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Winter 1990-91 The great December snowstorm/February freeze


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Posted
  • Location: Home: Chingford, London (NE). Work: London (C)
  • Weather Preferences: Winter: cold and snowy. Summer: hot and sunny
  • Location: Home: Chingford, London (NE). Work: London (C)
Posted
3 hours ago, damianslaw said:

Traditionally and statistically I think easterlies are more likely Feb onwards, more so in the spring, May is renowned for them.

Yep Spring easterlies are common, wasn’t sure about them being more common late in meteorological winter. I guess it makes sense.

Posted
  • Location: Hampshire
  • Weather Preferences: Warm-by-day sunny thundery summers , short cold snowy winters.
  • Location: Hampshire
Posted (edited)

 danm  The easterly lasted here until this very day  (10 Jan, also a Friday) in 1997 and was really intensely cold throughout that whole week. Dull damp weather with average temps arrived during the weekend of the 11th/12th, then the following week was sunny and frosty with (IIRC) max temps just a shade above the 61-90 norm but with very cold nights. The final 10 days were mostly cloudy with very average temps.

After that it became more average, but was never really mild in January and consequently Jan 1997 is one of the coldest Januaries since 1987 here, in fact only 2010 was colder. In Southampton the mean max in Jan 1997 was just 0.7C above that of 1979, presumably in 1979 there were a few short-lived spells of very mild weather which were entirely absent in 1997. Furthermore Jan 1997 had a colder mean max and overall mean temp than Dec 1981 - quite a remarkable stat if you think about it. The lack of any mild weather at all really helped Jan 1997's stats.

Really mild air didn't arrive until early in Feb, and the Feb was a big letdown: mild, dull and wet with constant Atlantic lows from around two days in. The fourth (of four) very poor (i.e. both mild and wet) Februaries within the 1989-1998 decade. By contrast 1979-1988 only featured one (1980).

As for 96/97 overall, I'd say unremarkable for the pre-AGW era, not a classic but considerably better than many other late 80s/90s winters.

Edited by Summer8906
Posted
  • Location: Hampshire
  • Weather Preferences: Warm-by-day sunny thundery summers , short cold snowy winters.
  • Location: Hampshire
Posted (edited)

 damianslaw These days though it seems February is the most westerly and Atlantic-influenced of all the winter months. 2020, 2022 and 2024 all being turbocharged zonalfests and 2023 was also frequently zonal despite higher pressure. Even 2021 had a very mild and Atlantic-influenced second half, and the first 5 days were mild and wet too IIRC: the cold episode being just one week long.

We have to go back to 2018 to find an at all "wintry" February!

Edited by Summer8906
Posted
  • Location: Hampshire
  • Weather Preferences: Warm-by-day sunny thundery summers , short cold snowy winters.
  • Location: Hampshire
Posted (edited)

 danm Also March doesn't seem to have particularly frequent easterlies. The period which seems to be very prone to blocking (northerly or easterly) seems to be April and around the first 20 days or so of May (and to a lesser extent, late May and the first half of June though it seems to be not uncommon to see "Atlantic" conditions over the late May bank holiday). Indeed I would suspect that N-lies and E-lies are more common than SW-lies in this period (certainly the extremely SW-ly early April last year seemed very unusual).

March often seems to be westerly though if you get lucky (and we often did between 1990-2014) pressure is high so you get a lot of nice early spring weather.

Edited by Summer8906
Posted
  • Location: Crawley
  • Location: Crawley
Posted

 danm didn't you do OK for snow in both January and December 2010? My point of view is if it's happened before then it will happen again and we will see a decent snowfall. Just very rare.

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