Todays min was lower than anything last December

Todays max was lower than anything last December

And we had as much snow today as we had in the whole of last winter .....






But I dont live in Aberdeen

We're in North Wales for New Year, and have to set off for home early afternoon on NYD. The timing for snow potential in that area is (as it stands) about 6 hours out. Bugger. I love driving through snow - especially when it's necessary; making an excuse to drive in it seems like cheating, somehow.

Well that's been a slow but seemingly inevitable slide from promise of exciting weather, back to the sort uninspiringly banal crapfest that characterises the UK's awful climate.

Absolutely. 

The only positive I can find is that at least this will help me catch up on some work, as I won't be distracted by snowy scenes and trips to the Pennines to go sledging.

You mean the way the snow hurtles towards the screen before zooming up and over if it's dry, or splatting on the screen if it's wet, the fact you can see heavier patches coming a few seconds before they hit, and the sight of the white coating building up on the road slush when the snow is heavy? And the snow in car headlights of course.

That post is just cruel.

It is. Beautiful but cruel. I feel like the little match girl, being shown glimpses of my heart's simple desires, just to snap back to dismal reality once the image fades.

Or something.

Tried to sledge down the hill, nothing happened, didn't even get stuck in the mud.

Might get up on the roof later, just incase the higher altitude throws me a frozen raindrop.

The door has now closed on yet another truly dire year and winter month which I’m glad to see the back of.

Total write-off December with little to separate it from December 2015. Neither managed to beat the record from 1934 but together they make the mildest pair on record easily beating the likes of 1910/11, 1931/32 and 1974/75

Here’s the daily means from both awful months. They look more like what the maxima should be like. Just five colder than average days in 2015 and 2016 went one worse managing only four. Ridiculous min of 11.1C on 31st Dec 2016 which beat 10.8C on 19th Dec 2015 and we had to suffer the 2nd mildest Christmas day on record only five years after the mildest

Here’s a table of all the winter months since I started recording in 2005. I’ve given one point for each air frost and one point for each sub 5C max. Ties have been sorted using sunshine hours. Didn’t start recording that until 2006/07 so have estimated totals for the previous winter. Dec 2016 deservedly right down at the bottom along with Dec 2015. Two detestable months.

What this really shows is what a pile of utter rubbish winters have been over the past decade with the exception of 2009/10 and Dec 2010. Months like Jan 2015 and Jan 2016 getting into the top half shows just how bad it’s been. Even the colder months now produce next to no snow whereas quite often mild months in the past delivered e.g. Feb 1999, Dec 2000, Jan 2004, Feb 2004.

As for 2017 it’s off to an underwhelming start with an embarrassing excuse for a cold spell. Another above average min of 1.6C and largely dry with around 10 minutes of wet snow so far. More like anticyclonic dross than a northerly really with pressure still above 1020mb

Meanwhile in the MO we have a JFF bitch slapping a Murr Sausage to then the Sausage slapping back the JFF

...Only in Autumn....sorry Winter!

Anyway it would help the Mods if it was done in here and not the MO

Some of the frost and ice here this morning is like bloody glass. It took me over 10 minutes to scrape the car, it's that hard. My God I hate winter!

Here at Folkestone, earlier on today I only needed a cardie when I popped out to get the paper where the low winter noon sun felt pleasantly warm on the face. If the lawn isn't quite so damp after yesterday's rain, I'd be breaking out the mower.

Granted, we may not be having that much luck in terms of real cold snowy weather so far, but I'll settle for second best with calm, mild and sunny weather like I'm experiencing today.

I'm beginning to think no matter what background signals we have in place or what day ten on the ECM, ENS, MOGREPS and GLOSEA show this winter will continue on the current path of a snoozefest. Sometimes things just aren't meant to be and this winter may well just be one of them.

The weather has been dull and non-descript but there are few benefits to take from that and that is no damage to homes/businesses and also my garden is no where near as waterlogged and muddy as the past few winters.

We've had some really hard frosts and I'd say so far this autumn/winter I've scrapped my windscreen more than the past few put together. What is lacking though due to having no storms etc is that the higher ground of the Peak District is becoming a snow desert this season. At least with those disruptive spells there were some good dumps of snow up the tops.

As it stands now I've not seen a flake of snow this season and I think this is now the latest date I've not seen snow since I moved to the Stoke area 9 years ago!

3 years 10  months and counting since the last snowfall of more than 1 minute IMBY. 

A horrific run that has no parallel, quite this bad.  Desperate times for those that like proper winter.

I mean, a 3 day cold shot from the east a la Jan-Feb 1972 would be sufficient, a decent toppler, a la Feb 1983 would suffice, beggars cant be choosers, but the diet has become either zonal gruel or anticyclonic dust . Yuk!

The way I see it SC, is that these so called 'background signals' we have been hearing about lately are really always there in every winter, it is just a matter of how they may or may not work for us in this bleak, desolate, grey part of the world.

It's been yet another dire festive period full of unseasonable crap. It's so bad that it's making me wish I was back at work. Little worth photographing last week bar a few good sunrises/sunsets which accounted for around 10 minutes out of 24 hours

Far worse since Saturday afternoon with write-off conditions once more. The biggest joke of a non-cold spell in recorded history. Haven't left the house as conditions have been vile. Just a return to the grey damp muck of the first three weeks of December. Not that it was much better in between. Two frosts and five days with 3 hours sun is all this unremittingly rotten and depressing horror-show winter has produced after 34 days

Don't see the point of having a holiday today. Weather is utter crap. Pathetically mild, windy and grey yet again at over 8C already. Sick to death if this disgusting nonsense but no end in sight to these repellent conditions meaning the first half of winter will be a complete write-off just like last year and 2013/14. The three worst winters of my lifetime occurring inside four years.

I just wish that this ****hole island would sink into the sea and we could be evacuated to somewhere with a half decent climate. That would seem about the only solution to the constant suicide-inducing hell that has become entrenched in this decade whereby summer and winter are just atrocious write-offs year in year out and spring and autumn are the only seasons capable of producing either warm and sunny weather or cold and snow.

For lovers of real winters a less futile option than waiting for Albion to sink into the waters is to move to high ground. For a few years I lived in the countryside at an altitude of 950 ft and the increase in snow and frost compared to lowland towns and cities had to be seen to be believed. An average winter there was roughly equivalent to a severe winter at sea level. Of course there was also more wind and rain to put up with, but that has its pleasures too. While I lived there (Tarbrax in South Lanarkshire) a neighbour showed me photos of the snowstorm of February 2001, which left the village engulfed in snow. The level depth must have been around three feet and the drifts were so great that a car was buried under one without anyone knowing about it until the thaw came. Another neighbour claimed that a temperature of -29.2 C was (unofficially) recorded there in 1989, making it the coldest place in the UK. I think she meant 1979, when -24.6C was officially recorded in nearby Carnwath. Certainly it didn't take much for frost to form. It's a different world up there. 

Hopefully this sheds some winter light on what is currently dark and gloomy corner of the forum.😀