The Midlands Regional Discussion - Part 6

[chelseagirl]

Just remember Northamptoners, you may have stolen the snow from us, but you owe us big time. Just remember that when it comes to next winter. LOL

I will consider that when we have stolen a few thunderstorms too!!!!!

[The Wolf]

Oh well thats it, game over! I'm off to bed miserable!

[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!

[NorthantsSnow]

to cap off a poor day the GFS 18z is dire

It is but I wouldn't read too much into it at this stage. If you look on the ensembles there is serious spread beyond day 5. I think the 18z will turn out to be one of the mildest solutions.

[Severe Siberian icy blast]

very heavy snow now, maybe the ppn will develop out of nothing like it did an hour ago over wolvs area?

[Polar Low]

Fantastic evening here in Newark, must be close to 3 inches of fresh snowfall on top of the snow left over from last week. Great night.

[Costa Del Fal]

It's rain.

Wow! How have I and Gord managed heavy snow and your about 100m higher than us! PPN must have been heavy by you too?

[scrote]

Where have the Northants posters gone? Surprised there's not more excitement at what's showing on the radar. It looks to me as though there's quite a bit of snow with our name on it over the next few hours, and heavy snow too!

4.3cm and rising

Edited February 9, 2012 by scrote

[NorthantsSnow]

Interestingly there is still some snow coming in off the North Sea! And it seems to be bucking the trend this lot by intensifying over Lincs. Any thoughts on this?

[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...020821_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...020909_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...020915_0900.gif

http://expert-images...020918_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.

[Costa Del Fal]

Still very fine snow here with Ice pellets. Radar shows some light ppn from the North still to pass through.

[stewfox]

Fantastic evening here in Newark, must be close to 3 inches of fresh snowfall on top of the snow left over from last week. Great night.

Ditto and still snowing

[klippieboo]

well that was the biggest let down i can remember worse than last week bring on spring !!!

[Costa Del Fal]

Yet again, the radar is suggesting intensification just before it reaches here.

[Zakos]

Interestingly there is still some snow coming in off the North Sea! And it seems to be bucking the trend this lot by intensifying over Lincs. Any thoughts on this?

yes im keeping my on this looks interesting. Whereabouts in northants are you? Ive got piles of the wite stuff here. Looks like the northamptonshire snow shield has turned into a snow plughole, directing all the snow towards us!!

[kmanmx]

Well its all over here in Leicester, it all keeps dieing out before it gets here, and the rest is slipping just south of us. got about 0.5 maybe 1cm of crappy snow. You know the crappy icey kind, not light fluffy snow, it's more like white colored hard crystals of ice that have built up. It is technically snow, but it just sucks. Hard to explain

Roll on winter 2012/2013.

What I have learnt tonight is that even forecasts updated throughout the night which are literally only predicting 1 or 2hours ahead of time can be totally and utterly wrong. The NMM performed diabolically today, and the NAE.. well the NAE needs a slap in the face too.

What has annoyed me most is parts of Nottingham got good snow and Northants got good snow. But between them two the very same blobs of ppn decided they would just hold it all in and not dump it over Leicester, can fully confirm Leicester snow shield back in operation running at about 85% efficiency.

Edited February 9, 2012 by kmanmx

[mackerel sky]

In fairness I've seen this quite a few times where the GFS was more accurate at +36-48hrs, then did a little dance only at the last minute to resort back to square one and something similar and more plausable. The Met Office hedge their bets, but I still don't understand how with any basic understanding they could have forecast heavy snow for the West Midlands. Most of it, until later would have been freezing rain or plain rain - so snow accumulations would have been limited regardless. Everywhere has a serious ice risk, thats a given. The precipitation charts 48 hours ago represent what has happened tonight, oh and the 12z (well done the 12z, thats like the "nowcast" page they used to have on Ceefax - only of use if you live in a dungeon).

Still snowing nicely here. Thankyou.

[Soma]

Yet again, the radar is suggesting intensification just before it reaches here.

I'll have the same as before please Blizzards -when you've finished with it of course

I'm grateful for that hefty shower earlier it has given a covering albeit a wet snow one at least I got to see something other than the awful drizzle from earlier tonight.

On a separate note nice to see NW big guns Kold and TEITS posting in our corner of the forum - very insightful they have been too!

[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!

Anyone??

[fordy]

Very poor evening here, the ppn split over the top off us as it traveled south leaving us in a dry slot between the two bands and then it intensified to the south and is now heading southwest. Did pretty well on Saturday though but half of the snow was gone by sunday afternoon and the rest gone by monday afternoon. Still could be worse im sure there are people that have had no snow at all from both events.

[mackerel sky]

Interestingly there is still some snow coming in off the North Sea! And it seems to be bucking the trend this lot by intensifying over Lincs. Any thoughts on this?

Don't know, but I spotted it also. Could keep things going right through the night!

[Vince Coombes]

Ditto and still snowing

hello , have been between the bands of snow this evening hence only around an inch here

aylesbury

bucks

[FreezeManiac]

hello , have been between the bands of snow this evening hence only around an inch here

aylesbury

bucks

Same, barely a cm - so much for 5-10cm

[snow freak]

i'm near northampton town centre. even here with all the traffic it must be a good 15cm and we already had lying snow still on the ground from last weekend. tonights snow has just refreshed everything. the snow keeps getting lighter and then getting heavy each time we think its all over. Huge flakes 10 mins ago

[Herefordweather]

Really heavy sleet in Hereford now. Definately a change happening. Shame its to late as it'll soon clear.