Indeed - One would have thought this would be a sustained blocked easterly given the SSW but apparently not. We have had several stratospheric warming's and despite all this and given that rapid Siberian snow cover in October, a weaker PV, fewer sun spots, cooler northern pacific, ENSO Neutral, to borderline La Nina (weak), more hurricane activity - We still epically fail at every level to get a decent cold spell lasting more than a couple days with maybe a few flakes in the wind and a -1c. - I can't believe last month they had to cancel flights from Heathrow when it was sleeting! Ridiculous.

What next!? Perhaps we should hope for an El Nino event, crash in the stratospheric temps, higher sun spots, little Siberian snow cover, warmer northern pacific etc - and then to get prolonged cold and snow!? Surely!? 

NOT ...this is the UK after all.

I watched Gav's weather videos and apparently this Scandinavian HP is not the result of the SSW 3rd week of Jan, end of Jan and beginning of Feb etc because this block has been trying to build for several times and always failed. - Maybe one day we will get a cold spell lasting more than a couple days and a -1c by night.

What really confuses me is why this block is sinking!? - Even John Hammond said that once easterly's set in they are hard to nudge away and it takes a lot zonal shove it away. But it just never seems to want to play ball. - Instead it looks like a couple of colder days (like in Jan) followed by milder weather but this time thanks to the SSW we will have southerly winds and +14 or 15c by the end of next week!!

I bet you anything - when we all want some early spring warmth in March or April it will turn cold and wintry!!

This current set up, that the GFS along with many models and forecast have for us next week show a very pleasantly warm weather pattern and this would have been ideal if it was to occur in June, July or August etc.

What's even more frustrating was that we had almost two weeks of an easterly wind in October last year ...! Wrong season . Not happy!

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When I look back on things, that really cold spell at the end of last April came far too late for my liking, and even that cold spell in March 2013 came too late for my liking even that that was a really impressively snowy period. In my book, any really cold weather HAS to come at some point during the months of December, January or February otherwise it is not even bothering about since those after all, are the three months which make up the meteorological winter and there surely has to be some official reason for that which is connected to how our weather would normally be expected to behave during those three months.

Once we get into March though, my thoughts like many others on this forum will then start to turn towards what the forecast models are predicting for the coming summer and course, that is also the time when Gavin P. starts to give out his summer updates which go a lot more into that. March is after all, the month in which the Vernal Equinox lies and because the days are then longer than the nights after that, I like many others on this forum should be seeing things warm up then as a result. I therefore, don't want to be dealing with some really cold and snowy periods then which we should have been getting a few months earlier, and which never actually happened at that time.

Yet once again, I'm seeing yet more indications that this could end up happening this year once again. Dr. Simon Keeling at Weatherweb.net has recently be showing us some projections for both the NAO and the AO which actually go much further ahead in time than any of the forecasts in Gavin P';s recent videos, and these do show both the NAO and the AO trending more negative during the spring months. Indeed, Dr. Simon Keeling on that website has also hinted that we could end up seeing what he refers to as a 'delayed' spring and that all ties in with the fact that we could end up seeing that really cold weather during those spring months when in my books, it will be too late for that.

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Yes in 2013 the cold weather lasted way into April 2013 with a good 5cm that fell and settled in the south and east.

So you believe that this SSW could affect our weather patterns and give us a cold March into April?!

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I don't know whether or not we can blame the SSW for that (although that could possibly be the case since the SSW at the end of January 2013 didn't fully affect things until March of that year). However, it certainly wouldn't surprise me if it was to get colder, just when it should be getting warmer (i.e. some time during the spring months). This is after all, the UK where it is possible to snow on the Cairngorms on the day of the summer solstice (and it actually did so back in 2015), yet find it so difficult to the point of being virtually impossible these days, to get any snow here on the day of the winter solstice.

However, most people down south can't really complain too much about this winter since England (and especially, SE England) at least got to see a colder than average January, even though they didn't see much snow either. We kind of saw the opposite of that during last summer as well. The main difference here is that we did at least see a warmer than average summer last year. However, it was the south of England which got just about all of the good summer weather and for here, the best weather didn't come until September (although the west of Scotland did at least see some decent summer weather during June) which again, is too late since that month contains the Autumn Equinox after which the nights are then longer thanthe days which means that it should then be in the process of getting colder, with all thoughts turning to the following winter.

To a certain expent, I can buy the fact that the south of England got most of the good weather during last summer since that is much further south and closer to the Equator which means that you would expect it to be warmer down there. However, that should be the case regardless of the time of year and so the fact that it has been the south of England that got nearly all of the cold weather during January really takes the p*@s because since they are further south, it should be warmer down there and that means that the coldest weather has actually been at the wrong end of the UK compared to where it should be.

It is as though Theresa May and her extreme right-wing, xenophobic, Brexiteering (the fact that Scotland is about to be taken out of the EU against its own will shows just what they are like) Tory Government down at Westminster has taken a tight iron grip on the UK's weather to ensure that it is the SE of England which always gets all of the proper seasonal weather, and that wouldn't surprise me one bit since that is what the Tories are good at (after all, there might not have been such a loud cry during the 1990s for Scotland to get its own parliament had that not been the case, and there might not have been so many people campaigning for Scottish independence had that not been case even though that wasn't quite enough to win a majority for that back in 2014).

Io me, it feels as though that would be the more of the case rather than any ban on the cold air entering the UK which is similar in nature to the one which President Trump has just imposed on immigrants from certain countries entering America (if that were the case, the SE of England wouldn't have got its cold weather during January. Of course, it is stupid to suggest that any government could control our weather since that is something which none of us can ever hope to have any control over. However, the nature of how our weather has been over the last year or so means that you wouldn't think that this is actually the case.

 

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Keep the politics out of this forum.

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Apologies for that. I have never brought politics onto this forum before and won't do so again. However there is such a strong correlation just now between the weather patterns in the UK over the last year or so and the general political situation here in the UK which I feel so strongly about, that I felt that this would be a good place to point that out (since this is a moaning thread, after all). If this isn't the relevant place for that though, I will be more than happy to be guided towards another thread (or possibly another forum) which is.

 

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If you're feeling brave you can venture into the Up in Arms forum...

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Thanks, I'll remember that in future.

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Can I moan that this 'beasterly' is warmer than it was 10 days ago IMBY?

http://www.weatheronline.co.uk/weather/maps/city?LANG=en&WMO=03166&ART=MXMN&CONT=ukuk&R=310&LEVEL=150&REGION=0003&LAND=UK&NOREGION=0&MOD=&TMX=&TMN=&SON=&PRE=&MONAT=&OFFS=&SORT=

Plus any snow event for edinburgh has been reduced to a light snow shower sometime on friday. Hurray. :-(

As expected this utterly hopeless excuse for a cold spell is even more dismal, inadequate and useless than was suggested in that vile forecast I posted the other day. Temperatures were supposed to be near freezing by now but in reality 3C and not a sign of even a flurry of snow Nothing wintry at all with the precipitation drying up as soon as the dewpoint fell below freezing. Just an endless sheet of grey nothingness all day with the temperature stuck on 3C for over 24 hours. Feels and looks like complete and utter crap.

The sooner milder weather arrives the better then we might actually have the chance of getting a frost. It’s just like January 2013, when under easterlies and -10C uppers we suffered five days of unrelenting grey filth with the temperature failing to go below freezing. Then the following month gave us  -3C under an anticyclonic westerly with 0C uppers before the hell returned in March and a max of +0.5C even failed to result in a sub-zero min.

Sick joke is that they were the only times we’ve come close to a cold and snowy spell in six years. You just couldn’t make it up. Proof of how utterly poisonous and toxic easterly winds are and that this decade is the worst for cold and snow in recorded history – probably since the medieval warm period – despite previous decades like the 1930s and 1990s having far more genuine mild weather. All it seems to be these days is stuck between 2C and 8C with no distinction between night and day. Just the most dire and depressing winter weather imaginable

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still, look on the bright side, at least you're still alive to enjoy it 

Well if it's not even snowing in Aberdeen, it is probably even less likely now that we will get it here in Edinburgh since they normally get the snow up there, before we do. Apart from that, we have exactly the same weather down here with the exact same temperatures, and that same old boring grey nothingness.

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The first time this winter that I've seen the blue (below zero) isotherm stretch across the North Sea 

http://www.wxmaps.org/pix/temp4.html (2nd week)

and the GFS provides some support for a northerly to bring that our way (GFS 6z , 25 Feb).

So why is this a moan? Because

i) it's so deep in FI that it's not a forecast, it's only a tease

ii) who wants snow in March anyway?

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Bored with this winter !

More than usual, it seems to have  been one of  mirages that fade when you get closer.

This latest effort is pretty pathetic - chasing the occasion grain of graupel  from leaden skies really doesn't float my boat.  

<ding> Next please !!!  Roll on Spring  and let's  hope  winter 2017-18 proves better.

 

 

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So those of us being cynical about the cold spell, snap...now day...look like we were right to be so...we may crawl through this latest "cold" blip without even going below zero?

I think too much store is placed on upper temps when looking at wintry potential... although we currently have uppers between -8 and -11c, even though it is from a continental source it less cold than it often is when uppers are +5c!

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Tell me about it. Upper temps of -8C according to high res maps right now and it is steadily raining. 

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and it's not even as though the air is a cold westerly that has crossed the Atlantic allowing for copious mixing.  

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Remember the 850 hpa temperature is much higher when pressure is 1030mb therefore cold 850hpa temps won't look as spectacular on the ground .

Our second November 2016 snowfall was from showers from the west with 850-s only about -4c. But pressure was about 975mb.

Obviously there are other factors too though.

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Yes the air is a cool easterly that has crossed the North Sea. Not unexpected not unforecast. Could be a very cold night in parts of NW Scotland tonight.

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This is all rather underwhelming so far. The air temperature has yet to fall below freezing (currently 0.5 ºC) having bottomed out at 0.1 ºC at around 4am. DP currently -2.1 ºC.

Grey leaden skies without even a sniffle of snizzle.

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http://old.wetterzentrale.de/pics/Rtavn062.gif 

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last I looked the DP here was 0.0c and air temp hasnt dropped below +1.2c since this "cold spell" arrived.   Earlier in the week, when it was still "mild" we had -2.7c .....  

(Obviously not the slightest hint of precipiation from the dull, dull, dull, dull, dull skies, let alone anything vaguely of a wintry nature - though I note we do have rain forecast here on Saturday)

And yet you can be sure next winter some folk will still looking for a "beast from the east".   Only a vampire with a cold and snow intolerance wants an easterly in winter!

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I'll be one of them because IMBY it's the only way to get icicles, powder snow etc. Bear in mind though that we haven't seen "the beast" since 1997, as for whatever reason it's gone on holiday. This is unprecedented since the year 1900 (at least), as since then there had always been at least two "beasts" per decade.

This current attempt just isn't cold enough aloft, nor is there any low-level cold from a frozen continent.

 

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1C and heavy drizzle for the last 16 hours and counting. Can the weather get more vile than that? Loads of water on the roads - if it was snow then we would have a decent covering.

Bit of course if it turned cold enough to snow the precipitation would instantly stop...

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