A little simplistic, but I get your point. It's not just a 'stalling warm front' that delivers snow for the west. In a long NW'ly flow, convective snow is common - often characterised by snow pellets mixed with the flakes.

Aye was quite incredible the run up too.  I remember the snowfall in November and thinking - well - Ill be happy with that, as its on paper more snow than most people see in a year.  Then December hit. 

i think it was about the 14th December 2010

I remember standing on the platform in Limestreet waiting for my train back to london.  it was 6.30am and the temp was ~ -16 to -17*c.  I was ill, (would turn out to be the flu - there was quite a large outbreak that year)  train was delayed due to the cold.  Anyway i remember the cold and how it acted up me.  To walk around with a coat on - wasnt so bad.  It hurt your face and fingers a little.  but when you stopped, the cold would penetrate your coat alot quicker.  The cold would act upon your body alot faster, and it was quite frightening.

I returned 2 days later suffering quite badly from the flu.  I had decided to get the train after noticing yet another weather system pushing in with substantial snowfall (6" + ) predicted - I remember how the forecasters quoted expected depths with no real surprise in their voices... it was another snowfall that had followed several other larger snowfalls.  6" just didnt seem significant.

Anyway - i whizzed across London, with a lightsnowfall in progress.  The 9.07pm train was delayed an hour.  Once we were moving it stopped again at milton keynes as the train had broken down.  It was now snowing more moderatley.  on a new train we trundled very slowly across central england and arrived into Limestreet at 2am.  I had the flu - it was about -10*c.  snowing.  no trains, no buses.  the roads were dead.  I managed to find a cab.  i got home at 3am - 7hrs after i setoff.

Would be quite interesting if the mods could dig out the model discussions from then, and post it as a sticky so we can read what was effectively a diary.

Some interesting accounts in here, cheers guys 

That mention of the flu outbreak jolted my memory - my opinion of December 2010 was seriously harmed by the fact that I was very ill on Christmas Day (lost the dinner within 10 minutes of eating) and for much of the following week while the ice-capped snow lay on the ground.

It really was sod's law in it's most vile manifestation 

At least that means all I have to do is avoid being unwell the next time there's lying snow on the ground and it will seem amazing 

Talk of flu & cold takes me back to spending a week at a mate's student digs in Sheffield in Jan/Feb 1991. A really bleak, old, rundown semi of a student house, the inside of which was much like that of The Young Ones. It was freezing - ice on the inside of the windows, see your breath condensing (or perhaps this last bit was just the insane amount of pot we all smoked that week!)

I remember it snowed on the Saturday night, really deep. We had to stay on another night cos my mate's 1.1 Escort couldn't make it up the snowbound hill my mate lived on.

The following week I came down with the worst flu I can ever remember having. The on-call doc that my mum called out took my temp at 103f. I was hallucinating most excellently!

My favourite part of December 2010 was when my aunt and I had to walk to town to get supplies. All of us had been house bound for a week or two and so we decided to walk it. It took 30 minutes in the bitterly cold snow and wind. It was so exciting :)

Another favourite thing was the timing. I had no oncoming exams and my Christmas holidays had just started. It was such a beautiful time. 

http://i.imgur.com/B0feKig.jpg

Stepping into the field of play  - 180 mph Super Typhoon Vongfong, the strongest cyclone of 2014 and the most intense since Haiyan of 2013 (which slammed the Philippines as a 190 mph storm).

If this cyclone takes the sort of path predicted by GFS at the moment, it will track close to Japan and then NE from there to somewhere south of the Aleutians, which has a tendency to cause a strong trough across the eastern U.S.

GFS comes up with a dramatic temperature response over there:

http://www.tropicaltidbits.com/analysis/models/gfs/2014100712/gfs_T2ma_us_45.png

...and I do have concerns over what that might do to the Atlantic jet stream as anomalous cold clashes with anomalously high SSTs in the western North Atlantic - which even accounting for the Gulf Stream are really substantial at the moment:

http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/map/images/sst/sst.daily.anom.gif

While the SSTs close to the U.S. coast have risen dramatically from being below average at the end of last winter, the area of negative SST anomalies in the central Atlantic has remained in place, partly due to a lot of storm systems developing and in many cases hanging around in that region.

There's a curious positive feedback in place too, as the sharper than normal drop in SSTs just north of the Azores gives the jet stream a bit of a boost whenever it meanders down there, encouraging more storm development than would tend to be seen otherwise.

The UK has a huge bubble of anomalously warm SSTs all around it, with the chilly August seemingly more than countered by the much warmer than normal months before and after. Tropical maritime flows from the SW should feel particularly balmy if and when they occur during the next few months. Meanwhile easterly flows will have a lot of work to do if we're to see snow from that direction any time soon, though if we did manage something the right side of marginal there would be an unusually high moisture content involved, giving some spectacular snowfall intensities with a bit of luck (be that good or bad, depending on your opinion).

The Squirrel's round here have been gathering nuts at a more furious pace than usual over the past few weeks. They've taken tons of fallen conkers not far from here.

I was watching them the other day whilst on a walk. Not sure what all that means in terms of Winter folklore! 

Means it's a zonal winter when squirrels are hosting the World conker championships this early.

You would think squirrels gathering up their nut's early might be a sign of something....

Being hungry maybe?

Re. 2010, I recall the atmosphere in here in November being quite restrained as the charts and mid-term outlooks got better and better. Most members had experienced big let downs in previous years and appeared to be reluctant to get too excited at the outlook, as if they couldn't, or wouldn't, let themselves believe what the charts were showing. For me it was Darren's (Retron) increasing confidence that was the key indicator that we were looking at something special, with his daily ENS-watch and reasoned explanation as to why this forecast pattern was different.

An epic spell of model-watching (including the build up). I just wish it had held on for a few more days to cover the Christmas period.

Does anyone know if/when Retron will be back posting?

He's incredibly knowledgeable, not just about chart interpretation, but the mechanisms, etc that enable actual forecasting. We've got a handful of great amateur meteorologists on TWO, but it never harms to have more!!

Not sure...

But I won't be getting too excited until I see Kent's very own GUSTY (Steve) start posting in here

When Matthew leaves

Joke Matty

Certainly wasn't me that upset him. He told me who it was but I can't remember. Heat and kitchen I guess. 

I also like Gusty's posts. Full of enthusiasm. 

this years winter buzzword is OPI. there is a thread on NW. at the moment, the evidence is strangely compelling but i cannot believe it can be that straightforward to link october pressure patterns and the subsequent winter AO.  time will tell as per usual.

One of my favourite snow memories is from 2010. I had not been keeping up with the weather and had only heard from someone in passing that it would maybe snow a little. I can still remember the excitement when the teachers announced that anyone who wanted to go home was allowed to go in case they could not make it later (lots of kids lived in rural areas). I had no idea what was coming that night :)

My other snow memory is from January 2013 (I know it did not snow as much but still..).

I made it to University even though the snow had started and had been settling in the morning (it was a compulsory class so I had to make it in). Once again I had no idea how bad things were gonna be and I got caught out in a blizzard in town on the way. 

Anyway I made it to uni. They decided to close university in the afternoon and all the trains were being cancelled. I just about got the last train home :)

This is my favourite snow memory for a reason. On the way home because of the snow the whole town had gone quite. There was no one  on the streets and I did not see even one car being driven. 

There was something so surreal and so magical about the streets being so dead in the middle of the day. The snow made everything look 10 times more prettier and for the 20 minute walk home, it felt like I was the only person on Earth. There were no foot prints or tyre marks on the snow.It had been a really really crappy week and I was feeling really really down and heart broken but as I was walking home, my spirits had been lifted very very high.  I can not describe that amazing euphoric feeling. The range of emotions I went through were incredible. Amazing what a bit of snow can do for you. 

I'm 40 miles from the south coast and December 2010 was cold and snowy but more notable for the cold than the snow.

5/6 January 2010, on the other hand was epic - the best snow depths I've seen in my location, with 10 inches of level snow on the road outside and easily a foot in favoured spots. And it was then followed by a few days of cold sunny weather that preserved the snow beautifully.

Although 2010 cant be bettered for cold temps in recent years. 2013 stands out for me for outragous snow amounts near where i live.

just 20 mins down the road it was like this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q7ySgAi69pU

from one overnight snow event on the 20th March 2013.

What made this year so special for snow, was how regular it was. I work from home on Fridays, and luckily enough most - if not all the snow storms rollled in whilst i was "Working from home" - in other words i sat at the window with a cup of tea occasionally looking at the radar. Then moving to another window - rinse and repeat for literally hours.
 this happened - IIRC - weeek after week - culminating in the above event at the end of March.  By far the biggest one off local snowfall ive ever seen.

indeed Steve - was just trying to nudge the thread in this direction without being too direct.  i wonder what odds you can get on the winter GDP numbers being negative ?? 

Steve

At a basic level is this just using the 500Hpa NH GFS runs to index how warm / unstable the stratosphere is ? And this index is based on the values that we've already had plus the forecasted values for the rest of the month?

So in effect the lower the index the more likely an organised PV cannot form in November (which of course isnt rocket science to deduce). This correlates to a winter NAO/AO prediction with something like 90% accuracy if i've read that research note correctly?

Becomes very interesting if that verification is anywhere near accurate and the 2009 OPI was strongly -VE

Snow slowly moving west 

If you combine SSW and OPI you get PISS, WO!

A coincidence - I think not