current Conditions: Partly Cloudy Temperature: 6°C Feels Like: 2°C Dew Point: 4°C Humidity: 87% Wind: From the West Northwest at 21 km/h Visibility: Unlimited Barometer: 992.9 millibars and rising UV Index: 0 Minimal Pretty chilly here right now, some of the cloud starting to break up, so might check for aurora later on tonight.

Going to be deserted all Winter then!

Thanks for saying so ross, its like a ghost town in here, maybe everyone shocked at Philips replies or summat

Philip Eden, a trained meteorologist from the university of Birmingham worked for several years as a weather forecaster in the oil industrybefore he started his career on the radio, well known to the audience of BBC Five Live since 1994. He writes for The Daily Telegraph, The Sunday Telegraph and also authored a couple of very popular weather books. Philip writes weekly features for WeatherOnline UK & Ireland since March 2001. Over to Philip! 1) What weather type interests you most of all? Why? Oh, I'm a snow nut like everyone else, I usually find an excuse to go out for a long walk whenever we have a decent fall (not that that happens very often these days). But there is the proviso that, as I get older, the thought of falling over and breaking something does occasionally intrude ... having a dodgy back doesn't help either. But I should also say that I find something of interest in all types of weather, and scarcely a day passes without something surprising or unusual happening. I even chose to live on a hillside facing west so that I get to see some fantastic sunsets. I know that there are a lot of people who are fascinated by weather extremes, especially heavy snow, violent thunderstorms and tornadoes, but if that's all that interests you, you are missing out on an awful lot of other things, and you are going to be awfully bored and frustrated during the long gaps between extremes. Anyway, back to snow, I was lucky enough to grow up in the 60s, so I had some pretty exciting winters when I was at school, including that of 62-63 and I can still remember the weather detail for practically every day from December 22 to March 4. There were some other good snowstorms too ... notably 4th March 1970 when it lay 15 inches deep in Birmingham (which is where I was then), and the forecast the previous night had been "sunny spells and scattered wintry showers". They wouldn't get away with one like that now! 2) What subjects did you take at school, and at what age did you decide you wanted to pursue metoerology/climatoligy? It was *that* winter. There was a whole generation of meteorologists who were inspired by the winter of 1947, and another one -- mine -- who were inspired by 1962-63. When I was at school the only way of pursuing a career in meteorology was to take maths and physics, but I perversely chose to go down the geography route as that was my best subject. I took four A-levels ... the others were maths, french and economics -- an odd combination for a meteorologist. What it did was to give me a broad education, a feel for language, and an ability to be critical ... all things which have stood me in good stead in the broadcasting and writing worlds. Too many scientists (not just meteorologists) become too narrowly specialised too early. That's probably where the "boffin" phenomenon comes from. These days, the Met Office no longer believe that a thorough grounding in maths and physics at the expense of everything else is necessary for all their staff, so if your maths isn't too hot there's still hope for you yet. 3) Have you ever experienced an extreme weather event? If so, what? Well, I've talked about some of the big snowfalls already. What else? Well, I worked in the Gulf area for a few years and when I was in Dubai one summer in the early-80s we had several days with a maximum temperature of 47ºC. I don't actually like hot weather at all, but at least in Dubai everything was air-conditioned -- home, office, car, sports centre, hotels, supermarkets, etc etc, so I didn't have to spend much time out in it. But I do have a vivid memory of crossing a large empty car-park made of black asphalt -- the heat radiating from that was unbelievable. Lowest temperature I ever experienced was in Aberdeen one January ... minus 19. Around the same time I also did some tours of duty on the oil rigs in the northern North Sea when the oil production platforms were being installed. I remember one New Year's Eve going out to do the 3-hourly weather observations in a fierce gale. Normally I'd take my whirling psychrometer and hand-held anemometer onto the heli-deck to make the measurements, but not that day -- I would have been blown away. In the end I had to make do with standing on the upper gangway on an exposed corner of the rig; I measured a sustained wind of 72 knots, gusting to 90 knots, and I was battered and soaked by vicious clouds of spray being torn off the top of the waves by the wind. We could actually estimate the wave height pretty accurately by looking at the legs of the production platform next to which our rig was working. Waves on that occasion averaged 30-32 feet high. That was scary. 4) We have a lot of 'snow-lovers' on our community, so here is the 'be all and end all' question!: Can you see this Winter being cold, average, or mild? Much snow? Well, we are certainly in a sequence of very "un-westerly" months at the moment. Whenever the westerlies come back, they get interrupted again after a week or ten days. If this continues -- and it's a big 'if' -- the coming winter should be an interesting one, although the chances of it being a historic snowy one are pretty small. The worst that could happen for snow-lovers, I suppose, is that it ends up being totally anticyclonic, like 1991-92 was. What I would say, however, is this. Whatever the underlying trend in the world climate, there is absolutely no reason at all why the synoptic patterns which produced famous cold winters like 1947 and 1963 couldn't happen again. And a winter with a mean temperature one or two degrees higher than 1963 would still be a very cold and very snowy one. My money's on 2007-8. 5) What do you find to be the biggest factor in producing a cold Winter in the UK? Northern Hemisphere snow cover? Solar activity? NAO? Ah, well I suppose I've just answered that. Snow cover over northern and central Europe is, of course, very important because that reduces the temperature of the lowest layer of the atmosphere ... and the really long winters have all been easterly, not northerly. I have not seen any research that persuades me that the variability in solar output has any impact on the synoptic patterns which produce our coldest weather. It is a branch of meteorology which has suffered severely over the last 75 years from being peopled by oddballs. Now, the NAO. It's important to remember that the NAO is simply an index of the strength of the circulation in our part of the hemisphere. It doesn't have a life of its own. The NAO index is a result of the sequence of synoptic patterns which make up a month, or a season, or a year, not the other way round. The synoptic patterns do not happen *because* the NAO is positive or negative; the NAO is positive or negative *because* of the synoptic patterns. On that basis, a very cold winter will inevitably be associated with a negative NAO index, but the NAO didn't cause the cold winter. 6) What did you make of the breaking of 100F this summer? A one-off synoptic situation? Climate change? Both, I suspect, although I don't *know* any more than anyone else does. Recent research has shown that extreme high temperatures in the UK are increasing at a rate of 0.7 degC per century. The 1990 record was 0.4 degC higher than the previous record in 1911, that's a rate of 0.5 degC per century. But the 2003 record was 1.5 degC higher than the 1990, and that's a rate of 11 degC per century!!!!! So I think that the synoptic detail had a considerable input on this occasion. I happened to be in France during that heatwave, and we had 11 straight days between 37 and 40ºC with night minus around 22-24ºC. It was an endurance rather than a holiday, and I can quite understand why so many people died from the heat there. 7) Who do you most look up to in the feild of meteorology/climatoligy, and why? The people I most look up to are long dead, so I can spare their blushes by naming them. Victorian trail-blazers like G.J Symons and James Glaisher I have immense admiration for ... they set up climatological networks, Symons's rainfall network was over 5000 strong (all voluntary observers) by the time he kicked the bucket, and he administered it, analysed the data (all by hand, remember, in those days), and published an annual volume, for over 40 years. In the 20th century I have tried to follow in the footsteps of Hubert Lamb and especially Gordon Manley, both superb writers on the subject, and also meticulous collaters and analysers of data. If any of these people had had computers to help with their work they would have been able to do so much more. If you've never heard of any of these guys, you should really spend one of those long winter weekends researching them -- they led fascinating lives and should be an inspiration to anyone interested in our weather and climate. As far as doing the weather on the radio is concerned, if I needed any advice there was only one person I would turn to, and that was Jack Scott, who, by the way, is still very much alive. Younger readers may not remember him ... he was the chief BBC telly forecaster from about 1967 to 1983, and went on to Thames TV until about 1988. Best regards Philip Eden Philip's book's can be found on amazon, some title's include: The Daily Telegraph Book of the Weather (New Century) Weatherwise: The "Sunday Telegraph" Companion to the British Weather and.... Weather Facts (DK Pockets) http://www.forbesbookclub.com/bookpage.asp...p?prod_cd=IHU4L http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/search...4531738-1717266 These links can (hopefully!) be used to access information on them. I would like to thank Philip for the time and effort he has put in for this interview....a round of applause for Philip Eden!

Basically, what we can do, is if anyone posts anything other than a report of snowfall, we remove it, and place it in an appropriate forum. Is that OK with everyone else? I think that we can let everybody off this time, it is our first thread Thanks for raising the point Crazy/TWS, I had'nt particularly noticed!

Current Conditions: Partly Cloudy Temperature: 6°C Feels Like: 4°C Dew Point: 2°C Humidity: 76% Wind: From the North at 8 km/h Visibility: Unlimited Barometer: 1,019.0 millibars and steady UV Index: 0 Minimal :lol:

Current Conditions: Mostly Cloudy Temperature: 8°C Feels Like: 5°C Dew Point: 5°C Humidity: 81% Wind: From the Northwest at 19 km/h Visibility: Unlimited Barometer: 1,023.0 millibars and steady UV Index: 1 Minimal Maxed out at 10c earlier today, still well below average for the time of year. I would expect temperatures like this in mid-late November.

Current Conditions: Partly Cloudy Temperature: 4°C Feels Like: 1°C Dew Point: 1°C Humidity: 81% Wind: From the West Northwest at 11 km/h Visibility: Unlimited Barometer: 1,025.1 millibars and steady UV Index: 0 Minimal After a very frosty start!

At 21:20 Current Conditions: Partly Cloudy Temperature: 3°C Feels Like: 0°C Dew Point: 1°C Humidity: 87% Wind: From the Northwest at 11 km/h Visibility: Unlimited Barometer: 1,025.1 millibars and steady UV Index: 0 Minimal

I think it's the 'lamp post' effect Ry, always makes it appear as though its snowing! :o

Explains why I saw snow today at 200m. The current Webcam from Dartmoor shows a covering of snow, albeit slight. Sleeting now in S.Wales. Only short bursts in longer peiods of rain though.

The snow/sleet has turned back to rain! Still, it was amazing for a 20 minutes or so, I'll try to get some picture's up.

Sleet/snow now! Alternating between the 2, predominantly sleet though.

Current Conditions: Light Rain Temperature: 4.5°C Feels Like: 1°C Dew Point: 3°C Humidity: 87% Wind: From the Northeast at 26 km/h Visibility: 6.0 kilometers Barometer: 1,005.1 millibars and steady UV Index: 1 Minimal

Current Conditions: Partly Cloudy Temperature: 3°C Feels Like: 1°C Dew Point: 2°C Humidity: 93% Wind: From the North Northwest at 8 km/h Visibility: Unlimited Barometer: 1,009.1 millibars and steady UV Index: 0 Minimal