Is cold weather making a comeback?

[Freeze]

 In Absence of True Seasons of course it is, the only poster who is obsessed with the end of humanity lol

[danm]

Don't we have a climate change thread where people can thrash out their end of humanity vs nothing to see her guv points of view?

 

[In Absence of True Seasons]

 Sceptilli0naire haha. I thought I recognised your writing style

[currents]

3 hours ago, Sceptilli0naire said:

We're at the point where we have to accept a basic nature about humanity, and that is the loudest person is generally seen as the correct one, not the one with the most logical or factually correct argument. While scientists, politicians, online figures etc. try to remain civil, deniers, disinfo agents and the far right are free to shout with no opposition. It's time we embraced the shaved-chimp nature of humanity and started shouting louder than the deniers, far right, capitalists etc.. That's the only way anything will change.

Okay, fair enough, you've won me over with this quote 

[currents]

Anyway, shall we return to the topic at hand 

[LetItSnow]

Some fantastic and informative writings in here, genuinely, no sarcasm, but it’s best saved for the CC section where you can really sink your teeth into it. Ignore the criticisms you get @Sceptilli0naire 

 

Having said that, back to the topic at hand and - no. The same thread was started a couple of years ago and the answer was the same as now. Interdecadal variation will still occur but winter isn’t really making a comeback. My own stats (from my good memory) show that down here the days with falling snow are usually about 1-4 times a year and haven’t increased in the past few years. I mean this politely but it’s a bit of a nowhere thread. 

[Daniel*]

Well I’ve definitely noticed harder frosts in recent years than I experienced in much of 2010s. Nothing has beaten that rotten period from late 2013 to early 2018 where I had no more than a dusting. Virtually 5 years without any proper cold spell.Dec 2017 that gave North London a fair bit but next to nothing mostly rain south of Thames. 

[LetItSnow]

 Daniel* Was great on the North Downs though and that was south of the Thames. Got pasted as snow turned to rain and settled with large accumulations. 

[SiGh]

 LetItSnow

"I mean this politely but it’s a bit of a nowhere thread."

Yes, it is, i suppose, as Winter is here as it is every year, but its weather just varies over periods of years, for our climate.

[Daniel*]

Just now, LetItSnow said:

Was great on the North Downs though and that was south of the Thames. Got pasted as snow turned to rain and settled with large accumulations. 

My location is a much better proxy, sea level inner London, it takes much more than flimsy cold to deliver that was the mid 2010s the cold was largely polar maritime rubbish as far as I’m concerned. 

[reef]

 Daniel* Similar to here. Just one snowfall above 1.5cm since January 2013 and that was February 2021 (5.5cm).

Our cumulative snowfall since January 2013 has been 11cm. It has been truly dire in the last 12 years. That's less total lying snow in 12 years than January 2013 alone which had 15cm.

[LetItSnow]

 Daniel* I’m not disagreeing, I’m just saying it was a good spell for me.

[Metwatch]

The short answer is not really.

However for Scotland and maybe northern England could say there have been some better cold spells in recent few years compared to the "mid 2010s winter doldrum period" I like to call which @Daniel*mentioned above.

With deep snow cover and light winds which still seems to not be that difficult for Scotland / N Eng yet, night temperatures will easily plummet as we've seen in February 2021 and this month. However generally the cold is becoming less severe and prolonged compared to last century especially further south, with only the odd few months or cold spell being truly cold in recent decades, which were mostly in the 2009-2013 period.

Edited January 14 by Metwatch

[North-Easterly Blast]

 TheOgre In the grand scheme of things, winter 2017-18 was not a particularly cold one overall; by historical standards, statistically it was regarded as average overall, and I think it actually had a bit of everything in it.  I also think that Winter 2020-21 overall was a little below the averages for recent times, but still slightly milder than the older 1961-90 average.

[Harry233]

I’m inland and fairly rural in Scotland so much more prone to colder snaps. For me I think cold snaps are becoming shorter and less frequent here. I would say in terms of snowfall we have much less than we would’ve 20/30 years ago. Although I have noticed that there seems to be a rise of more brief, sudden cold snaps and then a rise to very mild conditions straight after. Recently winters have had very little snow. The last winter with any prolonged and significant snow was 2020/21. There has been snow every winter since then but it’s never lasted any longer than a few days. Back in the 1990’s and 2000’s even in the 2010’s it was fairly typical to have snow cover here for around two weeks some winters. I’d say in the last 10 years snowfall has become much rarer in winter here. Only 2017/18 and 2020/21 has seen significant snow here since then. Whereas every winter in the 2000’s bar 2001/02 and 2007/08 had seen at least one notable heavy snowfall.

[Harry233]

 Metwatch Definitely been a few really significant cold snaps here in recent years but they never lasted anywhere near as long as they would’ve done in the past. 

[SunChaser]

I think we've had a few alright winters on the trot, the last properly dire one was 2019/20 which is five years ago now, 23/24 was poor but nowhere near the levels of some of the worst weather we saw in the 2010s.

I think as the climate continues to warm and it becomes harder to get long-lasting cold synoptics, the actual window for proper cold will narrow (maybe late Dec to early Feb) and winters like 2020/21 will stick out as notably good. We'll have another 13/14 soon enough but it's all about luck, 3 months of constant lows will bring us another winter like that and it is noticeable over time that Atlantic air masses are getting milder.

On the other hand, while the weather definitely won't be getting colder long term, it's only a matter of time before we have another notably good period for snow and cold, like 2008-2013. Despite what people say it is still (and will be for a while) possible to get a month way colder than Dec 2022 or this month, we just haven't had the right synoptics. An April 2021 (or even June 2024) style month but in January would give us a month a lot closer to 2010.

[Frigid]

Though the winters as a whole aren't getting colder, I have noticed harsher frosts in the past few winters. IMBY btw, since Winter 2022/23 every winter has seen a low below -8C. Dec 2022 was quite exceptional with four ice days and a min of -11C, Jan 2024 saw a decent cold spell with a low of -8. And Jan 2025, this month saw another potent cold spell with three ice days and a low of -10C. To put it in context, from January 2011 to Dec 2022, there wasn't a temperature colder than -7C. It's entirely location specific, but some areas have seen some good winter weather in the past five years. 

[The PIT]

Last ten winters for here average temp. I think we can say no they are not getting colder. The average winter temp is 4.7C. The recent trend is for any cold spell to be over done with a stronger mild spell.

4.4C

5.9C

5.1C

3.8C

5.9C

5.8C

3.9C

5.6C

5.3C

6.1C

[summer blizzard]

I don't think that colder winters are returning however I think the recent predominance of mild and dry has made a mild winter 'feel' less warm relative to the 00's and late 1990's which saw strong zonality in the non-cool winters. 

 

[stewfox]

To answer the question

This winter so far would already been in top 30% of winters I've experienced for cold lying snow.

I can go back to the early 70s

Too many memories from members of months of snow etc back then 

I remember Dec 79 a teacher said it was snowing. Just as excited then as now as it was rare even then 

 

 

 

 

 

[Methuselah]

I haven't seen a single day of lying snow since February 2021!

[Bypass]

No surprise that we are having warmer winters because that is the case through France  and Germany . For over twenty years we have travelled regularly to  Bavaria Germany in the winter; winter tyres were necessary,  virtually compulsory but not any more. For example Munich's average January temperature is now plus 3.2C  back in the 1960s it was minus 2C. With no cold pool in our near continent we are far less likely to have cold winters and a 1.5C global rise seems to be unrepresentative  of the change in  Western Europe, especially the last fifteen years or so.

[Sceptilli0naire]

14 hours ago, SunChaserWales said:

23/24 was poor but nowhere near the levels of some of the worst weather we saw in the 2010s.

Hard disagree. 2023/24 was one of the worst winters overall of my life. 2021/22 was also just as bad as any [insert horrific 2010s winter here]. Yes January 2024 had that brief cold spell but aside from that it was completely devoid of winter at all, and February was the worst of my life, somehow even worse than 2020. It's not like December even remotely makes up for anything, as after that very brief cold spell right at the beginning, it was virtually as mild as December 2015 the whole way through.

I'm also going to be unpopular and say 2022/23 really wasn't that good overall aside from the cold snap in December. Yes we had that cold spell in January but most of that month sucked and February was only decent from a sunshine/rainfall perspective. In terms of being a winter month it's one of the worst ever as it was more like an average, albeit very dry March.

The only winter here in recent times that was remotely passable is 2020/21 with the prolonged colder temps over January and the snow in February. This winter so far has probably been the least bad since then, although if the rest of January and February are devoid of winter then 2022/23 will return to being the least bad since it.

The reason I put 2021/22 in the category of "avoid at all costs" is because of the total lack of any winter at all aside from the first week or so of December. We barely even got any frosts. Ok January might've ended up fairly close to average but it was like that all month. February was like 2023 more like March than anything else. We avoided a lot of the rain and garbage that further north got, although that windstorm did break our fence that we only put in the previous spring.

[Sceptilli0naire]

 Bypass This. Very true.

The warming of winters in the alpine region has been shocking.

Even in some of the mildest winters on record historically that could have passed for a winter today here, in most of central Europe they still got at least a good couple of weeks below zero every time.

Even some of the colder winters in the last 20 years really aren't all that much compared to what they used to get fairly regularly.

As you have pointed out, an overall global warming of 1.5°C has it's own positive feedbacks. The poles warm faster than the equator. A 1.5°C warming means the air to our north that often brings our cold spells is significantly warmer on average and has much less bite than it used to. So even if on average our winters have only warmed by about that much, in reality our cold snaps have already become a lot weaker than they once were. The opposite effect is true for summer heatwaves - The western Mediterranean is one of the disproportionally fastest-warming areas on the planet, so the air to the south of us is now notably warmer than it once was, which means along with the background warming, our heatwaves are now significantly stronger than they once were.