Scotland - Weather Chat

[Ravelin]

Not a cloud in the sky this morning! Hit a low of -0.3 just before 8am at home and the car thermometer showing 2C just after 9am. Bright, sunny with a small breeze and there was some light frost on the grass and car.

[101_North]

Beautiful morning! Hit around freezing last night but didn't feel that chilly first thing. If I can't get snow and cold I'll take mornings like this all winter long :-)

[Frozen Britain]

Icy this morning and frost on the grass, ground and cars. First this winter.

[Guest]

We took the dogs out for a walk earlier up to the forest. By the time we went to the car (leaving the house) a thick fern frost had developed, we struggled even getting the doors open. There's still frost in the shade here.

 

I've decided to set up the thermometer part of my weather station in the back garden. I couldn't care less that it might pick up heat from the house as I'm only going to use it to judge how cold it is. If it's over-reading on the temp then that's not an issue. It seems to be settling down on, it'll be interesting to see how cold it gets tonight. It should be a very sharp frost given the lack of cloud cover.

Edited December 2, 2014 by CatchMyDrift

[blitzen]

Was just under 2c when I got up at 7am.   Temp started to fall after that and we landed up with 0.7c at 8.30am.   You could see the frost and ice on the car starting to form.   Temp up to 3.7c now though and a lovely day it is too.   Probably a chilly night to follow!

At the moment, they appear to be touching on another 'Baw Bag' event next week.   However, GFS being fond of overdoing these lows like it is, it will probably only be enough to part your hair by the time it gets here!   That's if it even gets here!

Edited December 2, 2014 by Blitzen

[Big Innes Madori]

-1 Deg C for me this morning with a nice fern pattern frost on the car!

Eh, any snaw tae be had for the many or the few this week?

Big Innes

[LomondSnowstorm]

-1 Deg C for me this morning with a nice fern pattern frost on the car!

Eh, any snaw tae be had for the many or the few this week?

Big Innes

Mibbes aye, mibbes snaw:

 

 

 

(UKMO would probably be even better but it looks to be out on its own at the moment)

[Big Innes Madori]

Mibbes aye, mibbes snaw:

 

 

 

(UKMO would probably be even better but it looks to be out on its own at the moment)

Cheers LS, always look forward to your take on things!

Big Innes

[Northernlights]

Cold here too first thing  this morning at 1c with a ground frost. But the best part was clear blue skies and a fresh cap of snow on Ben Wyvis with a dusting right down to 1000 feet on the surrounding hills. Fabulous winter day here. Currently 4c with a sparkling frost in the shade.

[Guest]

Temp falling away nicely now, 3.4ºC reading on the weather station, not sure it's picking up any heat at all from the house!

[blitzen]

3.3c here now and clear as a bell.   Temps only forecast to drop to 1c overnight apparently.  Cloud incoming maybe?

[Guest]

3.3c here now and clear as a bell.   Temps only forecast to drop to 1c overnight apparently.  Cloud incoming maybe?

 

You must be in the tropical part of Scotland, it's 0.3ºC in suburban Kelso with a decent frost before 5pm. I'll need to check later but I thought it was to stay clear with fog becoming an issue from this time tomorrow onwards.

 

Make that 0.1ºC....sadly enough I'm excited by a possible air frost

Edited December 2, 2014 by CatchMyDrift

[A Winter's Tale]

Absolutely beautiful winters day and it's great to see those magical wintry afternoon sunsets/dusk. Looking at the models, nothing to spectacular is on the horizon but there should be a few opportunities for snow in the foreseeable future but nevertheless it looks like a pretty seasonal start to the month. I suspect this month will come in just either side of average temperature wise with no real prevailing weather pattern for the first half of the month with our weather strongly influence mid-latitude heights. I think eventually, later this month we'll see more pronounced periods of mild/wet/windy and cold/frosty/snowy as pressure patterns alternate so before Christmas we could see a sudden switch to mild muck as we did in 2011 and 2012 or a change to a colder pattern as we did in late December 2000, all depending on where areas of high pressure end up so the second half of the month is up in the air. At the moment, I think in a couple of weeks time we'll end up with more active Atlantic driven conditions, but by the very end of the month the jet may take a dive South as a precursor to a more significant period of winter weather occurring sometime after the new year.

[snawbaw]

-2.5_⁰ C this morning, the car door was frozen shut and then once I opened it I couldn't get the blasted door shut again because the lock was frozen. My windscreen however was clear due to the maximum foil blanketage slapped on last night. Looking wintry over the Ben and other mountains, snow level progressively lowering as the day went on.  Long may it continue.

[blitzen]

 

 

Make that 0.1ºC....sadly enough I'm excited by a possible air frost

Know exactly what you mean!   3.2c here so not moved much at all.   There is a grass frost though, oddly enough.   Overnight temp is now being predicted at 2c so up a degree on earlier!

[LomondSnowstorm]

Know exactly what you mean!   3.2c here so not moved much at all.   There is a grass frost though, oddly enough.   Overnight temp is now being predicted at 2c so up a degree on earlier!

A very slight change to the actual weather coming up tonight, only a bit of cloud incoming and still dry tomorrow but a slight westerly breeze will usher in some milder uppers that will raise freezing levels and increase temperatures (although Catch's air frost is probably safe till dawn):

Still not exactly mild though tomorrow away Shetland, Orkney and the Western Isles:

 

ECM at +72 hours has a slightly better looking northerly than was the consensus yesterday, so a minor win for UKMO on that one, but how much precipitation we can get in association with that remains to be seen (worth taking a look at the yr.no forecast tonight for Friday):

 

On the next, and potentially genuinely snowy, phase, there's a bit of disagreement - UKMO and to a slightly lesser extent the old GFS look like giving widespread lowland snowfall through Sunday, with strong winds to boot with a sharp pressure gradient:

   

 

The ECM is, if anything even better:

 

The GFS (P), using its backup computer and not running for the next 4 days, is a bit out on its own with this, nudging the ridge a bit further north and hence squeezing out less cold air than the rest of the models:

 

However, it does more than make up for it by its upstream pattern(which the other models look like repeating but with the initial better cold spell), which doesn't phase the storm and instead amplifies the Azores ridge to bring in a genuinely Arctic sourced westerly into FI:

followed by a northerly:

FI yes but some decent snowfall totals piling up even to low levels in western Scotland:

 

So, all in all, a bit of an upgrade again in the medium term - no sign of anything genuinely mild for the foreseeable, with plenty of opportunities for snowfall in the next 8-10 days.

[Guest]

ECM cooking a major storm for a week from now, forget any ideas about snow cos it'll all get blown away!!

 

Edited December 2, 2014 by CatchMyDrift

[LomondSnowstorm]

ECM cooking a major storm for a week from now, forget any ideas about snow cos it'll all get blown away!!

Note to self - never mention the GFS overblowing lows again

Looks a bit like the early modelling of Bawbag to be honest, very severe winds possible (+100mph gusts on some of the runs) but still a chance it'll either track further north or won't deepen anything like as much as per the GFS(P) 12Z.

The problem with it tracking as far south as it does, other than the obvious problem of the wind, is that it mixes out all the cold uppers, although it does amplify things over the US and drains some of the vortex energy away:

 

Let's hope it gets toned down or at the very least moved in future runs.

[blitzen]

If only the 850s had been lower, it's like looking at January 1984!  Wonder what the NH chart looked like?  Curious if there was an Aleutian low.

Edited December 2, 2014 by Blitzen

[Guest]

Note to self - never mention the GFS overblowing lows again

 

 

We'll find out soon enough if they've both overblown it or if they were anywhere near right. We could do with a benchmark model over the winter, now's a good time for them to earn some stripes or some tripes.

 

After the last few years model watching I will take everything with a pinch of salt until it's on a FAX chart at +48hrs. Too many let downs and too many "THAT ECMs" to go down that route again.

[LomondSnowstorm]

Interesting - BBC Weather long range outlook hinting at 'quite a bit of snow' for northern Britain next week:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/weather/feeds/30303588

[snowy owl]

Will be very interesting to watch how things progress. Lots to consider with a large possible Storm system and some snow into next week( and this weekend too). So many signals to watch. Absolutely glued to Nw

[lorenzo]

Well if you want to check out an insane set of Ensembles click to around 168 hrs here anfd watch them bomb.

 

http://www.meteociel.fr/cartes_obs/gens_panel.php?modele=0&mode=1&ech=168

 

Here's a taster..

 

 

And the vintage.. 'True Dartboard'

 

 

ECM onboard on the det run with this so definitely worth keeping tabs on. A real sporty start to the season.

 

 

[LomondSnowstorm]

If only the 850s had been lower, it's like looking at January 1984!  Wonder what the NH chart looked like?  Curious if there was an Aleutian low.

That's the famous 'abandoned Scottish Cup match' chart that was wheeled out a few times last winter (but sadly never seemed to have the desired effect of compelling the weather to do as we want ).

I remember last winter doing a composite chart that showed it was mostly Aleutian ridges that brought about cold zonality but in that instance there actually was an Aleutian Low:

The main difference for me is that the vortex isn't anything like as strong, so the cold pool we're tapping into is a bit less cold, but on the other hand the amplification over the US looks a bit better than back then when the vortex was glued to northeast Canada. 

If you look at the upper air temperatures it wasn't actually all that great, and not too dissimilar to the uppers currently progged, but, similarly to this one, the 528 dam stayed to our southeast throughout:

  

We've come very close a few times over the last 3 winters to getting some proper cold zonal setups but the only half decent spell was early December 2011. Last February also featured a bit of cold zonality (although that winter was dominated entirely by 'cool but not quite cold enough for low ground snow' zonality):

 

It's also worth remembering that the lower the pressure, the higher the threshold of upper air temperatures needed for snow, since the 850hpa level obviousuly drops in low pressure, so that's why the thicknesses are often a better guide in these setups.

[Hairy Celt]

Alright chaps. Alright?

 

Winter arrived last week on the north coast - had 4 successive mornings of grass (well, heather) frost and 1 air frost at -1C. 3 weeks ago I got a -5C a few miles north of Forsinard.

 

Got the winter tyres on this morning in prep for a few days of driving around coming up. Good feeling to get the softer rubber out... (No sniggering there)

 

Anyone else hoping we don't get a repeat of last winter? That was just miserable!

 

LS and Lorenzo have already got me hooked, keep up the good work

 

 

 

edit - 4000 posts, nah, surely not? And where's Mr Brock gone?

Edited December 2, 2014 by Hairy Celt