On a night when by tonight, any showers were supposed to have been turning increasingly wintry and where I had hoped to be having a chance of seeing my first frost for a while, it's bl@*dy raining outside now as I write!! This in turn, has already added a further 0.2 mm to today's rainfall total at Edinburgh Gogarbank although there is still nothing else being reported at the botanic gardens in Edinburgh in terms of rainfall just yet.

Temperatures are still slowly dropping though and at 5pm this afternoon, it was 3.5°C at Edinburgh Gogarbank, 4°C at Edinburgh Airport and 4.0°C at the botanic gardens in Edinburgh which at all three locations, is today's minimum temperature so far. It's just that those stupid dew points keep refusing to drop to below freezing so that we at least have a chance of seeing that rain turn to snow. Having said though, there has been a couple of occasions during this afternoon where the dew point has briefly dropped to just below freezing at the botanic gardens in Edinburgh, but they haven't dropped any further since the early part of the afternoon and have now gone back above freezing.

As a result of that, this now has me wondering what on Earth it is going to take to get some snow into this part of the world.

Model output can be proved to be wrong though and it would be nice if for once, that model output could be wrong for this sort of thing with an outcome which ends up being better than expected. That in turn, might have given us a chance of seeing some snow by now (although it also might not have) and we did for a while get very close to seeing those dew points dropping to below freezing (at one of my local stations, the dew point even briefly did go below freezing on a couple of occasions). It's just a shame that they then decided to go back up again at the last turn and it just seems to be Sod's Law that the dew points always seem to end up rising to above freezing these days where there is some precipitation on the way.

At the same time, this also shows that transitions from mild to cold scenarios don't seem to happen in the way that they used to because I can remember many occasions in the past where a morning would be really mild (around 11°C or so) before a cold front moved through and then by as early as later on that afternoon, the showers coming in behind that would already have turned to sleet or snow. Any snow from that would not yet have started to lie then, but this was happening even with a straight westerly on the odd occasion and even with a returning polar maritime air mass which had reached us as a SW wind.

So disappointed today. The cold that we've been chasing for what feels like weeks down here in the south has seemingly vanished into puffs of -2 to -4  850 Hpa's temps after Sundays forthcoming rain event. It's all too exhausting. 

Yet another revolting day with a thoroughly nasty, deeply unpleasant wind and rain during the afternoon. Beyond horrible.

Furthermore there is absolutely no sign of any cold air arriving here. It has been stuck on 2C for hours. The same miserable, horrendously boring garbage no matter what

The colder air should be here shortly with showers falling as snow increasingly overnight (if we get any precipitation). It is basically exactly as the better resolution more accurate models have shown. Too much a westerly component and we will be in a so near yet so far situation though.

You know me too well 

And of course, it is those hills over on your side of the Forth which stop any wintry precipitation in a straight northerly from reaching us here in Edinburgh whilst the Firth of Forth itself, just isn't wide enough (I think that there are only about 8 miles from the north of Edinburgh to Burntisland (which is roughly the nearest town from here on that side of the Forth) in a direct straight line) for any showers to actually be able to form over it.

That is why we really need a properly easterly (preferably with a slightly northerly component to that here whilst those in the likes of Burntisland over on the Fife coast would be looking for a slightly southerly component to that) in order to bring that snow into this area from in off the North Sea. Even then, there is still the risk that this air mass could be modified by passing over that relatively warm North Sea which would therefore result in that snow just falling as rain right on the coast itself. This therefore means that this air mass also needs to be coming from such a cold source like Siberia that any modification from the North Sea is then minimised as was the case in December 2010 and March 2013.

EDIT:

I forgot to add that in order for us to get that proper easterly, we need to be taking that mid-Atlantic high pressure system which has been feeding in those northerly winds and then shoving it up to the north of us so that it then forms a big blocking feature between Scandinavia, Iceland and Greenland. It has been a long time though since we last saw that happening at this time of year and there has never been any signs of that on the horizon until now either.

I've just looked at the latest BBC Weather For The Week Ahead forecast and according to that, Aberdeen is forecast to possibly get its first official ice day of the season during the next day or so with daytime maximum temperatures of no higher than 0°C which would also make Aberdeen one of the coldest places in the whole of the UK on that day.

Surely, that would be something to look forward to if it happened.

I know that a Notherly is not much good for you eather , far to much shelter we are the same here . In the past I have spotted a front giving snow to The North of Scotland on the radar but as it heads South it just seems to fade out !! and we get nothing , but the front starts to get active again as it heads South of here so the Borders and the North of England get the snow . Never understood how that works lol yep a good cold Eastely or North Easterly always delivers here.

As I type Gateshead in northeast England is forecasted to remain at or below freezing from Friday until Monday afternoon.

In fact, the BBC are forecasting our first ice day of the season here in Edinburgh on Sunday with maximum daytime temperatures of -1°C. That is actually colder than what our lowest minimum temperature of the month and winter at Edinburgh Gogarbank has been so far even though we now have our second official air frost of this month and winter this morning with temperatures of -0.2°C at Edinburgh Gogarbank, 0°C at Edinburgh Airport and -0.3°C at the botanic gardens in Edinburgh as at 7am this morning.

Monday's system keeps getting forecasted further south. MBY is only just now under the snow risk - but depths forecast just 30/40 miles south look to be seriously big.

FFS, not a happy bunny.

Join the club. We look like being the sour spot here in the NE.

And just when you think it couldn't get any worse, the fecking SE looks like being set up for a huge blizzard on Monday.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: the only thing worse than getting no snow is seeing other people in England getting bucketloads of it.

Yup - and especially when it's the Southeasterners!

Oh yes. Yes indeed.

... and especially when it is the same ones who constantly get all of the decent weather during the summer which is around. This just shows that in the world of weather at least, life just isn't fair.

I seem to remember a similar thing happening last winter not so much with snow, but with the temperatures. I think that this was back in January (although I might be wrong of course) when the south of England was actually colder than average overall during that month whilst here in Scotland, it was milder than average yet again.

That was the only colder than average month which I can remember anyone getting in recent times, and it had to end up being the south of England which got that. I mean, who would below that the south of England could actually be colder than Scotland? Yet, that is what happened on this occasion and of course, it is just Sod's Law that this had to happen during the winter.