Love the rant thanks so much for sharing!

Meanwhile Athens will get more snow tomorrow maxes of 3 c ! Crazy whilst we are up to 11c and Aberdeen 9c! 

Here in Edinburgh, we are at 9°C with not even as much as a single brief glimpse of the Sun for four days and counting, It certainly can't get any duller or more boring that that especially since we also still haven't had any recorded rainfall during this year so far, either.

In fact, our permacast hell in Edinburgh has now gone on for longer than the one in Aberdeen where they at least got to see some sunshine on Thursday (whilst we were already under our gloom) and as col has said, it did get down to -6°C up there during that time.

I wager John, that compared to here, Edinburgh is akin to a tropical beach with deep blue skies.  We have had no sun (not even a brief sunny glimpse) since before Christmas. Every day has been overcast, though over the last 3 or 4 days - today excluded - the cloud base had been higher and  the air drier, which made for some pleasant skyscapes and a healthier feeling of air. Today, it is back to the usual. Heavy low stratus and RH readings back up into the high 90s with little change in temperature. 

Tweet of 2019 so far.

Thanks. I agree the UK is a very tough nut to crack. And for the life of me don't know why the natives basically live in Hawaii but expect a Moscow winter! Maybe it is all Charles Dicken's fault.

— Judah Cohen (@judah47) January 6, 2019

Not so much a moan but more how pleased I am that it's being a wonderfully benign & dry start to the year. It's been a while since we had an easy-going winter and I don't mind it, far more preferable to the usual southerly gales and blustery rain crap we normally get to have at this time of the year. At it is at the moment, there is a Winter 1988 and 1989-esque feel about to it.
  However, there is a risk that we could run into "ready made" drought-related issues if we go onto having a drier than average Spring and Summer (aka 1975 & 1975) but knowing our luck we'll go onto having another 2012.

Monday brought vile wind, yesterday vile drizzle and today vile cloud and pitiful diurnal ranges. Welcome to the latest week of abject hell from this totally worthless season that doesn't deserve to be called winter. God knows what lies in store tomorrow.

There has not even been a semblance of winter in what has to be the least rewarding and unfulfilling season of unrelenting blandness and misery I can ever recall. It just keeps sinking further and further into the abyss. Today brought a max of 3.9C, no frost, no snow just grey tedium and almost four hours after sunset it's 3.6C. What is this if not the worst winter weather on earth? I'd rightly expect more even if I lived in coastal Cornwall.

I dream of a great SW Blizzard like March 1898 I believe, and we so nearly got there with Emma but it was not to be.....

Northern Iceland really has got a mad climate. 

Max of 16C today in Akureyri (current temperature 13C).

Maximum temperature on Sunday, -2C with snow.

Not the same extremes as the States, but still! 

We haven’t had a Bartlett high at any stage this winter.

Didn't Helston do well from the beast from the east/? before storm Emma and didn't you get more snow during storm Emma?

This winter is one of the most boring i can remember in my lifetime it has had nothing of interest weatherwise we have had no Gales No heavy rains No Fog barely a Frost and as we head towards mid Winter Not even a Flake of Snow has fallen just day after day of mostly cloudy weather with just occasional days of a little sunshine.

Roll on Spring i say you can see most of the rest of Europe and even Greece is getting winter this year i just cannot see us getting any cold weather this winter now.

Of course when we want some Spring warmth the winds will switch to Easterly and Spring will be delayed by snow and cold well into April this year .

If I could set a post for the future, I would set it in this thread for next weekend saying..

'Disappointed that once again the snow has missed us. Woke up to a dusting but that's all. Even more frustrating that just miles away in Failsworth, they have inches of snow. Sick of hearing the media banging on about it and sick of seeing cars with snow on their roof when we have nothing.'

That's my future moan in case I don't get online at the time.

I hear you, brother!

My thoughts entirely Andy!

The thing which I hate about this winter up until now, is that we have had no actual winter. Over on the MO thread, you will see the odd member referring to "winter is over" posts. The problem here though is that any event (such as this winter) has to actually start as some point in time before we can then say that it is over and up until now, this so-called "winter" has never really got underway at any time as has been shown by the fact that we have had virtually nothing in the way of snow, and very few frosts.

Instead, all we have had is just a vast nothingness with the odd sunny day thrown in with lots of mostly cloudy or overcast days. In other words, this so-called "winter" has just been one massive borefest with virtually nothing which is even remotely interesting in terms of our weather, actually happening. By that, I mean that there has been virtually no snow, very few frosts or gales and not even much in the way of rainfall, especially from the middle of December onwards.

There are parts of the UK which have never fully recovered from last summer's droughts and where, that rainfall deficit has never been made up (this currently dry winter means that the rainfall deficit is now just growing even bigger as a result). This has resulted in a number of farmers and growers in certain areas crying out for some much needed rainfall so that even if we did get a lot of rain just now (without any snow), that would at least be serving some form of constructive purpose.

However, this abject nothingness which we are constantly having to endure these days is serving absolutely no purpose whatsoever. Since this winter has never really ever started, we can never say that it is "over" for the reasons which I have described above. Rather than saying that winter is "over", it would therefore be far more appropriate to say that winter is unlikely to ever actually start on this occasion in the first place.

In fact, it turns out that the lowest temperature at Edinburgh Airport during this current autumn/winter season so far is the -7°C which was recorded during last October which is only halfway through last autumn, and not even part of this actual winter. It is ridiculous that last October should be the time that we get our coldest temperatures of the entire autumn/winter season. However, I did say back then that I wouldn't be surprised if that then, ended up being "it" for our "winter" and as I am writing this just now, that is exactly what appears to have ended up happening.

I think winter may well start in a weeks time but it has been dismal so far. The worst thing is the lack of sun. Since Christmas we have had 12, yes, 12 sunless days and no days of completely clear skies. Only 18 hrs altogether. I wouldn't mind but the whole period has been dominated by high pressure yet just two frosts.

Welcome to yet another awful totally useless grey and windy weekend. It's been the same every weekend for the past two months 

Not since 1934 have we reached this stage of ‘winter’ without a semblance of winter to be seen and given that is now 85 years ago it’s beyond living memory for all but the oldest. It’s not just the entire absence of snow or the pathetic lack of frost that’s getting to me. It’s the lack of anything. There’s never even a good sunrise. Every day it is the same soul destroying monotony. Wake up to grey skies and frost free gloom, the cloud breaks for a while then reforms leading to another rank mild frost free night.

Where’s the mid-January cold spell we were supposed to be getting? That’s right it’s been postponed just like the late November cold spell we never got and the late December cold spell that never happened either. Just a complete farce. All that’s happening is that this tedious mild, sunless, frost free nothingness is becoming more and more entrenched.

We've only had 4.8mm of rain since 19th December but unlike in the summer when everything took on a nice, seasonable parched look everything looks horrible with the grass taking on a piss coloured yellow hue. Just sums up this winter perfectly

The weather of the Canaries is often derided as amongst the most stable and boring on earth but I find it interesting and changeable compared to the utter dross we are served up here nowadays. More chance of seeing snow there as well, even in the resorts where you can see the top of Mount Teide.

It’s unreal how such anticyclonic conditions can produce so little frost. Not just far less than in a standard low pressure dominated unsettled winter but even the horror show of 2013/14 with its record low pressure and relentless misery still managed more frost than this execrable pile of steaming horse manure.

This decade really is going well beneath even the scrapings from the bottom of the barrel.  No winters of the 90s or 2000s decades were as bad as 2013/14, 2016/17 or this winter and no six week spell was as bad as the first half of 2015/16. At least in the other atrocities listed, November delivered either frosty or snowy conditions. For such a dire winter to come on top of the foul and stinking November we endured last year is staggeringly awful. It’s been about the worst three months of weather I can ever remember. Other than a couple of sunsets over Christmas I’ve had zero opportunities to get my camera out at all. It’s beyond desperate and about as enjoyable as being tied up in the basement of a sterile tower block in the middle of Stalingrad with only a daily bowl of gruel to live on

What about the -6C you had on Jan 3rd?