This cold spell is just lame, pathetic and embarrassing beyond words. Supposed to be the coldest night of winter and four hours after sunset it's not even below freezing Yet again that crap wind set in during the late afternoon, at just the very time it would have dropped out in the past.
No snow falling all week but the pitiful dusting we had late on Sunday has hung around like a bad smell. Looks awful and worse of all has turned to an icy mess and made the pavements treacherous. Funny how during this unprecedented snow drought we seem to have to endure more icy pavements than I can ever remember in the past
January has just gone the same way as December - a complete write-off - and undoubtedly February will too. We have now had only three Januaries in 15 years where more than 2cm of snow has accumulated. A statistic so incredulous that anyone with even a basic knowledge of UK climate would think I had made a typo. Unfortunately not - since 2005 only 2010, 2013 and 2016 have recorded a snow depth of more than 2cm. So diabolical it's surreal.
It's not even been mild either because I haven't recorded a January as much as 1C above average since 2007 which is the longest run without a very mild January since 1899-1915. Only 2014 has been more than 0.5C above average since then and that was down to hideous mild nights.
The cuplrit responsible for giving this complete and utter dross has been the inexplicable arrival of previously unheard of 'cold westerlies'. Couldn't name a single month dominated by these in the past but over the last decade we've suffered them in January 2009, January 2011, December 2011, January 2012, February 2013, most of winter 14/15, second half of January 2016, January 2018 and now this month. All of them brought the same tedious banality. Average temperatures, sunny and dry with little or no snow or hard frost. Most of the very mild winter months of the 90s and 2000s were snowier than the dross listed above as even a 36 hour northerly would have been capable of delivering more snow than the whole of that rot combined e.g. 12cm on 6th December 1998
Originally Posted by: richardabdn