scotland Scotland Regional Discussion 14th February 2013 >

[Buriedundersnow]

snow showing again on the 18z GFS for saturday

[LomondSnowstorm]

Latest N24 forecasts showing no snow anywhere in the NE on Sun? Just cold and grey which indicates they think cloud cover will prevent convection?

I don't have access to the skew-ts for the UKMO so perhaps their output looks different but I really do have a lot of trouble believing that. Certainly by Sunday evening at least the convective potential will be there. The GFS and UKMO are not dissimilar at face value so theoretically they shouldn't look too different on the ground either.

By 12pm Saturday you can already see the high and medium level clouds clearing on the NAE from the northeast:

[Buriedundersnow]

what a cracking GFS tonight the pub run has done its buisness again

[LomondSnowstorm]

I think we may end up with more cold than we bargained for:

A brief spell of -4C uppers on Tuesday before we return to -6/-8C uppers, temperatures by day struggling up to maybe 4-5C, frosts by night, snow cover permanent on the hills and often lying on the low ground too.

The previous CFS run is even worse, not budging the -6C uppers in any meaningful way until the very end of April:

March would probably end up averaging 2C (March 2006 was 2.4C so actually colder than this winter as a whole), April about 3.5C and we'd be plunged into a new Ice Age where NL would have to start importing Greenlandic straw just to keep the farm going

[Buriedundersnow]

120h fax chart looks interesting

[Sunny Leith]

RRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRAAAAAAAMMMPPP !

Extended NMM model on meteocenter:

http://www.meteocent...rope.html#model

Uppers at 6am on Monday are -14C with the -15C line just grazing the Aberdeen coast. Heavy showers Sunday afternoon onwards right down the east coast, getting into the central belt too. Currently northeast England is the hotspot with nearly 36 hours straight of heavy snow but much of eastern Scotland has showers for 24 hours from Sunday midday through to Monday. CAPE (basically index of likelihood of thunder) is pretty high out in the north Sea too as one would imagine with a 20C temperature gradient, so thundersnow possible in places.

I think this might be one to remember for a long time...

[Northernlights]

I think we may end up with more cold than we bargained for:

A brief spell of -4C uppers on Tuesday before we return to -6/-8C uppers, temperatures by day struggling up to maybe 4-5C, frosts by night, snow cover permanent on the hills and often lying on the low ground too.

The previous CFS run is even worse, not budging the -6C uppers in any meaningful way until the very end of April:

March would probably end up averaging 2C (March 2006 was 2.4C so actually colder than this winter as a whole), April about 3.5C and we'd be plunged into a new Ice Age where NL would have to start importing Greenlandic straw just to keep the farm going

Hi LS. Hope you are only joking but after last spring anything seems possible. Have to hope that positive thinking wins the day Most farmers are born optomists!!!!!

Edited March 7, 2013 by Northernlights

[Hairy Celt]

fair point but i wasnt looking to split this thread up just some people like looking through model threads aswell and some folk get confused looking through all the posts from south of the border because they dont really include scotland in alot of the comments

Fair comment too... not sure what you can do about that, although I'd guess most Scots looking into the forum would pretty quickly pick up on the Kilted thread and sus that the MT is very anglocentric. I like having this thread as a mix of model analysis with other posts and reckon it works most of the time; maybe it gets a bit hectic when there's some central belt snow but I quite like a spot of Irvine Welsh...

Is it me or is the forum about to crash again???

Just back from the north tonight, had a rather odd drive down Strath Halladale with a very gusty easterly to contend with along with suicidal deer. A pretty crap dreich daynotable only for the first ppn for err quite a while..

[LomondSnowstorm]

Hi LS. Hope you are only joking but after last spring anything seems possible.

I was at least joking about the Greenlandic straw

Partly joking about the severity of the cold, although both the ECM and the GFS have us signed up to being under the control of the Scandi trough for the next 8-10 days at least, which does take us a long way into March, since the ensemble mean stays cold right through to the end:

Even colder for Moray, and trying to find a run that could even be generously described as 'spring-like' would be a thankless task:

So on balance it looks as though March will come in below average, and probably by a considerable margin. The CFS raw charts are just for fun, but the ensemble based ones which are somewhat more useful keep Greenland heights in place right through to the start of April, which would indicate a continuation of well below average temperatures:

http://origin.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/people/sweaver/cfs_fcst/images1/wk3.wk4_20130306.z500.gif

and for April also signal below average (on today's runs at least)

It may well change of course but a cold spring is certainly the form horse at the moment.

[Snowplough33]

Can't copy it across on tablet, but there is still a feature on the 0z fax charts approaching the east coast on Sunday afternoon. NAE also showing something spilling out of Norway early Sunday (last frame if the 0z)

Edited March 8, 2013 by Snowplough33

[Guest]

Can't copy it across on tablet, but there is still a feature on the 0z fax charts approaching the east coast on Sunday afternoon. NAE also showing something spilling out of Norway early Sunday (last frame if the 0z)

Aye, that's the trough which has been appearing on the charts, it's still there on the FAX charts and looks set to hit the NE. I had to laugh at the MT last night, one of the NW team got a ticking off for posting up a chart showing East Lothian and not SE England. Never a mention when anyone posts up the French charts which chop off Scotland, yet the poster will say something about "look at this chart which shows x happening across the UK". Anyway, rant over, although I can understand why some people feel that the MT is SE biased, I was going to suggest that the MT is SE weighted rather than biased.

Current temperature is 2.7ºC with a dewpoint of 1.1ºC. It feels like a raw November's morning, with cold rain. This week has been like a whole year of weather, spring at the start, a very little taste of summer on Tuesday morning, autumnal for the past day or two and hopefully winter from today onwards.

[JoeShmoe]

MetO still not having any of it, dry and cold and grey, have to wonder what they are seeing in their low level models that we aren't? dry air, cloud cover, capping?

[Mandy Langlands]

Morning guys, off to Kinloch Rannoch this afternoon for our Tvr celtic gathering. What are the chances of a snow free weekend?

Hopeing theres a very SLIM chance so i can spend all weekend in the spa! x

[Northernlights]

Very cold here this morning with a strong east wind and currently 2c.However it is dry but overcast

[tempestwatch]

MetO still not having any of it, dry and cold and grey, have to wonder what they are seeing in their low level models that we aren't? dry air, cloud cover, capping?

Thats what I have seen too, very cold yes, but also very grey with only the chance of a few light snow showers near the east coast on Monday.

[Joe Bloggs]

MetO still not having any of it, dry and cold and grey, have to wonder what they are seeing in their low level models that we aren't? dry air, cloud cover, capping?

I'm baffled. The MetO have been known to underestimate snow potential for Eastern Scotland in an easterly flow, but this is ridiculous.

If they are picking up on something that is invisible to us amateurs, then fair play to them... ?

[Hairy Celt]

Very cold here this morning with a strong east wind and currently 2c.However it is dry but overcast

I could just <ctrl c> <ctrl p> that post for here. Be good to get the direction when the snow arrives, if it does...

[Benvironment]

Sleety mix up here this morning.

[Hawesy]

Morning all, dull grey and wet, 4.2c.

So, finally, after a long winter of disappointment locally, it looks highly likely we will have the low 850s (sub -10c, along with sub 520 thicknesses) required for snow for my location in an easterly set up, with a 36 hour window of opportunity starting from 12z Sunday, approx. And the MetO puts the kabosh on the whole thing by insisting it will be dry throughout (until Tuesday when slightly less cold air will have removed the accumulating snow threat here).

My money is on LS (no pressure there, mate!).

[Sunny Leith]

Whilst its quite possible this could end up being a dry-easterly for some of the technical reason described ... battle-weary kilters here are well aware how often the precipitation aspect of easterlies are mis-forecast by the met-office in particular.

I'd still be optimistic at this stage of seeing snow in Leith over the coming days, but we'll see. Certainly seems like March is going to drag out as a long cold one whatever the specifics.

Morning all, dull grey and wet, 4.2c.

So, finally, after a long winter of disappointment locally, it looks highly likely we will have the low 850s (sub -10c, along with sub 520 thicknesses) required for snow for my location in an easterly set up, with a 36 hour window of opportunity starting from 12z Sunday, approx. And the MetO puts the kabosh on the whole thing by insisting it will be dry throughout (until Tuesday when slightly less cold air will have removed the accumulating snow threat here).

My money is on LS (no pressure there, mate!).

You beat me to it there Hawsey, agreed !

[Ravelin]

Current weather here.....same as everyone else has posted this morning. The rain forecast hasn't hit yet, well not in Dyce at least, other than some light drizzle.

The forecast on the BBC news this morning contrasted somewhat with what the Met & BBC websites are showing, for Sunday at least. The TV forecast suggested snow showers down the length of the East coast on Sunday, although not in "disruptive" amounts..

[LomondSnowstorm]

I'm going to do a comparative look at the skew-ts because these cut to the nub of the whole convection issue. This is the skew-t for Albermarle in NE England from the easterly a few weeks ago that delivered a streamer here to give 1-2 inches and delivered 2-4 inches for parts of the northeast of England:

Cloud tops look to be about 600 hpa on the top one, around 700 hpa on the second one, so roughly 10,000-12,000 feet, with a very low cloud base.

Taking Edinburgh Airport at +66 hours:

Cloud tops look to be around 700 hpa again, maybe slightly lower but still reasonable for convection. Moreover if there's a trough embedded in the flow then you can end up with decent snowfall totals without the need for any great convectional soundings.

From the 6Z perhaps slightly more favourable, East Lothian sitting at slightly above 700 hpa, although cloud base is predicted to be somewhat higher than optimum with such low dewpoints.

Anyway, we're fortunate in that we do have a trough feature to contend with, which should enhance precipitation in any case and cause a lowering of the cloud base in itself:

Extended NMM has this hitting around 6-9pm, with upper air temperatures widely below -12C by this time, so the quality of snow is likely to be much better than normal in any case.

[JoeShmoe]

Great stuff LS, interesting latest N24 is now shoowing precip down the east coast on Sunday so maybe they are reading your output

Edited March 8, 2013 by JoeShmoe

[LomondSnowstorm]

Great stuff LS, interesting latest N24 is now shoowing precip down the east coast on Sunday so maybe they are reading your output

Cheers. It's going to be interesting at least, at some point the convective cut off point will come, probably around Monday morning sometime, and that will shut down the showers, but slight northward or southward corrections will prove crucial here.

Also, RJS has southeast Scotland down for 15cm on his map on the MT, though of course dependent on streamers, troughs etc. I think that might be a bit optimistic but if streamers do set up and the flow holds 6 inches is far from out of the question.

Edited March 8, 2013 by LomondSnowstorm

[Northernlights]

Whizzed round feeding/bedding the cattle this morning,really cold out there still only 3c and windy .All the animal models are saying bad weather on the way bird feeders swamped and emptied this morning, cows going round edge of neep field eating up old dried grass on the banks after eating their row of neeps, they don"t do this every day.Cats wailing at the window wanting to come in the house this morning woke us up . Mid afternoon and the restless wintering sheep (under one year old) are racing round and round the field doing their four feet off the ground jumps.Don"t think it is spring they are celebrating !

Edited March 8, 2013 by Northernlights