Sunny Leith

If I'm being cynical, it co-relates with the current end of their own cold spell. If its not happening down there, then they don't give a monkeys.

Yes. Seriously though, does no-one in that organisation actually read warnings before they go out, to see if it makes logical sense ! Met report just in from my in-law (ahem) observers in the higher part of town (Liberton, Gracemeount) Having cleared the car/driveway by last night, they called to say another inch has fallen on those surfaces. I can confidently translate that to mean in reality another fresh centimetre (they don't do metric)

Now throwing them out fast and furious. Looks like ass-covering for tomorrow so they can clock off at mid-day today and head to the pub Edit: very very light snow here, adds to the feel of the day if not the snow cover !

I'm philosophical if it happens...even the metoffice get it right sometimes LOL. But I'm not really buying it. Uppers may get a bit higher than we've had this past week , and possible that surface temperatures could be higher than we've had for a few days in these parts . But up to what ... 3 or 4c ? The ground is freezing now. The worst case to me is looking like some mushing of the snow cover that could change it from its current pristine state to a crustier, patchier scene when it re-freezes and the next cold setup takes over. If I had to place a bet with myself, then I expect to be looking out of my window and still seeing todays white on the ground (on the grass at least, in some form or another) somewhere in my field of vision come Saturday/Sunday. I can guarantee the 6 foot 8 snowman we made will still be there anyway !

Visited the NorthEast England thread about 30 minutes ago. Reports of the event ranging from dissipating/snizzle, to freezing rain, to 5 cms or so of snow. So a good chance for many of us in East/Central areas to land something during the day. And with no negative effect on snow cover whatever happens (Xmas Day itself must be preserved at all costs !) Eyes to the skys, noses to the radar and good luck !

Yup, looks like there could even be a bonus dusting through the central/lanarkshire corridor as well. This spell is making me nostaglic for the late 70s/early-mid 80.... just lots of cold stuff and crazy little events happening all the time. A real reminder of what winter can be like at these latitudes, even in Scotland.

Either a horrid recording error or the wackiest inversion to end all wacky inversions !

Same here in Leith (well its East Embra isn't it). Light powdery stuff falling into minus quite-a-lot degrees centigrade. Positively continental ! Winds are very light so doesn't look like we'll get any unwanted local warming from the estuary That ticks another 2 boxes here to add to the catalogue of this brilliant cold spell. Day 8 of snow falling (consecutive days) Snow has attacked us from the East, the North, the West, the South-West. the North (again) and now the South-East. Don't know how much we'll get from all of this but its just another Xmas-Eve bonus. Edit: getting heavier...

Couldn't help myself, went to the NorthEast England thread... Theres not surprisingly been - and is currently - some snow activity from the band. Some debate as to whether its thinning a little and slowing down. Or not. Worth keeping an eye on anyway...

They changed the report to freezing fog, so yeah, case closed !

I'm sure your right CMD. I suppose I expected the radar to tell fog and precip apart but I'm sure snow-like grains can come out of heavy freezing fog.

Interesting midnight report from Glasgow airport of snow shower at -5c. Backed up by a couple of small but bright radar echo's to the south of Paisley and Glasgow. Unexpected. Anyway, carry on !

Its amzing how many "showers", "wintry showers" and "wintry mixes" we've had up here this past week courtesy of the met-office and the data they supply to the TV and media outlets. As you observe, some of this has even been seen to fall as outright snow in some areas

To concur with LS, at some point in the last 10-20 years (and I can't remember when...maybe its been gradual) ... the metoffice/bbc weather have taken it more and more upon themselves to double up as travel advisors ... "drive carefull out there, roads in yorkshire will be icy in the morning" kind of thing. All good and well I suppose, I can see the sense in them taking some of that role upon themselves... ..but if they're going to do that then the impact of getting their underlying forecast wrong becomes more deeply frustrating. If people get to depend on the MO/Beeb for travel advice as part of the weather forecast, then things can come badly unstuck. My wife drives to Wishaw and back every day. This last week that means driving up and across the mate/Harthill/North Lanarkshire tundra. When she went to bed last night, there was absolutely NO advance indication or warning of this mornings blizzard (and in local terms thats exactly what it was). Luckily it struck here before she would have normally left - and looking at the 6AM whiteout she knew it wasn't going to happen. However if it had come later - with no warning - she could have been 20-30 minutes into her drive , and then put in a very dangerous situation heading out to the mate. All the met-office had to do, was to be as diligent as many on here ... and you were one of several people here making the forecast that proved to be ultimately spot-on. Consequently I'm basing my advice to her tomorrow on what I can see and interpret from here. Theres more insight, local knowledge and plain common-sense on here, than I'm going to get from the MO/BBC

I would imagine that a bunch of grapes (for example) would freeze quite rapidly at that temperature

Its utterly utterly perverse CMD ! It makes no sense to issue warnings for ice tonight as the met-office have currently done for virtually all of England, Wales and Northern Ireland ... and to NOT do exactly the same for Scotland for all the same reasons... I'm not being the touchy Scot here. I'm being the" straight down the middle this makes no sense" Scot

Have you got snow cover with that cold FJ ? None too shabby and looks like you're -10c bound or lower !

I expect it to go up a bit , down a bit, up a bit, down a bit. I wouldn't even be certain thats its the exact temperature over the whole field.... Overall though it'll go more down than up and I'll stick with -12c as a likely overnight minimum. Little bit of patchy cloud though or a bit more wind could prevent even that (althouh its 100% cloudless looking out over town) And I guess even now the ground under the snow still has some residual autumnal warmth (relative to the snow cover) ... maybe that puts a limit on things just now. I don't know how the thermal dynamics would work TBH ! Pity theres a possible relative warming by the weekend, we rarely get a chance to test what would happen in these situations of night after night severe frost and the minima that could lead to over a few days of cooling and cooling and cooling. I wonder how many days and nights like this (purely sepeculatively..) would we need to have before Embra or Glasgow would post -20c or -25c airport temperatures ?

10PM report from Edinburgh now says -11c .. going through the floor. Record there I think is -17c ???? Don't really expect to match or break that ... but its possible they could post the coldest minimum of the last 15 years or so .. think it got to -14c or -15c in the baltic late December 1995 spell (and with a lot less snow cover here at that time).

And Embra reporting -9c just now. Should be a no-brainer for forecasters to predict -10c or worse (wouldn't be surprised to see Embra or Glasgow hit -12c) 55 degrees north ... 10cm+ of snow cover ... light winds ... clear skies ... almost 18 hours of darkness... I think a lot of these predictions are "automated" forecasts ie a real met-person never even gets near the forecast.

<SARCASM>I'm sure the metoffice are on the case and will either issue warnings during or after any snow event, or more likely just not mention it at all.</SARCASM> I don't want to sound too sycophantic about NetWeather - and I'm only on here when its snowing LOL - but if I want to know whats likely to happen during this spell at a local level , then I'm going to come here to get the scoop. BBC Scotland/metoffice just haven't done accurate local forecasting up here during this spell. Edit: if anything was to come this way tomorrow (and I'm uncertain... but as last night showed I know nuffink !) then it would be another remarkable feature of this spell. Snow would have fallen here arriving from the E, the N, the SW, the W, the N again ... and then maybe from the SE. Incredible !As well as giving 8 consecutive days with snow falling. Remarkable !

In saying that though Snow1975, you are 130 metres ASL so I guess that might be the reason why in this case.. You're probably making up for it in windchill though !

Exactly SP33 ... I'd expect the gritters to pass the buck to the metoffice. They probably act on metoffice advice/warnings. If thats not forthcoming then they're not to blame ... at the end of the day they're truck drivers, not weatherforecasters

Not going down the nostalgia route on this cold spell, sufficient to say though from an Embra/Leith perspective, this is the best snow since 1993. The "worst in 20 years" comment is a typical knee-jerk media/political number that gets pulled out of the air ... the public mostly won't question it ... and only us anoraks will quibble ! So I'll let it go. Whats fascinating to me now is whether the current snow cover can or will survive any weekend (ahem) "warm up". I've seen snow survive it before to a reasonable degree and it'll be very late 70's/early-mid 80's era-ish if it does. The uppers might be warmer by then but ground-level will be well frozen. The windflow flow from the hypothesized low pressure looks to be fairly slack ... hardly a raging south-westerly. We might even have frosts - or some fogging up - and with the best part of 17-18 hours of darkness that'll keep any thaw mostly to the daytime. Doesn't look too wet either. Quite possible we could come out of the weekend with a degraded snow-cover that then freezes up after the (ahem) warm-up is displaced by the next cold setup. All conjecture of course. But this spell does have the capacity to last for another 10 to 14 days. It would be quite something to then point to the by-then frozen crust of todays lovely powder snow (by then it might form a crusty undercoat to a subsequent snowfall) and say "yeah that stuff is about 3 weeks old". This would be another element in what may mark this spell down as memorable ... not just the fact that its been so widespread ... but the fact that it may have continuity of snow cover over 3 or 4 weeks. That would be remarkable compared to the winters of the past 10-15 years !

Scottish metoffce woman pulling her punches even just there on todays forecast at the end of the BBC Scotland news. Just using the generic "showers" (not even the old standby of "wintry showers" LOL) for today and Xmas day. So that covers all eventualities as usual.... Not trusting their minimums for tonight either. If skys clear I'd expect -10 in Embra as well as Glasgow. There is a sheet of high cloud though just now though so time will tell as the day wears on.