Such an autumnal feel today. It feels like the weather has not been like this for ages. I remember last year it was bloody hot this time. 

These are the kind of synoptics that would bring the country to a standstill this winter, a mere 120 years or so ago..from February 1895.

 

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I can't wait for 8 weeks to come and too log in and see that 200 people are logged on... why... because they all know something BIG is going to happen...!!. This is a dream of course... I can dream can't I????

 

 

...... or not

Last year I had a 200 Yrd "commute" to work and we didn't even get a decent frost - This years it's  a 50 odd mile round trip - over  the downs so you just know it will be "blizzard central" here for weeks on end !

 

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Well we know that inevitably there will one winter - or early spring - be a bout of cold, snowy weather that rivals those of legend, such as '47 and '63.

I have often wondered whether, under the same run of synoptics as seen in those winters, generally higher SSTs these days to the north and northeast of the UK would produce an increase in atmospheric moisture - hence precipitation - sufficient to counter slightly higher air temperatures.

Theory points towards the potential moisture content increasing considerably more than the air temperature, so it's not hard to envisage that under marginal conditions, a higher intensity of precipitation could lower the freezing level sufficiently to swing the balance in favour of settling snow.

Of course, there were periods in those particularly severe winters when conditions were well within the boundaries required for snowfall, and replicating those these days would be likely to leave us with higher snow amounts - though probably not by much, as such situations tend to involve a continental airflow that doesn't cross much in the way of sea or ocean on the way to the UK.

 

Who knows, we might be able to use real observations to assess this hypothesis sometime in the next decade or two.

Or we might not.

There's no way of knowing! 

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Weather porn!!

 

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According to Wikipedia on the Winter of 1946-47 "On 14 March the deepest ever recorded depth of snow lying in an inhabited location was measured at Forest in Teesdale in County Durham at 83" or 211 cm" 

I'm guessing that's not counting drifts 

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Well, we did have December 2010, the coldest Dec. for over a century and one of the coldest UK calendar months full-stop. But it also turned out to be the third-driest UK December on record (though we still enjoyed blocked lanes and a foot of lying snow for nearly a fortnight down here).

I realize that doesn't really prove or demonstrate anything, because you're talking about '47/'63-style synoptics rather than weather, but I thought I'd throw it into the discussion. 

As an aside, I don't think Dec. 2010 gets the appreciation it deserves from those who pine for the chance to live through something as rare and epic as 1947 or 1963. Maybe you did, but you didn't realize it.

OK, the most intense period lasted only a fortnight at the most in the run-up to and after Christmas, and it's the longevity of 1947 and 1963 which is crucial to their legend. But whole generations have come and gone in my part of the world without experiencing anything as alien as that eerie blue Arctic light over the permanent snowfields around the shortest day in 2010.

 

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Today's offering is from 1882.  Another chilly one.  Renowned for a blizzard from 18-20 January.

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There is an element of 'in my back yard' to December 2010, despite the widespread nature of the cold and snow.

IMBY the snow amounts were really not that much, half a foot at most, and that peak depth only survived one afternoon before some sleety rain compacted it into ice. If anything, January 2010 delivered better on that front, as did February 2009.

The cold itself was impressive though, with numerous minimums of -5 to -10*C, which had not been experienced before and hasn't been repeated since.

The main issue was that the precipitation mostly came from Channel lows that pulled in just a bit too much milder low-level air from the Channel without enough cold air to combat it. I was surprised in a bad way by this, given that Channel lows have been responsible for some of the South's most legendary snowstorms. I think the problem was that the main thrust of the cold arrived from the north, with no long-fetch flow of cold air from the continent - instead cold air was dragged in from the North Sea, where it had been sitting for a day or two, and had therefore seen a fair bit of moderation, particularly at the low levels. It wasn't enough to counter the Channel air and keep the snow falling.

 

So for residents in the far South, en epic snowstorm is still a long time coming - the last arguably being in early 1991 based on various accounts I've read over the years.

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Thanks for the reply.

At 51 degrees of latitude, I'd always considered Taunton to be in the far south (even Penzance is only 50 degrees) and I found the snow of Dec. 2010 epic, but maybe I'm just easily pleased. I will say though that, until then, whenever anybody local had described winter weather as "severe", I had always smugly referred them to the winter of 1981-2, which I spent working halfway between Hamburg and Hannover. But in Dec. 2010 I finally experienced something as severe as that Continental freeze in balmy Somerset.

But I take your point that the source of the precipitation could have made it a local phenomenon and it wasn't an example of what a precisely aligned Continental fetch might produce when combined with higher sea-surface temps.

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Yes December 2010 was very cold - one of the coldest periods I have experienced at my age, but the snow up here wasn't the heaviest I have ever seen, I think for most people old enough that was the same impression. We had a few half foot falls in late Nov/Dec 2010, they did last a long while on the ground though with very little melting. But it wasn't anywhere near as bad compared to some the snow we had in the 70's & 80's. We had some fantastic snow drifts round here in the 70's & 80's. Proper up the wall/fence stuff and completely burying the hedgerows and cars. IMBY we do well from the E/NE or from the NW/WNW. Northerlies are not as good as I am not far from the spine of the country. So unlike Wales, Northern Ireland, the SW, the East and far North we tend to get more sunshine than snow in a Northerly.

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I am only around 9 miles south of Taunton in the Blackdown Hills, but here it is generally around 3-4 degrees colder than Taunton (my weather station is on 'wundermap' . In January 2013 the snow was around a foot deep and lasted days !

 

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I'll be forever grateful that I was living in Angersleigh, 4 miles south of Taunton and in the foot of the Blackdown Hills in Dec. 2010. Unfortunately I've now had to move to a location down by the River Tone, so I'll never experience anything like that again.

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Weather Online goes for a cold December:

http://www.weatheronline.co.uk/cgi-app/reports?LANG=en&MENU=seasonaloutlook&DAY=20141001 

Time will tell!

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What are yout thoughts on this:

http://www.wellsjournal.co.uk/8203-Winter-coming-Met-Office-hints-wet/story-23046647-detail/story.html 

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Very sketchy at best they are definitely sitting on the fence for the time being

RE everyones thoughts on 2010. What stands out to me on this (as i was travelling weekly from Liverpool to London) was the day time lows *c. Quite remarkable.

I remember watching the BBC forecast and the forecaster regularly saying values like -18 and -15 very casually. with daytime temps of no higher than -6 or -7, in normally non cold prone areas too. By the end of the cold spell- the forecaster was soo non-plussed by the fact we were in proper arctic conditions.

Compare this to other cold spells where the forecasters voice strains when telling us to expect temps of about -1 to -2 at night!

My son lives in Mancester, and was playing in his backyard throwing snowballs after school ~ 6pm. This was fine until i realised it was -16*c and really - thats actually quite dangerous. Im 31yrs old and have never seen anything like that.

I reckon this IS a remarkable cold period - though i agree, value on the floor in the NW were quite poor. when traveling i saw substantial snowfall in the central and southern belts.

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In Somerset, flood headlines, or risk thereof, sell papers

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Yes, Russ. Yard-long icicles hanging from every stretch of guttering down here were a fair sign that you were living through an historically memorable period of intense cold in Dec 2010 rather than just a good period of snow and/or ice.

I know I keep coming back to this aspect, but it's the fact it happened around the shortest day that sealed it for me. Perhaps in artificially lit towns you weren't aware of it, but there was a quality about the winter light on the landscape that I've only otherwise experienced north of the Arctic circle.

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I remember that all time temperature records were broken every day at one point. The most remarkable day for me was the 16th when I was in Yorkshire. The morning temperature was -20C and didn't rise past -11C. 

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February 1956 - a proper cold winter month, here on 2nd February we have -20 uppers grazing Kent, and -15 uppers widely. Could we see the like in 2015?

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I think one factor is whether the baltic sea freezes, a completely frozen baltic sea would essentially make the European continent larger and support colder uppers more like canada. 

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It was the run-up to Xmas that did it for me - and for the second successive year (although Dec 10 eclipsed Dec 09)

How early it started is often forgotten. It turned cold mid-late November and temps didn't return to normal until the very end of Decmber. In the NE, there was deep snow by late November. I remember our annual day out at the St Nicholas Fayre in York. It was on the last Sunday of November. The snow in the NE had already hit the news and my missus was worried we'd get stuck in York. I chuckled, showed her the morning BBC forecast, which said there maybe a light isolated snow shower over the NE and Yorkshire, and off we went.

We got there around midday and, as we were parking, the snow began to fall. And it never stopped. The plan was for a whole day of shopping/mooching round the Xmas markets, then a meal, then head off for home around 6pm. By 2pm, we'd already decided to cut it short and grab a meal early, then hit the road. The snow was 2/3 inches deep when we went in the restaurant, about 4/5 inches deep by the time we left. Unable to resist a walk round beautiful York in this Xmas Card winter wonderland, we headed through the Shambles with dusk settling in and snow still falling, the light from the shops making the scene magical. And then we got the Minster. Just...wow. It looked stunning - and then, to just add the cherry on the cake, a group of choristers in full garb emerged from a side door and began having a snowball fight. You couldn't have scripted it more perfectly. Satisfied, and with the snow now really coming down thick & fast, we headed back to the car for what we knew would be a tough journey home. We had to get over the Pennines, and I knew that could be tricky if the snow had made it that far inland. The journey out of York was hairy - confronted by gridlock, I decided to follow a taxi driver through a warren of backstreets, many with unsullied sheets of white for roads, the snow about 6/7 inches deep. It worked, and by the time we hit the crawling traffic of the main road out, we'd skipped a couple of miles and probably an hour's worth of stop-start. The strange thing was that, once no more than 10 miles out of York, the snow had stopped and there was not a trace of any lying on the ground.

The whole day will remain in my memory always.

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Such is the nature of the lake effect, the thing that I think some people on here miss is that stuff like this struggles to happen in January and February, the lake effect is insanely strong in Late November given the right conditions. I remember thunderstorms in 2010 in the last few days of that month. By January the lake effect is weaker and requires much colder air, ofc those in the west don't care as they rely on stalling warm fronts all the time anyway. 

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