Cold Spell General Discussion

[Alex95]

If the easterly spell does come off, it is looking more north easterly than south easterly at first especially. Therefore I'd expect North east England, eastern Scotland and northern East Anglia to do best out of this spell. South west England could get fronts later on, so I'd say Northwest England, the west of Northern Ireland and South west Scotland to do the worst.

[kold weather]

Well the models certainly are very good, the general trend for a cold easterly looks just about nailed on now, how long it lasts and what happens next is up for debate. The easterly in question doesn't look the strongest, wintry showers in the SE look possible and overnight these could well be of snow as well I'd imagine but the north sea will play havoc at modifing the flow, hopefully a good cold shot will cool them right down.

Anyway firstly we have Friday to deal with, I'm still wiling to bet it'll locally be very cold in places, certainly one that may surprise a few people IMO.

[Frosty.]

I don't think ive ever seen a run with cold in the close range well beyond in FI!!

http://www.wzkarten.de/pics/Rtavn2162.png

Another crazy snow fest GFS run, it could still fail because the main goodies are still a week away which is an eternity in weather forecasting terms..pro forecasters still won't be drawn in yet but the evidence is piling up rapidly, even darren bett might have to concede defeat soon.

[Snowmadsam]

What about the western side of the country would see heavy snow as well??

[Vince]

no TWO hasn't crashed I can get on it any way

but lets remain on topic now...

hey!! ive been netweather here much longer than you , so less of the sarcasm please , i was asking the question .as for going off topic i didnt realise this was a heavily moderated thread . no wheres my old pal paul b ;-)

[Snow Queen one]

Only had a brief look at the models but dare I say we are slowly starting to see a clear trend with these models.

In summary it looks as though come Sun/Mon we are going to see an E,ly set in with possible wintry showers. However this is only the starter before the main course because from +144 +192 we see the main course tracking S down the North Sea and behind this is some bitter cold and where some serious snowfall could occur.

Who cares about the dessert!

But eye if this were to happen wouldn't it put your christmas plans in danger of being cancelled? Besides i will not allow you to keep my snow i have an industrial vacum cleaner pointed straight at your neck of the woods mwahaaaaa.

[kold weather]

To be fair I think most sites will struggle with this possible cold set-up!

Anyway the holy grail of getting cold is on some of the models, we could get a really cold ESE flow with an actual very cold 850pha temps as well, we've seen all those times where we've had temps at 1-2C with upper temps of 3-4C in a ESE flow before, imagine a proper cold set-up with that flow, thats how you get those maxes of -2/3/4C.

However we have a long way to go yet, for now I'm watching Friday and also the intial cold shot from the east on Saturday which could well see some wintry showers into the SE...we shall see!

I wonder how many of these threads we will get through in the next week or so!

[JamieUK]

Things are looking extremely good model wise, just hope everything can pull together and bring us one of the best winters in my life!

The weather forecaster on the sky news channel isn't too sure though. She thinks it will break down somewhat

[SP1986]

I think everyone can agree that if this northeasterly came off the northwest of England would probably be the worst in terms of prospect for now (assuming a battleground scenario may not occur until later), also it will be one of the coldest places, although I imagine a few temperature records would tumble in the southwest if the scenario occurred.

[glasgow-guy]

will the regional threads be back most will want to talk locally once things get going?

[Snowmadsam]

hope so glasgow guy!!

it's nice talking to people in the same regions as you!!

[Mark Bayley]

will the regional threads be back most will want to talk locally once things get going?

If anything like the models predicted then yes, otherwise we will go through a thread every 5mins

Dad didn't put a bet on white Christmas, hes thinking a mild wet one, we shall see

[k19]

Guys, Met check are still going for 6c+ next week. have they not updated? and does anyone expect this to continue until xmas day? possibly in north east?

[glasgow-guy]

hope so glasgow guy!!

it's nice talking to people in the same regions as you!!

its the most sensible way and the fairest for all concerned

[cyclonic happiness]

Wow!!! just got back from work and have just had a scout through all the models fully prepared for some sort of downgrade but to my shock, all seems well still

The only thing that worries me is that there is gonna be some sort of catastrophic backtrack, probably due to all the huge letdowns over the past 5-6 years.

Let's just hope we can get some long lasting snowfields so the temperatures can really plummet!!

[frostyjoe]

Guys, Met check are still going for 6c+ next week. have they not updated? and does anyone expect this to continue until xmas day? possibly in north east?

yes metcheck are forecasting that for me next week too if i was to go by the models id say 2-3c.... have they not updated????

[k19]

yes metcheck are forecasting that for me next week too if i was to go by the models id say 2-3c.... have they not updated????

The strange thing is, metcheck normally go by GFS charts or near enough, and it doesnt appear to be showing up on metcheck, so one of them hasnt updated, which is unclear

[cyclonic happiness]

I think we can all see now what proper Model Watching is all about, this site has been here for 7 years next February 27th and in all that time we have NEVER Seen a Possible Set-Up like what these charts are showing, it just goes to show what garbage and straw clutching we went through at times when the SW Dominated Winters gave us a 2-3 day cold snap and snow melting before Lunchtime once during January and a few times in February. I really hope this comes off because most of the members on here simply do not remember what real winter Cold spells are like, I am talking 78/79 - 1981 - 1982 - 1984 - 1986 - 1987 and 1991

These charts are reminiscent to the Archived charts from wetterzentrale that we gaze over and dream about our 14 days of snow on the ground and 10 foot drifts.

Just savour these and hope it does not all go pear shaped.

Paul S

I really feel that we have had a shift in the past 3 years in terms of synoptics, just as we had all got used to the "even larger teapot/summer" period, I think we are now in a different place, wet cool summers and cold winters.

Last winter marked the return of the traditional type winter.

I haven't seem anything like these sorts of charts since the eighties!!

[glasgow-guy]

The strange thing is, metcheck normally go by GFS charts or near enough, and it doesnt appear to be showing up on metcheck, so one of them hasnt updated, which is unclear

i hate metcheck best using the models on here

[Thundery wintry showers]

I think everyone can agree that if this northeasterly came off the northwest of England would probably be the worst in terms of prospect for now (assuming a battleground scenario may not occur until later), also it will be one of the coldest places, although I imagine a few temperature records would tumble in the southwest if the scenario occurred.

I agree. A trip through the Lancaster archives reveals that most cold spells brought about by an omega blcoking situation result in cold dry sunny weather and occasional flurries, although January 1985 had a number of light snowfalls there which resulted in about half of the month being snow-covered.

North-west England would need either a frontal battleground (which in itself is fraught with danger snow-wise- February 1979 had a number of those and they didn't deliver much to the Lancaster area) or a northerly plunge to arise as per some GFS FI scenarios with a polar low in the Irish Sea.

[Nick L]

i hate metcheck best using the models on here

Good advice that. Or if you don't know how to read the models use the Netweather forecasts.

[Paul Sherman]

Yes the regionals will most probably come back from some time on Sunday I would have thought

Paul S

[cyclonic happiness]

yes metcheck are forecasting that for me next week too if i was to go by the models id say 2-3c.... have they not updated????

Metcheck has been really weird the past few weeks, it's ok in the short term, showing reasonable temps and everything but, once you get out to the longer range it goes a bit silly, like showing easterlies with temps of 6-7'c and they are all the same throughout the run??!!!

I think they are having trouble with their data sources or something?

[nsrobins]

has TWO crashed cant seem to get on the site , it has been running very slow recently

Just very heavy traffic, Vince, as you'd expect.

We are trimming the edges and reducing less critical applications to maintain the service but with over 1000 online at any one time it's a bit of a strain!

Mind you, we're not the only ones who are busy

[kold weather]

The thing to remember is at the moment there are still ways that we could get nothing in the UK, esp if the Atlantic low is too strong and absorbs the shortwave before it can spread the cold air in, in thats situation we'd end up with a cold and wet situation which is not what we want at all!

I'm fuly expecting there will be a battleground situation at somepoint, just a matter of timing really!