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Winter 05/06 Summary-


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  • Location: Lee, London. SE12, 41 mts. 134.5 ft asl.
  • Weather Preferences: Cold, Snowy Weather
  • Location: Lee, London. SE12, 41 mts. 134.5 ft asl.

Afternoon all,

Steve M. great read as ever. The one aspect of your "Winter Ode" that stuck in my mind way back in November was that I didn`t realise how important the Greenland High was in working in tandem with a Scandi High in producing prolonged spells of cold weather for the British Isles. How prophetic your "Ode" was in relation to this winter. We finally saw a true Greenland High in the final days of Feb. & as we now know it produced some noteworthy snow & cold in some parts, notably N. & E. Scotland & parts of N.Ireland, N.Wales & N.W.England.

Shows what happens when you get a true GH & not a mid-Atlantic high ridging north. If only it occured a month earlier but I suppose conversely we might not have seen as much convection in inland parts due to lower temps.

We had four consecutive days of light flurries down here but wasn`t expecting anything anyway. `Twas ever the case with that kind of wind direction. Had we seen a direct northerly for the whole week it`s poss. we might have seen an elusive polar low.

The season as a whole certainly felt more wintry than it has done for quite a few years. Philip Edens` amazing stats. re. lack of double figure maxes in his part of the world bares testament to this. I don`t have any instrumentation here but even in S.E.London I don`t think there were many double figure maxes, certainly compared to recent years. The number of frosts down here was noteworthy too.

One really frustrating aspect of this winter, like so many in the last ten years, has been the failure of January yet again to produce anything really wintry. Statistically our coldest month & lying as it does in mid-winter, even with a weaker Atlantic than we`ve seen for some time it still couldn`t produce. Like last winter we came close again to seeing some bitter air arrive from the east only to see the northern arm of the jet have just enough strength to sink a Scandi High just when it looked likely to deliver. We`ve had to wait to late Feb/early March again to save the day, ( As someone said the other day, late Feb/ early March the "post even larger teapot").

One point I`d like to throw into the mix is that I felt that substantial snow cover allied with colder temps. arrived a little too late for my liking over Scandinavia this winter. Had this got more of a foot hold in December perhaps that weakish arm of the northern jet would not have been able to sink the Scandi high so easily, and perhaps it would conceivably have been able to ridge towards Iceland & Greenland, thereby driving bitter easterly winds right across the country as by that time Russia & E.Europe were bitterly cold as we know.

What do you guys think about that theory?

Although a frustrating winter on the whole, it`s certainly been interesting synoptically.

Anyway guys & gals it`s been great fun reading all your comments & sharing the rollercoaster of emotions with you. Group hugs & huddles. B)

Ci vediamo prossimo inverno. ( See you next winter ).

Regards,

Tom.

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