Winter 2022/23 - Moans, Ramps & Chat

[Cymro]

There's a lot of talk of poor Januarys for the past decade yet Jan 2021 was a fantastic month for snowfall here in Wales, where it snowed and lay 3 weekends out of 4. No deep freeze but plenty of winter weather

Edited December 21, 2022 by Cymro

[RhHh]

9 minutes ago, Cymro said:

There's a lot of talk of poor Januarys for the past decade yet Jan 2021 was a fantastic month for snowfall here in Wales, where it snowed and layed 3 weekends out of 4. No deep freeze but plenty of winter weather

Snow-free for us here last January. 

[Cymro]

18 minutes ago, RhHh said:

Snow-free for us here last January. 

I'm talking about January 2021 not last year at 2022

[RhHh]

5 minutes ago, Cymro said:

I'm talking about January 2021 not last year at 2022

Both 2021 and 2022 were snowless Januarys here. Been very poor since 2013 in fact. 

[LetItSnow!]

January 2021 was quite an excellent month for Scotland IIRC. I remember very well being quite frustrated at the weakness of the easterlies only bringing very cold rain and perpetually grey skies. However, Scotland saw their coldest January since 2010 by a long shot and overall faired a more anomalously colder winter than the south did. Where I lived at the time I missed the snowfall on the 24th but London didn’t… very odd. I’d finally see snow come the 7th of February. Overall, it was very dependent where you were, so for half of us January 2021 was great and for the other half of us it was an exceptionally wet and exceptionally dull month that didn’t have the “benefit” of “at least it will be mild”.  I still enjoyed it for the fact it was a colder than average month. We needed them after the run from December 2019 to June 2020.

12 minutes ago, RhHh said:

Both 2021 and 2022 were snowless Januarys here. Been very poor since 2013 in fact. 

 

47 minutes ago, Cymro said:

There's a lot of talk of poor Januarys for the past decade yet Jan 2021 was a fantastic month for snowfall here in Wales, where it snowed and lay 3 weekends out of 4. No deep freeze but plenty of winter weather

 

[I remember Atlantic 252]

1 hour ago, Cymro said:

There's a lot of talk of poor Januarys for the past decade yet Jan 2021 was a fantastic month for snowfall here in Wales, where it snowed and lay 3 weekends out of 4. No deep freeze but plenty of winter weather

24th was amazing here, also a bit on 23rd and 2nd

[Easton Luna Boys]

14 hours ago, RJBingham said:

It's all going on, unfounded optimism, grief, recriminations, denial, some posters have disappeared, others have gone from hero to zero, the EastEnders Christmas special is dull as dishwater compared to this.     

Yes, always the way, but not quite as bad as on the other side; venturing into their Model Output Discussion forum this morning you'd have thought you were in the Moaning Thread; it was full of toys and dummy throwing and unsavoury in-fighting  attacks on users who predicted this upcoming mild spell when others either refused to see it, or were consumed with the usual rose tinted cold model bias. Some of the so called self proclaimed experts on there really should know better. No wonder members have left in their droves. A shell of its former self.  

[Weather-history]

22 minutes ago, LetItSnow! said:

January 2021 was quite an excellent month for Scotland IIRC. I remember very well being quite frustrated at the weakness of the easterlies only bringing very cold rain and perpetually grey skies. However, Scotland saw their coldest January since 2010 by a long shot and overall faired a more anomalously colder winter than the south did. 

 

 

It was fairly decent here, saw 10 days of lying snow that month. That's more than any January of the 1990s, Infact, you could add up the lying snow totals for the Januarys of 1990, 1991, 1992, 1993, 1994, 1995, 1998 and 1999 and it still wouldn't come to January 2021's total.

Shows you how bad the Januarys of the 1990s were.  

[Easton Luna Boys]

13 hours ago, Richard Waters said:

I don't know why I am coming back here looking for cold having just come through what most have been amongst the top ten wintry periods in my life .  Definitely one to remember . It is actually a relief to be able to get around again and see green

Hi Richard, I'm not sure how old you are, but to say it has been one of the top wintry periods in your life, really?? 

For those that saw anything, it was a band of heavy snow showers that hit a small but densely populated area of the SE, followed by 8 days of cold and frosty but very dry weather which obviously kept the white stuff around for longer than a few days which is usually the case. But to say it's in the top 10, I'd have to dispute that.  

[MAF]

but don't forget, Richard is posting his own experience/opinion so if that's how he feels about the recent event. who can argue with that  

[Frigid]

January 2021 was a great month around here.. temperatures weren't as severe as this month but the amount of snowfalls we got were amazing. 10+ days of lying snow and a good amount of frosts. Probably the best January since 2013. 

I wouldn't mind Jan 2023 to take the same route, though I acknowledge many didn't receive all to much in Jan 2021.. maybe a Jan 2010 would be good

[Summer8906]

15 hours ago, Mapantz said:

Double digits showing right out to Monday for here. 

Cold was never an option.

This is the real "extreme" winter weather, IMO.

Prolonged mild spells in winter also affect the following spring adversely, making flowers come out way too early (when it's still dull and dark, and you can't enjoy them) and making spring end too early. So drab winters are doubly bad: both in themselves and the way they adversely affect the following spring.

To be fair, London looks like dropping to normal temperatures by Monday. Not cold, but at least something normal:

London (Greater London) weather

WWW.METOFFICE.GOV.UK

---

London 7 day weather forecast including weather warnings, temperature, rain, wind, visibility, humidity and UV

 

Edited December 21, 2022 by Summer8906

[Summer8906]

19 minutes ago, Frigid said:

January 2021 was a great month around here.. temperatures weren't as severe as this month but the amount of snowfalls we got were amazing. 10+ days of lying snow and a good amount of frosts. Probably the best January since 2013. 

I wouldn't mind Jan 2023 to take the same route, though I acknowledge many didn't receive all to much in Jan 2021.. maybe a Jan 2010 would be good

Sadly it looks more like Jan 2007 from the GFS 00Z.

It often seems the winter solstice is the turning point with the weather often taking a turn for the worse around now. If you're going to get "wintry" weather, it tends to either happen in late Nov-early Dec, or from late Jan onwards.

Not sure if stats back this up, but it does seem that the month or so from Dec 21-Jan 21 is a writeoff in the majority of years. Mild, dull, wet and zonal. An utter waste of what ought to be the most "wintry" period of winter.

Maybe someone should write a UK-centric version of "White Christmas" called "Drab Christmas", with references to the endless rain, dull skies, extreme mildness and oppressive, claggy humidity.

Or, in a variation of the old saying: "as the days grow longer, the weather grows milder, wetter and duller".

Edited December 21, 2022 by Summer8906

[JR319]

Looks like things have flipped, with the mild ‘blip’ becoming a prolonged mild spell with any cold event becoming a blink and miss it type of affair. 

[MP-R]

1 minute ago, Summer8906 said:

Sadly it looks more like Jan 2007 from the latest models.

It often seems the winter solstice is the turning point. If you're going to get "wintry" weather, it tends to either happen in late Nov-early Dec, or from late Jan onwards.

Not sure if stats back this up, but it does seem that the month or so from Dec 21-Jan 21 is a writeoff in the majority of years. Mild, dull, wet and zonal. An utter waste of what ought to be the most "wintry" period of winter.

Fortunately the stats don’t back that up. Normally one has to wait UNTIL the solstice to get anything wintry, especially in the south. Mid October to mid December is the most southwesterly part of the year. Barring the recent cold spell, this year is a perfect example.

[MAF]

4 minutes ago, Summer8906 said:

Sadly it looks more like Jan 2007 from the latest models.

It often seems the winter solstice is the turning point. If you're going to get "wintry" weather, it tends to either happen in late Nov-early Dec, or from late Jan onwards.

Not sure if stats back this up, but it does seem that the month or so from Dec 21-Jan 21 is a writeoff in the majority of years. Mild, dull, wet and zonal. An utter waste of what ought to be the most "wintry" period of winter.

Maybe someone should write a UK-centric version of "White Christmas" called "Drab Christmas", with references to the endless rain, dull skies, extreme mildness and oppressive, claggy humidity.

I'm dreaming of a white Christmas
not like the 'drab' ones I used to know......

[Summer8906]

57 minutes ago, MP-R said:

Fortunately the stats don’t back that up. Normally one has to wait UNTIL the solstice to get anything wintry, especially in the south. Mid October to mid December is the most southwesterly part of the year. Barring the recent cold spell, this year is a perfect example.

Not sure about this year, though. The way the models are going, I'm wondering already whether it's time to write off most of January, except perhaps the end. The opening days really do look like a 2007-style horror show on the recent GFS models - and flips from that to something colder before around the 20th are extraordinarily rare, so much so that I'm struggling to find a single example.

And January is very frequently (sadly) mild, Atlantic-driven and often wet: see for example 1988, 1989 (not wet), 1990, 1993, 1994, 1995, 1998, 1999, 2002, 2004, 2005, 2007, 2008, 2014, 2016, 2018, and 2020 - that is 17 years out of the 33 from 1988-2020, more than half. It does seem January is the August of the winter months for a lack of "seasonal" weather. I need to look into the mid-Oct to mid-Dec period for the same timespan but from memory, I'm sure we've had more anticyclonic Novembers than anticyclonic Januaries.

Maybe still a hope for February (see for example February 1983) and maybe time to just hope January isn't the sort of ridiculous silly-mild that could badly affect the timing of spring flowering.

Edited December 21, 2022 by Summer8906

[Wynn D Woo]

1 hour ago, Easton Luna Boys said:

Hi Richard, I'm not sure how old you are, but to say it has been one of the top wintry periods in your life, really?? 

For those that saw anything, it was a band of heavy snow showers that hit a small but densely populated area of the SE, followed by 8 days of cold and frosty but very dry weather which obviously kept the white stuff around for longer than a few days which is usually the case. But to say it's in the top 10, I'd have to dispute that.  

It wasnt just a small area of the SE though was it.

We had a good covering over in Gloucestershire and does rank as one of the better winter spells for snow in a long while around here.

[Summer8906]

To give some hope that early-mid January may not necessarily end up a dull, mild SW-fest, as the models are currently showing: does anyone have a record of what the models were showing for say Week 1 in January this time last year?

If the models then were equally SW-ly, it does give some hope for this year, as the weather in January did of course rapidly improve to anticyclonic, and cold at night (albeit average to slightly-above by day) last January.

Edited December 21, 2022 by Summer8906

[MP-R]

1 hour ago, Summer8906 said:

Not sure about this year, though. The way the models are going, I'm wondering already whether it's time to write off most of January, except perhaps the end. The opening days really do look like a 2007-style horror show on the recent GFS models - and flips from that to something colder before around the 20th are extraordinarily rare, so much so that I'm struggling to find a single example.

And January is very frequently (sadly) mild, Atlantic-driven and often wet: see for example 1988, 1989 (not wet), 1990, 1993, 1994, 1995, 1998, 1999, 2002, 2004, 2005, 2007, 2008, 2014, 2016, 2018, and 2020 - that is 17 years out of the 33 from 1988-2020, more than half. It does seem January is the August of the winter months for a lack of "seasonal" weather. I need to look into the mid-Oct to mid-Dec period for the same timespan but from memory, I'm sure we've had more anticyclonic Novembers than anticyclonic Januaries.

Maybe still a hope for February (see for example February 1983) and maybe time to just hope January isn't the sort of ridiculous silly-mild that could badly affect the timing of spring flowering.

As you’ve pointed out it’s near enough a 50/50 as to how January behaves so one can’t say it’s a mild Atlantic month when half the time it isn’t. After all, it’s the coldest month of the year here on average. 
 

Its also worth noting that Atlantic weather in January is different to the autumn and early winter. Much less mild grey muck and more Pm influence. That’s why I pay more attention to cold zonality after Christmas.

Anyway, let’s see how this one pans out. Annoyingly, we’re more likely to get mild wet conditions from a west based NAO than if the Atlantic wound up into top gear. At least the latter would get lows beyond the UK.

[Summer8906]

33 minutes ago, MP-R said:

As you’ve pointed out it’s near enough a 50/50 as to how January behaves so one can’t say it’s a mild Atlantic month when half the time it isn’t. After all, it’s the coldest month of the year here on average. 
 

Its also worth noting that Atlantic weather in January is different to the autumn and early winter. Much less mild grey muck and more Pm influence. That’s why I pay more attention to cold zonality after Christmas.

Maybe, you never know. A few of those Januaries did have some sunnier interludes admittedly, I'm thinking of months like 2004. Others like 2007 were very dull as well as mild though.

33 minutes ago, MP-R said:

Anyway, let’s see how this one pans out. Annoyingly, we’re more likely to get mild wet conditions from a west based NAO than if the Atlantic wound up into top gear. At least the latter would get lows beyond the UK.

Apologies for the possibly dumb question, what is a west-based NAO? The terms I'm familiar are positive (full on zonality) and negative (the opposite), as I understand NAO is measured by the relative pressure over Iceland and the Azores. Presumably a west based NAO has the low pressure further west than Iceland, and an east based NAO has it further east than Iceland?

Can a west based NAO realistically convert into a more east based one, if the position of the trough shifts eastward? I seem to remember Jan 2005 did something a bit like this, for the second half of the month.

I guess the best hope for us on the GFS is that the pattern of early January veers a bit and ends up with a more WNW-ESE zonal flow. This would produce significantly more sunshine and somewhat cooler temperatures.  Then, perhaps later (end of Jan) it could then veer further to a NW-SE or even N-S flow. Wonder if that has a realistic chance of happening, and wonder if Scandi High-style setups by contrast have little chance of occurring now until much later?

 

Edited December 21, 2022 by Summer8906

[*Stormforce~beka*]

11 hours ago, Don said:

Deal!! 

Where are you visiting out of interest?

 

Blackburn. I'll post in the NW thread tomorrow when we leave

[Weatherman_93]

Looking like a nice mild Christmas is on the cards. MOD thread will be in meltdown 

[Don]

35 minutes ago, Weatherman_93 said:

Looking like a nice mild Christmas is on the cards. MOD thread will be in meltdown 

Already is!! 

I look forward to seeing some posts from you in there. 

Edited December 21, 2022 by Don

[Don]

2 hours ago, Wynn D Woo said:

It wasnt just a small area of the SE though was it.

We had a good covering over in Gloucestershire and does rank as one of the better winter spells for snow in a long while around here.

I accept some did very well out of the cold spell and that's great!  However, for many it was very frustrating from a snow perspective.