New Year 1994/95

[Thundery wintry showers]

There have been a couple of threads started during the past year about the northerly of 1 January 1995, which brought snowfalls to many areas:

http://www.wetterzentrale.de/archive/ra/19...00119950101.gif

Trouble is, my recollections of it in Tyne & Wear are somewhat confused. I originally assumed from the synoptic chart that it was one of those days when snow showers drifted aimlessly along the North Sea due to the NNW wind, but local stations did indeed report falling snow. I then recalled a day of heavy wet snow which didn't settle, but later realised that I was remembering 31 December 1994.

I'm aware that areas such as Aberdeen and Hedon (East Yorkshire) picked up sizeable snowfalls from it, but does anyone have any recollections from Tyne & Wear? It's not like me to mis-remember a snow event but it seems that I can't remember this one at all.

[Rollo]

I am unfortunately like yourself TWS in that my memories of that event are vague indeed-the only thing I can add is that being in business and the start of the January sale being very important I was always aware if the weather was going to hit things badly-to my best recollection whilst it was obviously cold there was no disruption at all from any meaningful snowfall in Newcastle.

[mackerel sky]

Have to admit i'm struggling to remember it too, I was definately at my parents house in Yarm home for Christmas from University.

Now I come to think of it - Whitby was badly affected - you had to be east of the Saltburn/Guisborough area to catch the majority of the showers on that NNW flow. In fact I think Whitby was completely cut off by road. The really deep snow only started at Birk Brow on the A171 moors road just east of Guisborough.

Yep definately remember it now - I took a drive out because I could see snow on Roseberry Topping about 8 miles away. The A171 was closed beyond a place called "Slapewath" about 2 miles east of Guisborough. West of Guisborough there was little or nothing at all.

Edited March 7, 2007 by mackerel sky

[Weather-history]

http://youtu.be/s_CWgmvI6Fg

[I remember Atlantic 252]

missing from recent winters, the class cheshire gap snow streamer, crap attempt on 16-18 Dec 11

[damianslaw]

Remember New Years Day 1995 being a cold one but not particularly snowy, perhaps a couple of cms at best. I went walking on the 2nd and remember it being bitter in the N wind with lots of powdery snow.

It was a short lived northerly blast - a toppler event with mild weather quickly steamrolling in, the rest of the month was mild and very wet with some snow on high ground but very little on low ground.

An average northerly blast in a poor winter for cold and snowy weather.

[Thundery wintry showers]

From memory plus my old weather records I have been able to place the weather for the event for Cleadon in Tyne and Wear. After a day of wet snow showers on 31st December 1994 and no accumulations, snow showers stayed out in the North Sea during the following night. During New Year's Day 1995, it was mostly dry and sunny with snow showers out at sea, but a cluster of snow showers moved south around mid-morning and gave about a centimetre or two (whether this was from snow showers that briefly crept inland, or the trough indicated on the BBC forecast, I'm not sure, but it may well have been the latter given the westerly component to the airflow). The odd snow shower also made it onshore that evening as the wind veered to more of a straight northerly, but generally speaking the Tyne and Wear area did not see much snow from the event. Indeed, depending on how organised those mid-morning snow showers were, some parts of the region might not have seen any snow cover at all.

Although this northerly did topple during the 2nd-4th January it wasn't quite your bog-standard 36-hour northerly toppler, the northerly airstream lasted for about 60 hours and some areas, notably NE Scotland, some eastern coastal parts of England and parts of the Cheshire Gap area, saw significant snowfalls from it. It is relatively unusual for Manchester to see significant lying snow from a northerly toppler for example but in Weather Log Ringway (Manchester Airport) reported 2 mornings with over 50% snow cover.