London & Se Cold Spell Discussion

[The Weather Yoda]

Seriously people...theres a lot of glass half empties out there at the moment

Go to bed and lets see who was right in the morning.

And the answer was.....Steve M.

Hard to predict I know, but to still be predicting up to 20cms for the south east at 12:30am on weatherview when it was obvious to everyone on here it would barely be 2cms is pretty poor.

I suggest everyone turns off their computer and actually goes outside to enjoy the snow today before it all turns into a slushy mess. Or you could just spend the rest of the day indoors hopelessly looking at radar screens and whinging about how rubbish the Met Office/BBC/snow melt/lack of sledges* is. Your choice...

* delete as applicable

[multitracker]

Raining heavy here now, begining to wash all snow away.

[k66yla]

Snow Schmow how bad is it in Chartham?, my son is due to go back there today from Maidstone on the train. If they are running

Edited January 10, 2010 by k66yla

[Iceberg]

For you lot in the SE, the precip seems to have spent so long over the north sea, there has been considerable modification of the boundary layer causing rain, this will take maybe as much as 30-50 miles or so before modifying back enough for snow, there will be less modification with a much shorter sea track, but atm that's not where the precip is coming from !.

The warm up of the boundary layer should be less with the higher precip rates.

[The Weather Yoda]

Snow Schmow how bad is it in Chartham?, my son is due to go back there today from Maidstone on the train. If they are running

Probably about six inches on the virginal untouched areas, but most of the main roads are clear, particularly down the bottom by the station.

Oh and the trains were running yesterday but a very limited service

Edited January 10, 2010 by Snow Schmow

[malc]

Quite a rapid thaw in Ashingdon. The lack of snow last night didnt suprise me but the thaw this morning has.

Suddenly feels like it is all over! And the Met hadn't forecast that either.

[Tomo]

Well looking at all of the charts for the comming week it would seem that Reading area will see a slow thaw with very little precipitation . But we had a great snow week so i am not too dissapointed when i looked out this morning and saw just a light dusting. We are only into the second week on January so i am sure we will will have further fun to come in the the next couple of months.

[nanu]

For you lot in the SE, the precip seems to have spent so long over the north sea, there has been considerable modification of the boundary layer causing rain, this will take maybe as much as 30-50 miles or so before modifying back enough for snow, there will be less modification with a much shorter sea track, but atm that's not where the precip is coming from !.

The warm up of the boundary layer should be less with the higher precip rates.

thats the problem.. i am 50 miles inland away from coast and it is raining... not even a sign of the odd flake with this rain. strange!! oh well.

[warrenb]

A fair old thaw going on here in Tonbridge as well. Total mess up in the forecast.

[zAiN]

Hmmm forcast last night said up to 20cm last night woke up to 0cm and what we did have is melting very very fast... whoopsie sky news, whoopsie bbc weather!

[snowfish]

A fair old thaw going on here in Tonbridge as well. Total mess up in the forecast.

Light Snow Here! Very disappointed though as are a lot on here about the forecast from BBC and Sky last night - still, it happens (the weather that is) and wise words about switching off radars and GETTING OUT THERE before it melts proper! Got mates coming over today and we are going sledging! lol!

Edited January 10, 2010 by snowfish

[Great Plum]

Occasional light bits of sleety rain... the temp up to around 1c so bits of dripping etc... Not what I was expecting!

[tomavenell]

note to self. Dont bother watching BBC forcasts, they have failed all week. Better off on here

[staplehurst]

What a complete and utter shambles. I am not too annoyed I didn't see anymore snow last night, but what annoyed me is the way that BBC, MetO and Sky were still harking about 15cm more to come in the SE and 2-5cm in London all the way through the night when it was very clear it wasn't going to happen! I can't believe how inaccurate they have been in the last 24 hours. The early warning for the SE was due until 23:59 today but I see the MetO have finally removed this a lot earlier.

So, I end this cold spell with 23cm of snow - not bad! But it appears to be thawing quicker today as temps and dewpoint are now above freezing!

[winterfreak]

A fair old thaw going on here in Tonbridge as well. Total mess up in the forecast.

We were in the 15/20cm sweet spot bracket too, weren't we Warren? What a load of old sheet!!!

[Buckster]

impressive thaw going on here !

[Lazarus]

I found an explanation of the "Snow out of nowhere" thing that happened to us the past few days...

From Will Hand of alt.sci.weather..

"It is not showing on the radar because it is still developing aloft. It is an upper warm front and what is happening is that snow is falling and then evaporating. The evaporation will moisten (and cool) the atmosphere and eventually the snow will descend to the surface, so I would expect a sudden increase in radar activity in a few hours from now. This has been well signalled by the models which do have the correct dynamics and physics routines to do this quite well. As always meteorology is a 3-dimensional process and forecasters have to think in 4-D all the time! In the past without models such situations may have caught forecasters with their pants down as nothing is showing on surface reports and then all of a sudden - it's snowing!

Will

[honey*]

nothing here and seems to be thawing fairly fast

i pressume thats it folks

[White Christmas]

yes its snowing here again, thought i might get rain...but its defo snow

[Shunter]

Probably a 20% thaw overnight, and we are at 83m asl.

Snowing lightly now. Temp 0.9c DP -0.3c

[jojobut]

thawing here and now we got snow coming down!! Temp 0.6 Dew -0.8

[White Christmas]

short and sweet but got to be a good sign ( not rain)

[winterfreak]

Off topic I know but re forecasts. We are constantly being railroaded into beleiving that these so called experts will know what our weather will be like fifty years or so hence. They couldn't even forecast this event accurately in the preceding 12 hrs or so. It just highlights to me the complexity of our weather and shows complete arrogance by those 'experts' that tell us that they 'know' best.

They don't

[k66yla]

Just walked up the local shop on the way back it was what Neil South calls 'Heavy Snizzle'. Took some photos but can't find my usb lead at the mo

Edited January 10, 2010 by k66yla

[debbie_summer]

Same here maria, came straight down and looked like rain but when I checked it was definately snow.