Scotland - Weather Chat

[sn0wman]

Alloa got lucky overnight About 2 cm here - the first proper lying snow this winter. Looks beautiful.

 

All eyes on next Tuesday into Wednesday now. Could be some really good frontal snow or perhaps a sleet fest. 

[edo]

Models a little dissapointing too this morning but I live in hope

I Do not think they look too bad...tue and wed still look really interesting although could be sleety for some but encouraging info from fergie earlier in thread on that and pretty much worst case scenario is we end up in a chilly NW PM which we seen last week can deliver for many....I could of course be talking nonsense as still not great at reading the charts... The models however seem to struggle for agreement beyond T96 so I'm just trying to focus on this cold spell...if we can get snow in place and some of the deep temps programmed it makes it all the harder to shift and could at least give us a very snowy messy breakdown at some point....I used to hate those but learned to enjoy them after building a massive snowman with all the kids in the cul de sac and having a chaotic snowball fight for a few hours before it turned to rain...I realised if timing is right you can enjoy a breakdown...anyway the breakdown will not be till March anyway Edited January 18, 2015 by edodfc

[edo]

Hopefully the serial pub attending quantum physicist bagpipe player will be a long at some point tonight to map out the potential of the week ahead...

Home alone with the 2 and 1 year old today so now need to work out a plan of action as the towing them around on the sledge is not going to happen... Grrrrrr

[GrangemouthBairn]

It snowed. Enough so that the ground is mostly white. 2.8/-2.5

[NUT]

Had another dollop early this morning. Ground white again

[Ruzzi]

Could you imagine the synoptics shifting more favourably and being able to watch all that Cold air to the East flooding towards the UK and counting down the hours. There isn't any support for that at the moment ofcourse but it is nice to see some very cold air not a million miles away, FI is probably 3 days right now so anything can happen, I'm trying to keep the faith here and if nothing else, we could get a good snowy breakdown. Post breakdown (if it occurs) it would appear that cold air won't ever be too far away so we could still end up with plenty snowy surprises moving forward. Gotta keep the faith!!

!!

 

 

Overnight we had another 1/2 inch on top of the existing snowcover and compacted ice, but where tarmac was visible from tyre tracks etc, it's already melted from there. Here's to a cold night tonight.

[Kayemill]

Sitting at -0.1 at the moment so I would expect some melt today but with the temps forecast I would imagine we will have this most of the week.

Edit: sorry for the dodgy iphone screenshot photos.

Edited January 18, 2015 by Kayemill

[Mesosphere]

Slight covering here overnight, although it's starting to melt a bit. Temp 2.1C

 

Traffic Scotland A1 cam at the top of town shows what its currently like

Edited January 18, 2015 by Mesosphere

[edo]

Couldn't agree more with that assessment Ruzzi and there is potential for at somepoint for one of these lows to undercut and potentially release that cold across too us....we may not have 2010 winter upon us but we have imo had and are having a decent winter with potential it could be a great one....certainly compared to some of the winters in recent memory

[snowidea]

We had a dusting too last night. Sadly not quite enough for the sledge or a snowman but might get a snowball fight in if we can get out before it melts.

[edo]

Sitting at -0.1 at the moment so I would expect some melt today but with the temps forecast I would imagine we will have this most of the week.

image.jpg

Edit: sorry for the dodgy iphone screenshot photos.

Nice little mini sledge slope across the road there and impressive looking snow...would love to have that right now Edited January 18, 2015 by edodfc

[Guest]

The curse of drizzle and a strong breeze. Left the house when the rain had just started but everything was still perfect and white. By the time we got to the cycle track (a whole 3 minutes in the car), there was no snow left on the trees and the thaw was going strong. Now a mushy mess on the ground with patches of white...I feel a bit miffed

[mardatha]

Good 2" plus here, hubby says it was heavy at 6am.

[Kayemill]

Nice little mini sledge slope across the road there and impressive looking snow...would love to have that right now

My wife isn't that pleased as she won't drive in this at all and we live up a fairly steep hill. It's not that easy to walk down. Because it's been ploughed it's single track as well.

We'll see what this week brings.

[Ross Andrew Hemphill]

Snow is very reluctant to leave here, not that its a bad thing!

[SW Saltire]

I Do not think they look too bad...tue and wed still look really interesting although could be sleety for some but encouraging info from fergie earlier in thread on that and pretty much worst case scenario is we end up in a chilly NW PM which we seen last week can deliver for many....I could of course be talking nonsense as still not great at reading the charts... The models however seem to struggle for agreement beyond T96 so I'm just trying to focus on this cold spell...if we can get snow in place and some of the deep temps programmed it makes it all the harder to shift and could at least give us a very snowy messy breakdown at some point....I used to hate those but learned to enjoy them after building a massive snowman with all the kids in the cul de sac and having a chaotic snowball fight for a few hours before it turned to rain...I realised if timing is right you can enjoy a breakdown...anyway the breakdown will not be till March anyway prectypeuktopo (1).pngprectypeuktopo.png

Thanks for your reply, good post.

Yeah, it seems there is some debate over the eastwards extent of these frontal systems pushing in and how much precipitation they will produce.

Wednesday is rain and temperatures of 5c. Better further north admittedly. I hope this is overdone and won't come to pass.

Those GFS charts are good but the UKMO isn't really inside yet although it is better than yesterday as Nick Sussex pointed out earlier.

I think it's really difficult to call how this situation will evolve. I think there will be much choping and changing in the models in the coming days and even weeks

[Hairy Celt]

Showers starting to feed down from the north now... Come to Daddy

[spindrift1980]

Was pleasantly surprised to find a fresh covering this morning - only 2cm. or so but didn't expect anything from the north and things look crisper and fresher again.

[Scottish-Irish Skier]

Aye, 2cm feel early in the morn here too.

 

Melting slowly at 1.6 °C.

 

Road doesn't seem to have seen a gritter, so pretty slushy. If we get a frost tonight it will be an ice rink.

Edited January 18, 2015 by scottish skier

[blitzen]

Morning.   A small snowfall around 6ish this am but not enough to leave any footprints!   Unexpected from a northerly here so nice to see.

 

MT is interesting at the moment with very good analysis.   I'm wondering if what Joe B was referring to a week or so ago in a tweet that both usa and uk would suffer extreme cold at the same time is something to do with tentative developments around Scandi?   It's a very big claim to make.   His tweets don't make a lot of sense to me at the best of times but he did mention 2-3 weeks and that post was a week ago.   I assumed at the time that he meant FOR 2-3 weeks but he may have meant IN 2 - 3 weeks?   Dunno, I may be grasping at straws. but I for one will be watching developments closely.

[Blizzardo]

I got a light cover overnight but not even a cm. Losing a lot now in the sunnier areas.

Was out and about in Glssgow this morning and some areas of the City still have a pretty thick blanket of snow that's great to see.

Expecting the coldest night of the winter for me tonight.

[Ruzzi]

Couldn't agree more with that assessment Ruzzi and there is potential for at somepoint for one of these lows to undercut and potentially release that cold across too us....we may not have 2010 winter upon us but we have imo had and are having a decent winter with potential it could be a great one....certainly compared to some of the winters in recent memory

 

Yep good to see that more energy is digging further southeast and the trough lasting longer and pro-longing the cold at day 6, preventing the azores high from breaking through and potentially opening the gate for another slider. It's all hypothesis just now, especially at day 6 because it'll chop and change plenty times before then, but hopefully it can be the start of a trend more than anything. We've seen this kind of thing many times before where there's a stubborn block positioned somewhere to our east and the atlantic intrusion continually gets pushed back as models always want to be over-progressive in these situations. I remember in 2009/2010 and 2010/2011 during the cold spells always seeing the models beyond day 6-8 wanting to bring the Atlantic back in but the cold spells lasted weeks, In 2009/2010 especially I remember constantly seeing models bringing the atlantic back even just after the cold spell started, the model thread being full of charts 6 and 7 days ahead with south westerlies being suggested and people hand-picking different perturbations to show the cold spell crashing to an end. It's part and parcel of every cold spell and IMO, looking beyond day 3 at the moment is not pointless but should be used to formulate a trend rather than taking the charts as gospel. Like I said it's nice to see the trough being pro-longed at day 6 however its one chart and will only hold some credence if it starts to appear in the same way across other models and continues to show up in future runs.... still no guarantees though. The only way to not have egg on your face is looking at 2-3 days ahead at a time. 

 

Also in 2009/2010 we had snow on the ground here every day for 5 weeks straight, and there was all the constant hype about the cold spell ending. I'm not suggesting we're going to see something like that infamous cold spell, but things 5 - 6 days ahead can change very quickly on the models, and I would stick my neck out and say the charts being modelled for Saturday-Sunday next week will not be what comes to fruition, granted it may be close, but in these set-ups, things don't have to change very much in order to reap great rewards. If worst comes to worst, there is Cold east and West of the UK, it's never going to be huge leaps needed to get some cold air back into the mix. Here's a chart to show what I mean.

 

This chart is amidst the potential modelled break down next weekend, and like I said, I don't believe this will verify like this but just trying to highlight my point that should a similar breakdown occur, the Cold air is to the West, East and North of the UK:

 

 

I'm not paying attention to any sort of detail in this chart, merely the broad scale positioning of cold air, which with the current NH pattern, appears to be readily available at not so great distances from the UK. Finally, there appears to be some interesting developments in the strat as some have mentioned and suggestions of a near technical SSW around 2 weeks from now. It all gets beyond my technical ability but if downwelling occurs quickly from the warming high up in the stratosphere then our weather patterns can be influenced very quickly so there's plenty to be positive and hopeful about moving forward, especially with the vortex already being heavily weakened. All things considered, I think we would have to be desperately unlucky not to get at least one really decent wee blast before the end of March. We all saw what can arise in late winter early spring in March 2013. By my reckoning that gives us almost 2 and a half months left of opportunity..... lets just see how it goes a few days at a time though..... Keep the Faith!!!

Edited January 18, 2015 by ruzzi (snowboy)

[Guest]

The Met-O have a yellow weather warning for snow and ice out:

 

http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/public/weather/warnings/#?tab=warnings&map=Warnings&zoom=5&lon=-3.50&lat=55.50&fcTime=1421539200&regionName=dg

 

It's for the north-east and the far east of central and southern Scotland. I think Kelso is almost on the edge of the warning area so we'll see what comes of it.

 

Euro4 charts look a bit so-so for here, perhaps a bit drizzly at times and the precip does look to be a little too far east.

[101_North]

4c - much higher than forecast!

[GrangemouthBairn]

The temperature has risen to 5.8c which I was shocked about but I have realised that the sun is shining on it in the space between two houses. I'm disappointed though that this has caused the temperature recorded to rise though because I thought the Stevenson Screen design around the thermometer would mean that the Sun shining on it would make no difference. Dew point is -3.3 which is the same as the minimum temperature from last night