The Enforcer

Have any of the hi-res models captured the current extensive shower/streamer pattern over the central Midlands northwards?

Under the moderate blue bit of the precipitation on the right where the streamer turns into a blob. Yes, it's light snow at 0.3C.

Another source of annoyance is how the bands of showers further north are capable of crossing the Pennines and Peak District so that they reach north-western areas of the North and the Midlands. Yet the showers coming in over The Wash, despite being heavier than those further North, are fading almost instantly even though I am pretty certain on the current trajectory there are no ranges of hills (it would pass to the north of the Chilterns) in the way to prevent it from reaching Central Southern England.

Some accumulations within a few miles to the east, north, south and west of here. Like every other recent Easterly.

That explains the direction of travel, but it doesn't explain why several streams of showers quite close together change into only three bands across the entire country.

Why does the shower pattern change so much from Monday into Tuesday? The former has a much fairer spread of showers.

Where on earth are all the showers? What is the point in getting colder uppers if that is all they achieve?

Now there's a thought for the NW Merchandise Dept: "Get your NW Flashlight here - for when a cool LED lampost just isn't enough."

For some reason a further drop of 0.1C has made all the difference turned to wet snow on 1.7C and now = 1.5C. Temperature drop of 2.7C in an hour, but you can see how that 20-25m has cost us at least half an hour of potential snowfall.

I thought you had twice the altitude up on Headington Hill. Dropped another degree in the last 20 minutes = 1.8C, still wet rather than white.

Never occurred to me that Broad Street in Oxford City Centre, close to the River Thames would have a 20-25 metre higher elevation than where I am (5-10 miles south, close to the River Thames). Makes all the difference even negating the urban heat island compared with my edge of town/50 metres from the countryside location.

Hi, what temperature are you recording to get that? And remind me of your height ASL?

1C drop in less than 25mins = 2.9C in the heavy precipitation now. Still rain, obviously.

North-eastern corner has breached 4C as of 11pm = 3.9C.

Do any of the short-range H-Res models (ICON/Arome/Arpege/Harmonie/UKV/NMM/EURO4/Hirlam/Net-WX) actually have this modelled correctly in their latest outputs for this timescale? Because if none of them do, then there is little point worrying about the exact detail of what they are/are not showing over the coming days.

Still 4.2C here.

If the colder air is supposed to be coming in from the NE, why is there a large area of rain in the SE corner with a band of snow further west?

Banished to the north-eastern corner of the room sporting a dunce hat.

I had forgotten about that, but impressed you remembered the December 2010 easterly fail. I remember your response to my astonishment at my location (and others further East) being in the same narrow 'green' corridor on the warning maps for three consecutive days whereas areas on either side were yellow/orange as it being like rolling a die (where anything other than one gets you a covering) three times and getting three 'one's'. Had it not been for the small Low/trough feature approaching from the south-west on18 December (which was only forecasted to go north of the M4 about 12 hours beforehand, we would have got nothing from that cold spell. March 2018 was an equally crap Easterly where what little snow we did get was too powdery and simply got blown against the sides of buildings and down cracks in pavements. The only accumulation we got from that was once the frontal snow tried to move in and even then 10 December 2017 was a better accumulation.

Classic example of the random nature of precipitation forecasts from Easterlies: 1. Snow wrapping all the way around, yet somehow avoiding, Oxfordshire; and 2. More snow in Devon than in Lincolnshire (for TWS).

Yes we seem to be far enough East for snow from Mon-Weds, but not Sunday. It worries me that we get within 24 hours and the warning area retreats eastward again. Having said that these shouldn't be taken as gospel and there is plenty of other model evidence showing snow outside of the current warning areas. The warnings should really take a more hollistic view than being based on one or two select model outputs that could be at one or other extremety of the range.

Why must that E-W boundary have that kink in it, which takes out most of Oxfordshire, when counties both north and south are included?

Another reference in the MOD thread to 'only' 5 inches, for goodness sake.

Plenty of 'snowflation' going on in the MOD thread.

*Added Arpege, which came out just after ICON.