A bit of a long shot Darren, but is there anywhere to see what the current 850s are, other than waiting to see the " +00 " part of the most recent model run, which would then of course be some 4 hours out of date?

As Chief Vitalstatistix might say if he was a regular here: "The -5 850s may fall on your head tomorrow, but tomorrow never comes" 

There's no way that I'm aware of - some data would be available via planes taking off and landing, but not to mere mortals like us. Using the various models' guesses is as good as you're going to get.

EDIT: There are also *some* 12z balloon ascents here:

http://weather.uwyo.edu/upperair/sounding.html

Lerwick and Camborne have them (and have data - I'm envious of that -7C at 850 in the Westcountry) but our local one, Herstmonceux, only sends balloons up at midnight. I don't know when the data becomes available, but as it was only 70 minutes after midday when I checked those it must be pretty soon afterwards!

Fergusson:

W COUNTRY OUTLOOK A cold but largely dry week ahead; high pressure becoming dominant later. For us, it'll remain influential 1st half Feb...

W COUNTRY CONT'D... w rather chilly periods by day & cold/frosty nights (cloud amounts varying), but essentially much dry, settled weather.

Boooooooooooooooooooring 

Hmmm...I wonder...a lot of info is transmitted via ACARS reports, and can be picked up and decoded via scanners (probably somewhere on the internet too). I'm not sure if temp is included in that data - I must do a bit of research 

Cheers Darren 

A snip from Wikipedia for example:

Uses of ACARS outside aviation[edit]

In 2002, ACARS was added to the NOAA Observing System Architecture. Thus commercial aircraft can act as weather data providers for weather agencies to use in their forecast models, sending meteorological observations like winds and temperatures over the ACARS network. NOSA provides real-time weather maps.

No chatter on the next round of potential let-down, as shown on the E4 model for Tuesday?

Monday 18.00 - area of PPN (mix rain/snow) appears to the north of Scotland

http://expert-images.weatheronline.co.uk/daten/proficharts/en/euro4/2015/02/01/basis06/ukuk/prty/15020218_0106.gif

Tuesday night it moves south, becoming completely snow by the time it's over southern Scotland

http://expert-images.weatheronline.co.uk/daten/proficharts/en/euro4/2015/02/01/basis06/ukuk/prty/15020300_0106.gif 

http://expert-images.weatheronline.co.uk/daten/proficharts/en/euro4/2015/02/01/basis06/ukuk/prty/15020306_0106.gif

Providing it maintains its intensity, it would give a decent fall of snow over much of the country.

I was going to have a closer look at that, but got distracted by some soaking wet pigs flying by my window (they were flying North to South) 

That'll be the band of snow the Meto are on about then. Looks good for Scotland maybe the North of England but doubt that would get to the south. Snow showers starting to pep up in the SE though

Really heavy snow right now turning things white quite quickly.

 Hopes raised a tiny amount for those of us 'downwind'....I'm desperate to try out my snow shoes! 

Light snow falling in Banbury

Just reached us in Southmoor, near Abingdon. Quite a brief but heavy snow shower

Good explanation on Weatherweb as to why this is not a particularly cold Northerly.

Welcome back Neil. You've tuned in just in time for an episode of "Gardeners World"....

Missed that one. Where was you when we had the blizzard early March 2013?. Snow was not settling much until 4pm then we had 4 inches the roads were chaos, took me 1 hour to get from Seaford to Denton corner then a further 2 hours to finally get home from the bus depot.

Cheers.

Light snow, starting to settle.  Temp 1.4c / dp -1.8c