Significant Snow/Freezing Rain Risk - 9-10th February

[Cheshire Freeze]

Blimey the crawly bum licking going on in here is making me nauseous

:lol:

Well, very poor for the west midlands I'm afraid with steady light rain for most of the afternoon with 5 mins of freezing rain....Mr Ian Brown would be proud...lol

I think my pessimism was warranted lol

[Heisenberg]

what was that someone said earlier, that the SE was ramping??

Been coming down for a good few hours. Very heavy at times and got a good covering.....Met and BBC didnt see it coming when lots on here did. Mad really considering the high power servers they have.....All they needed was a look at the netweather radar.

[Zakos]

Don't mean to blow my own trumpet, but I forecast this yesterday and people were arguing at me saying further west is best, WRONG!

I did aswell, good that you did too. Mind you, I wasn't expecting this much of a shift, where my area went from being snowless to being the centre of all the action! certainly would have had the heaviest snow well to my west.

Yes, the met get way to much praise for their worth on here. Some were criticising anyone who went against them saying yesterday how there all experts and have access to the latest high tech models blah blah etc. Well they were wrong and we right. plain and simple. Why on earth they adjusted the raw data (according to IanF) with a west bias is beyond me. Im also still waiting for a BBQ summer, and a mild winter, as this winter looks likely to be colder than average aswell.

Edited February 9, 2012 by Zakos

[Discombobulation Man]

There's a small 60mm/hr precipitation rate blob just SW of Birmingham, is that snow there or rain anyone able to confirm ?

[Garfmort]

TEITS guessed it right yesterday , part skill , and lot of luck , what i cant workout is that even at 6pm today , nowcast the bbc and met still ignored

all the signals that were showing from the radars , and lots of people on this site started to question their westerly bias . Hopefully there will be a serious look at

how the bbc and met office seem obsessed with their model output when they are so obviously wrong , and then a re so reluctant to update when proved wrong.

The peculiar thing is that they admit uncertainty in the build up to the event. Why don't they just get the radar up on the screen like we do, and show people where the rain is falling on the day? Afterall they broadcast live every half hour and it would be "reality weather" rather than a vague graphic. Could get ratings too.

[johnholmes]

The peculiar thing is that they admit uncertainty in the build up to the event. Why don't they just get the radar up on the screen like we do, and show people where the rain is falling on the day? Afterall they broadcast live every half hour and it would be "reality weather" rather than a vague graphic. Could get ratings too.

bnot a bad idea but I doubt they would do it, maybe worth a polite e mail as a suggestion?

[Higher Ground]

There's a small 60mm/hr precipitation rate blob just SW of Birmingham, is that snow there or rain anyone able to confirm ?

That was close to us, and we got a covering of snow out of it. Now back to freezing rain again. On the front steps which I'd cleared of snow a few days ago, we now have a triple layer of frozen rain (pellets) embedded in ice formed from freezing rain (i.e. froze on impact) with the covering of snow (grains/flakes) on top. Now being iced up with more freezing rain..... What a mess! A good old-fashioned foot of snow would be much better! By the way we have the benefit of altitude here so it's -2C

[stewfox]

There's a small 60mm/hr precipitation rate blob just SW of Birmingham, is that snow there or rain anyone able to confirm ?

Very heavy snow here

[Luton Weather]

Heavy snow forecast for Luton at 12am.

[Moisty]

We were talking in the office today and saying that every forecast on the BBC seems to contain the word 'uncertainty' these days.

[Higher Ground]

Very heavy snow here

Awesome - good to hear someone's got a pasting even if not me on this occasion (though at least we've got a dusting which i suppose it at least more than most)

[FreezeManiac]

What a shocking forecast

[cyclonic happiness]

We went straight through the middle of the two bands, at least we had a decent 11cm's on saturday, so I'm not gonna complain too much.

Would be nice if something happened to make the front pivot and dump snow where it was supposed to lol

[coram]

We went straight through the middle of the two bands, at least we had a decent 11cm's on saturday, so I'm not gonna complain too much.

Would be nice if something happened to make the front pivot and dump snow where it was supposed to lol

Never mind about that Cyclonic, could you please start posting on the ice and snow thread again.

[Interitus]

Something interesting at the moment, the ground level flow is totally opposite in direction to the upper flow. Generally southerly winds at the surface whilst the rain/snow moves from north to south.

[Stargazer]

Sleet has progressively turned to snow here and has finally started to settle (the road surface in particular is very wet). Still light but intensifying.

Edited February 10, 2012 by Stargazer

[Bristawl Si]

We were talking in the office today and saying that every forecast on the BBC seems to contain the word 'uncertainty' these days.

Basically, they're unaccountable to anyone.

[Dan the Man]

Errr I went out this evening at 5.30pm; watched the 5pm forecast on the BBC News Channel - completely nothing in the Three Counties nor London region. What the hell happened? Abysmal forecasting.

Edited February 9, 2012 by Dan the Man

[liam300]

Is it disintegrating near the south coast?

[snowintheforest]

Dont think so! I'm 2 1/2 miles from the beach and its still snowing here...rain today has it snowing here for at least another 3 hours....

[kold weather]

Going to be some serious questions asked I'd imagine in the Met Office over what went wrong with regards to the model forecast.

[TEITS]

Here is the reason why in my opinion it all went wrong.

I shall begin by looking back at last nights NAE because this is where it all went pearshaped due to the differences to the radar at that time.

http://expert-images.weatheronline.co.uk/daten/proficharts/en/nae/2012/02/08/basis18/ukuk/prec/12020821_0818.gif

During yesterday evening it was pretty clear the NAE had this wrong. The area of precip was much further SE with the rain across NE Scotland extending into the N Sea.

Moving onto this morning and the error from the NAE was even more noticeable.

http://expert-images.weatheronline.co.uk/daten/proficharts/en/nae/2012/02/09/basis00/ukuk/prec/12020909_0900.gif

The NAE suggested only light precip off the coast of NE England into the N Sea when infact it was much heavier and more widespread.

This is when the alarm bells should of been ringing!

http://expert-images.weatheronline.co.uk/daten/proficharts/en/nae/2012/02/09/basis00/ukuk/prec/12020915_0900.gif

http://expert-images.weatheronline.co.uk/daten/proficharts/en/nae/2012/02/09/basis00/ukuk/prec/12020918_0900.gif

The NAE suggested the heaviest precip would be towards the NW into N Ireland with only light precip into the N sea. This was wrong because at this stage the radar suggested a widespread area of rain extending well into the N Sea and lighter rain across the N/NW. So basically the models got it the wrong way round.

Now what the models suggested is they thought the heavier band of rain across the NW/N England would move SSW and bring heavy snow to W Midlands/E Wales. At the same time the models predicted only light precip across the E Midlands. They suggested this because according to the NAE only light precip would be over the N Sea. This is where the forecast went pearshaped because the area of across the N Sea was always going to move SSW and because this area was much more extensive it was inevitable this would bring more snow to the E Midlands than currently modelled. Now it isn't any coincidence that once the 12Z NAE got the precip about right the model was then forecasting more snow towards the E Midlands.

So in summary it all went wrong last night and not today. Due to this being further E this resulted in slightly warmer temps across the W and I believe some parts of Wales recorded 5/6C max temps. The area of snow that hit the E Midlands tonight was modelled wrongly because this area across the N Sea was always more widespread, heavier and further SE than the NAE predicted. The Pro forecasters got this wrong because for some reason they followed the models rather than the radar. If the NAE at +0 has the area of precipitation in the wrong place then you cannot base a forecast on the rest of the output. This is pretty much common sense and doesn't require much forecasting skills to realise this.

Im sure John H will defend the Met O but sorry you cannot defend this. Even at 1546 the Met O did not change the forecast from the morning for my region. They continued to predict only light flurries when a glance at the radar would of shown a huge area of precip extending SSW towards the E Midlands.

[Bristawl Si]

Going to be some serious questions asked I'd imagine in the Met Office over what went wrong with regards to the model forecast.

Not so sure - they appear to be accountable to no one quite frankly.

[Bottesford]

Wow watching that radar - so much precip going round us!

We've got alot of wet snow/sleet basically with a tiny accumulation on some surfaces. I could cycle home just now at full speed which is one bonus of lack of proper snow!

[leicsnow]

Does anyone think there is any luck for my location benefitting from any bands of precip again tonight? I want to put my mind at rest there before I hit the sack!