Scotland - Weather Chat

[SW Saltire]

Normally this warning would be very frustrating but I'm luckily well placed in Stirling to benefit

Snow that fell before is almost all still intact (just under 1cm I'd say). The latest heavy shower added a little to the overall cover. The sun has melted some snow though.

Looks good for a decent covering by morning

[moffatross]

Healthy caveat within the Chief assessment for tonight Amber warning.

 

Snowfall amounts will probably vary substantially across the amber area, and there is the likelihood that some places will see very little settling snow. ( Who left their Snawshield plugged in !! ) This warning will be kept under review and updated as and when necessary.

 

Essentially the amber status reads to me as having been awarded due to timing and potential travel impact, i.e both rush hours.

Yep, The mesoscale modelling that I've seen shows very, very narrow strips of prolonged and quite intense ppn. Their track is literally up in the air just now for that warning to include Moffat to Milngavie but whoever gets hit will really know about it. I'm curious to know what model guidance the Met Office is using, as the Euro4 and WRF aren't telling the story, and I can't see what the GFS parallel 0.25 degree is saying as its feed on meteociel is currently broken.

[Glaswegianblizzard]

I can tell Central Glasgow will be one of those places that sees very little settling snow.

[Ceitidh]

Heading into Glasgow on Wednesday night via public transport for a concert at the Hydro - if East Kilbride is going to get walloped then let it be AFTER I head out please lol. 

[Polar Gael]

I believe the expression is...

 

BOOM!

 

 

[Bullseye]

Agree with glasweiganblizzard, looking at BBC1 weather just now, central belt isn't really effected with snow until tomorrow morning before rain arrives so unsure about amber warning never mind yellow warning! Although maybe more updated forecast now.

Edited January 13, 2015 by Bullseye

[Ross B]

5-10cm on the warning for tomorrow evening as well now before it all melts in a huge flood. Let's see

[Guest]

I'm sorry to sound like a party pooper, and I'm the first one to wish everyone within the amber warning at least 20cm of snow, but that weather warning stinks to high heaven to me. I hope I'm wrong, but it's a stinker. Lorenzo highlighted the text which makes the warning stink. It's overwarn to the highest level

[spindrift1980]

I'm sorry to sound like a party pooper, and I'm the first one to wish everyone within the amber warning at least 20cm of snow, but that weather warning stinks to high heaven to me. I hope I'm wrong, but it's a stinker. Lorenzo highlighted the text which makes the warning stink. It's overwarn to the highest level

That's my gut feeling too, but we'll see soon enough, I suppose.

[grifter]

Aye! a brave man ye are Grifter!!!

Ye cannae joke whaur there is Snaw concerned.

If this had been the MT ye would huv three Adams Apples by noo!

Big Innes

 

Just hope I aint jinxed it - although living in the port I don't even need to jinx it lol!

[skifreak]

Carpark at Glencoe on the edge of Rannoch Moor earlier : https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=775770222497230

[Kayemill]

It's hard not to get your hopes up but CMD is probably right here.

 

Nothing I've looked at screams out the need for a Yellow Warning never mind Amber.

 

We'll see

[Scottish-Irish Skier]

I'm sorry to sound like a party pooper, and I'm the first one to wish everyone within the amber warning at least 20cm of snow, but that weather warning stinks to high heaven to me. I hope I'm wrong, but it's a stinker. Lorenzo highlighted the text which makes the warning stink. It's overwarn to the highest level

 

So we're more at this stage?

 

[Guest]

Don't get me wrong, I think a lot of places will see snow, just not at amber warning levels

[A Winter's Tale]

Heading into Glasgow on Wednesday night via public transport for a concert at the Hydro - if East Kilbride is going to get walloped then let it be AFTER I head out please lol.

I'm also going to the concert tomorrow evening and wondering what travel conditions will be like after seeing the amber warning. As the warning says, snowfalls will vary locally but I think potentially by midday tomorrow there could be a fair amount of snow after two batches of precipitation cross the country but if there are variations in the location and intensity of snowfall then there could be large differences in snow totals in the Glasgow region. Tomorrow morning/afternoon could see disruption to transport and potentially for a tine in the early evening there could be fresh accumulations before snow turns to rain.

[Scottish-Irish Skier]

In the longer term, 00Z ensembles for London surface T.

 

Heading down to averages hovering close to zero.

 

[Northern Strath]

Haha absolutely no disrespect to East Dunbartonshire here, but why do tv people always send their reporters to places which haven't bore the brunt of the weather? The lass just on itv was standing in front of some urban park which collectively had the same amount of snow as I had on my eyelashes when I was shovelling the path in a blizzard 20 mins ago. Feel free to dig oot a map to find Dalwhinnie, Aviemore, Carrbridge, Tomatin, Tomintoul, MOY! etc one day ITV

Edited January 13, 2015 by Northern Strath

[moffatross]

It's overwarn to the highest level

I'm sure I've heard people saying that the Met Office are both damned if they do, and damned if they don't.   

[LomondSnowstorm]

One of the presentational issues with the EURO4 is that the precip type charts are for every 6 hours but only cover the three hours before e.g. the 6pm chart is just 3-6pm. The 6-9pm precipitation chart possibly gives a better idea of why the warning extends relatively far south:

The MO website's precipitation map suggests the front hitting Glasgow around 5pm then Edinburgh around 6pm, which presumably is based on the UKV model. The intensity is perhaps the other thing that's triggered the warning - it looks like maybe 2 inches over the course of an hour around that main band, which is pretty intense if that occurs around rush hour, and of course this does include tomorrow morning's snowfall which looks a bit more widespread:

 

 

I suspect the southern edge of the warning zone is the least likely to get disruptive snowfall tonight while the northern bit almost certainly will, but presumably there's enough of a signal over the next 24 hours even quite far south to keep them interested.

Edited January 13, 2015 by LomondSnowstorm

[Gogoslo]

Biting cold wind here in the Granite city with crisp clear blue skies.   Must admit,  if we cant have any of the white stuff then this is the next best thing in my opinion.  

[A Winter's Tale]

I'm sorry to sound like a party pooper, and I'm the first one to wish everyone within the amber warning at least 20cm of snow, but that weather warning stinks to high heaven to me. I hope I'm wrong, but it's a stinker. Lorenzo highlighted the text which makes the warning stink. It's overwarn to the highest level

I was surprised at the amber warning as well and I'm not getting my hopes up but last night/this morning was a surprise to have enough snow to clear the drive with the shovel for the first time in two years. It seems there are two bites at the cherry during the next 24hrs, some heavy and persistent snow should be in the vicinity of Central/western Scotland and after the snow/hail earlier, I'm confident whatever falls tonight should settle. I would be very happy to see just an inch of snow and there is a decent chance of that happening here and elsewhere in Scotland.

[Guest]

I'm sure I've heard people saying that the Met Office are both damned if they do, and damned if they don't.   

 

Overwarn is worse than underwarning, far worse. The problem now is that radio and press will be reporting "Amber Warning for Snow" across all of central Scotland, without putting the caveat in which the text of the warning contains. Then when it doesn't happen for the majority of people, the Met-O get slated. Plus when there is a need for people to take heed of an orange or red warning then a lot of folk will ignore it due to previous overwarn. It's a classic tale of the boy who cries wolf.

 

They could have left it at a yellow and then updated a couple of hours in advance (i.e. once the precip was clear on the radar). With modern communications then most people would know in reasonable time to take cover.

[lorenzo]

Didn't mean to burst bubbles by highlighting the bit in the warning that would be easy to read over, though it best to balance some expectations.. save mass disappointment..

 

Re : the actual projections I am sure the Met Office will use their Hi Res UKV model described here http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/research/modelling-systems/unified-model/weather-forecasting

 

 

Euro 4 shows two bands parked across the central belt on each of the time steps below and also hints of similar streamer activity on WRF. I think that this will be a nowcast for some areas and the models can only take you so far until it is a now cast relevant to different layers. 

 

 

That nuisance 950hPa layer that has generated a slushfest in previous attempts not showing as an issue for this modelling.

 

On a much brighter optimistic note the satellite looks awesome. Pretty much everything in that bag firing in from the Atlantic, rain, sleet, hail, snow, thunder, lightning  - the works....!

 

We have all this and if that's not enough to get you going check out the GFS and GFS(p) from this morning NErly and Erly on the cards and another precarious countdown to verification. In about all that our next inbound storm is parked mid-Atlantic and about to undergo it's period of rapid cyclogenesis, and by the end of Jan the vortex has cleared Greenland and is off to Siberia.

 

Weather is boring eh.

Edited January 13, 2015 by lorenzo

[LomondSnowstorm]

I'm sure I've heard people saying that the Met Office are both damned if they do, and damned if they don't.   

I think that's true, certainly the M 8 fiasco a few years back (which didn't look any more severe the night before than this one even though it looked like delivering more than the warning at the time suggested) has maybe made them err on the side of caution, but 5-8cm for much of the region covered is entirely plausible. My main issue with it is that this was the same level of warning that the Western Isles had out on Thursday night when they had hurricane force winds. Now I understand that this undoubtedly impacts more people but it is one of the irritating things about the warning system that a very severe event in a less populated area gets the same warning out as a far less severe event in a densely populated area when they are of course very different things. 

[moffatross]

WRF 2km link at meteociel

 

Running the sequence above, for anywhere much south of Dunbartonshire/Stirling/Fife, the WRF suggests that our jam will have to wait for tomorrow. The radar returns are showing showers encroaching towards Glasgow now though ...

 

Edited January 13, 2015 by moffatross