Scottish Cold Spell Discussion 6

[Mandy Langlands]

My father retired last year, he worked winter maintenance for 30 yrs salt does not work below zero.

[glasgow-guy]

its been a great few days for snow lovers all over Scotland. temps should remain cold enough to keep the snow we have now. next week looks set for round 2 of our snow fest i cant wait. for the moment I am taking a short break from netweather till at least sun when I will be back watching the charts.

have a happy Christmas everyone

glasgow-guy

Edited December 23, 2009 by glasgow-guy

[LomondSnowstorm]

its been a great few days for snow lovers all over Scotland. temps should remain cold enough to keep the snow we have now. next week looks set for round 2 of our snow fest i cant wait. for the moment I am taking a short break from netweather till at least sun when I will be back watching the charts.

have a happy Christmas everyone

glasgow-guy

Merry Christmas, GG! Not sure what will happen with you on Boxing Day morning, perhaps just a few sleety showers, perhaps some heavy snow, who knows at this moment! After that, the situation is marginal for snow again for a day or two after but there is a good chance of another blast of the cold after that. Tulloch Bridge has overtaken Loch Glascarnoch, -8.7C compared to -8.3C at 5pm. Edinburgh down to -3.6C, while we are still basking in -0.7C heat!

Happy Holidays all and hope for a -27.2C at Tulloch Bridge!

LS

[Mondy]

My father retired last year, he worked winter maintenance for 30 yrs salt does not work below zero.

A kettle of hot water does

[Methuselah]

Dalcross and Glasgow both at -5C...

[Ross B]

-4.7c

[Mondy]

Listening to Edinburgh ATC - seems ground control operators had earlier cleared the runway of snow and made a huge snow bank and now the pilots can't see where to takeoff LOL - you couldn't make it up!

[Methuselah]

Listening to Edinburgh ATC - seems ground control operators had earlier cleared the runway of snow and made a huge snow bank and now the pilots can't see where to takeoff LOL - you couldn't make it up!

Give a man a shovel and some snow, eh?

-4.7c

Thank you, Ross... :lol:

[snow1975]

Almost 31 years to the day:

Similar, but there are quite a few differences e.g. slightly stronger blocking over Greenland, lack of a Scandi trough etc.

What a great looking chart. I don't remember the weather in this spell, I was only 3 years old.

[Stuart]

all i can say it cold

[Scottish-Irish Skier]

A kettle of hot water does

Of course salt works, but obviously the colder it gets, the more you need.

For -5 C, you need ~8 wt% in water (i.e. 8 parts salt to 92 water) to keep it all melted. That is already a lot of salt.

Below -21, it will not work; everything will be solid (e.g. solid salt + ice up to ~38 wt% salt).

Of course the salt is gritty too (and has some other rock minerals in it) and this helps grip.

In most cold/snowy countries (e.g. scandinavia), they don't bother salting, they just pack the snow down and ask people to put on snow chains.

(Chemical Engineer by Trade)

[Methuselah]

Thanks for clearing that up for us, SS...

[Snowplough33]

What a great looking chart. I don't remember the weather in this spell, I was only 3 years old.

Same for me, I was only 2

[Ross B]

Did anybody see the reporting scotland forecast there? i caught the last 2 seconds of it but it looked as if they were making more of the snow showers tomorrow than the forecasts earlier today?

[Snowplough33]

Did anybody see the reporting scotland forecast there? i caught the last 2 seconds of it but it looked as if they were making more of the snow showers tomorrow than the forecasts earlier today?

Didn't see Reporting Scot Weather but the 1830 report for the UK had snow shaddows around the SE of scotland tomorrow pm, that was not on earlier forcasts.

Hate to rant, but all the talk of disruption and the councils not being prepared (as they would say) but not a word of the fact NO FORECAST at all!!!

[Mondy]

More from EDI..

Temps down to -7c there already and all pilots urged to take "extreme caution" on taxiway and runway due to icing. Guess after today's event at Prestwick, extreme caution is good phrase to use!

...or they end up like my avatar

[Guest]

Did anybody see the reporting scotland forecast there? i caught the last 2 seconds of it but it looked as if they were making more of the snow showers tomorrow than the forecasts earlier today?

They seemed to bring a few snow flurries in later in the day, especially in the SE. Also showed milder weather after Xmas with rain for most on Boxing Day. Surely freezing rain at the worst with the ground being ever so slightly chilled??

[Blizzardo]

Did anybody see the reporting scotland forecast there? i caught the last 2 seconds of it but it looked as if they were making more of the snow showers tomorrow than the forecasts earlier today?

The little low that is moving north east and is running on a line from North Wales across to Manchester should reach the Borders before lunchtime tomorrow but I would think that it depends how much punch it still has left. Its a mixture of rain, sleet and snow down south but due to our surface temperatures, and indeed uppper air temps, would be snow for Scotland. The latest fax shows that it should cross parts of Southern Scotland before moving into the North Sea.

[NorthernRab]

Temperatures falling away across Lochaber and Wester Ross, -11'C at Loch Glascarnoch and -10'C at Tulloch Bridge! -8'C in my back garden, coldest night of the winter so far to come I think!

[Sunny Leith]

Not going down the nostalgia route on this cold spell, sufficient to say though from an Embra/Leith perspective, this is the best snow since 1993. The "worst in 20 years" comment is a typical knee-jerk media/political number that gets pulled out of the air ... the public mostly won't question it ... and only us anoraks will quibble ! So I'll let it go.

Whats fascinating to me now is whether the current snow cover can or will survive any weekend (ahem) "warm up". I've seen snow survive it before to a reasonable degree and it'll be very late 70's/early-mid 80's era-ish if it does. The uppers might be warmer by then but ground-level will be well frozen. The windflow flow from the hypothesized low pressure looks to be fairly slack ... hardly a raging south-westerly. We might even have frosts - or some fogging up - and with the best part of 17-18 hours of darkness that'll keep any thaw mostly to the daytime. Doesn't look too wet either. Quite possible we could come out of the weekend with a degraded snow-cover that then freezes up after the (ahem) warm-up is displaced by the next cold setup.

All conjecture of course. But this spell does have the capacity to last for another 10 to 14 days. It would be quite something to then point to the by-then frozen crust of todays lovely powder snow (by then it might form a crusty undercoat to a subsequent snowfall) and say "yeah that stuff is about 3 weeks old". This would be another element in what may mark this spell down as memorable ... not just the fact that its been so widespread ... but the fact that it may have continuity of snow cover over 3 or 4 weeks. That would be remarkable compared to the winters of the past 10-15 years !

Edited December 23, 2009 by by-tor

[Guest]

The little low that is moving north east and is running on a line from North Wales across to Manchester should reach the Borders before lunchtime tomorrow but I would think that it depends how much punch it still has left. Its a mixture of rain, sleet and snow down south but due to our surface temperatures, and indeed uppper air temps, would be snow for Scotland. The latest fax shows that it should cross parts of Southern Scotland before moving into the North Sea.

The TAF for Glasgow Airport is forecasting light sleet showers tomorrow afternoon, so time will tell what happens. Certainly one to watch.

[Sunny Leith]

Didn't see Reporting Scot Weather but the 1830 report for the UK had snow shaddows around the SE of scotland tomorrow pm, that was not on earlier forcasts.

Hate to rant, but all the talk of disruption and the councils not being prepared (as they would say) but not a word of the fact NO FORECAST at all!!!

Exactly SP33 ... I'd expect the gritters to pass the buck to the metoffice. They probably act on metoffice advice/warnings. If thats not forthcoming then they're not to blame ... at the end of the day they're truck drivers, not weatherforecasters

Edited December 23, 2009 by by-tor

[Snowplough33]

Not going down the nostalgia route on this cold spell, sufficient to say though from an Embra/Leith perspective, this is the best snow since 1993. The "worst in 20 years" comment is a typical knee-jerk media/political number that gets pulled out of the air ... the public mostly won't question it ... and only us anoraks will quibble ! So I'll let it go.

Whats fascinating to me now is whether the current snow cover can or will survive any weekend (ahem) "warm up". I've seen snow survive it before to a reasonable degree and it'll be very late 70's/early-mid 80's era-ish if it does. The uppers might be warmer by then but ground-level will be well frozen. The windflow flow from the hypothesized low pressure looks to be fairly slack ... hardly a raging south-westerly. We might even have frosts - or some fogging up - and with the best part of 17-18 hours of darkness that'll keep any thaw mostly to the daytime. Doesn't look too wet either. Quite possible we could come out of the weekend with a degraded snow-cover that then freezes up after the (ahem) warm-up is displaced by the next cold setup.

All conjecture of course. But this spell does have the capacity to last for another 10 to 14 days. It would be quite something to then point to the by-then frozen crust of todays lovely powder snow (by then it might form a crusty undercoat to a subsequent snowfall) and say "yeah that stuff is about 3 weeks old". This would be another element in what may mark this spell down as memorable ... not just the fact that its been so widespread ... but the fact that it may have continuity of snow cover over 3 or 4 weeks. That would be remarkable compared to the winters of the past 10-15 years !

I also wonder if a cold spell of that length will have any effect on the remainder of winter this year. It must have some sort of cooling effect on the sea around us, which must effect the weather.

SP33

Edited December 23, 2009 by Snowplough33

[snow1975]

Only -0.3C here at the moment with still some cloud overhead.

-8C at Edinburgh airport!

[shuggee]

They've been repeating this 'worst in 20 years' line about the road conditions in Scotland ad nauseam on the BBC. It's certainly nowhere near as bad here as in 1993 (Braer Storm), 1995 (Christmas), 2001 (February) ... How would others rank this current spell for conditions in their area in general?

I am enjoying it though - just don't think it's particularly severe (yet).

I'd agree with by-tor. I've lived in Edinburgh since 1998 and never seen anything like it - so that's eleven years. I think because the central belt city centres have copped it, it's fair comment to say a decade or more.

Listening to Edinburgh ATC - seems ground control operators had earlier cleared the runway of snow and made a huge snow bank and now the pilots can't see where to takeoff LOL - you couldn't make it up!

Saw them this morning when passing on the train clearing the snow - the machines looked like combine harvesters making their way through icing on a Christmas cake. Lovely