Mid March cold & snow (miniBeastfromtheEast)

[Jo Farrow]

This weekend's notably cold event for mid March and now with Amber warnings from the Met Office for snow

[Scandinavian High.]

21 minutes ago, Jo Farrow said:

This weekend's notably cold event for mid March and now with Amber warnings from the Met Office for snow

Thank you so London and South East England in firing line..

[Jo Farrow]

Sunday SW Britain AMBER and Netwx SR snow accumulation charts Fri night til early Sunday 

[Snowyowl9]

Very impressive easterly again(I underestimated this for snow depth wind strength and temps max after yesterday max of 2c) not recorded a temp this low at this time of year before and havn`t seen a trace of thawing -1.5c max.

And more blizzards earlier from the severe drifting as the winds peaked earlier.

[Terminal Moraine]

 My records at this site go back to 1977 and a remarkable feature of the two cold spells this month has been the casual ease ( if it can be termed like that ) with which the previous coldest days in March have been exceeded. Prior to the very cold spell in March 2013 the lowest 24 hr maximum in March was -1.1c in 1996 and of the 5 'ice days' recorded this month 4 of them have been colder than that. 

In the last 41 years only 7 Marches, before this one, have managed a 24 hr max below 0c and 5 of those were in the late 70s through to the mid 80s. Prior to 1977 my records were at a different site a few miles away and lower down but fortunately I have a 10 year overlap of records and have calculated a reasonably accurate temperature differential  between the two sites for each month of the year. Allowing for this, the lowest maxima in the cold spells this month have exceeded any which occurred during the period 1963-1976 when 'ice days' were recorded in 1964, 1965, 1969, 1970 and 1971.

It raises the question of what could potentially occur in other months in the winter half of the year given the right synoptics. 

[Jo Farrow]

Time, Obs, elevation (m)    Snow depths from Met Office (cm)

19/03/2018 03:00	LARKHILL	WILTSHIRE	132	23
19/03/2018 03:00	HIGH WYCOMBE, HQAIR	BUCKINGHAMSHIRE	204	22