Aye same with Portsmouth. . . .

We have had very little by way of snow in any winter since December 2010. Even the cold/very cold spells of early 2013 didn't produce much here. In some ways, it just goes to show how exceptional a yeay 2010 was for snow given events both at the beginning of the year and again at the end.

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If I am going to have moan it is about the CET. After 9 days there is +0.7C anomaly.

https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/hadobs/hadcet/cet_info_mean.html

 

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Yesterday we had some wet snow showers but in this part of Manchester they didn’t really settle. This afternoon the precipitation did get heavier but again there were no real accumulations, we just had the lightest of dustings.

I’ve come to realise that here we need a direct westerly wind with very cold uppers (-8C at their warmest) for convective showers to deliver snow here. The warmth of the Irish Sea prevented anything meaningful here yesterday. 

Frontal precipitation is also hindered whenever the wind is from the east or SE too due to the drying effect downwind from the Peak District. Even if the precipitation is moving in from the W/SW. It’s infuriating. 

Lowland South Manchester (Didsbury/Withington/Fallowfield/Chorlton) is one of the worst places in the UK for snow. Where I used to live (Stockport), just a 10 min drive away, had more than here, only 40 metres higher up. 

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And I'm sure that whoever came up with idea of giving this thread its sub-heading of "it's a southern thing" probably now realises that there isn't actually so much to moan about during this winter after all, as a result.

 

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What a shocking few days here!

Thursday evening seemed promising with graupel and hail showers from 9pm. The ground was still wet so there was a thaw between showers.

Friday woke up and there had been another couple of showers followed by a freeze. Despite this we had 1cm on 90 percent of surfaces at most.

After this the flow turned too much to the NW so Friday was a dry day.

At this point Sunday was still looking good with an Amber warning and the forecast for Saturday had massively upgraded.

Friday night was very cold putting us in good stead for building proper cover. Woke up Saturday morning to a heavy snow shower about 9am.

Despite the old ground and no solar input there was a still some melt. There was some really heavy showers at one point around midday but the frequency just wasn't high enough to build cover.

End of Saturday and we still only had patchy cover and of course our Amber warning had been shifted South. 

Today there has been snow in the air all day with a surprise pick up in intensity in the afternoon. Temp was 0c but guess what. We still haven't managed 100% cover!!!

Everything is frozen solid. I await Wednesdays slider which will probably fall as rain and definitely won't miss us!

Sorry for the rant! The last significant fall here at town level was 4th March 2016... and I was out of the country!

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LOL!

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Maybe you should move to Glossop’s biggest snow rival? 

Buxton ;-) 

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Not sure what you mean here?

Most of todays snow has been north of southern England. The m4 is pretty much a good cut off marker between 'southern' and Midlands/ East.

In my earlier years as a South Londoner, that was my thinking too.

Now I am slightly incredulous at that way of understanding what constitutes the south! To be honest, when you're up here, it seems bizarre to refer to Manchester and Liverpool as the north. They're 100 miles south of here!

For me, Cambridge and Oxford, for example, could not be more clearly "southern England".

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I've been tempted! It's amazing what that extra bit of altitude does for them. Also they don't have Kinder scout in the way when the winds are from the South East. 

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I do think people have their own ideas of where north or south might be.

For me this its pretty much like this.

 

 

Woke up to almost springlike conditions 11c with sun albeit windy - Crazy to think 70 miles northeast it was 0c with snow all day and accumulations of 20cms!!

A big let down for the SW as expected.

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If yesterday's snowfall further south had occurred in Leeds, there would be nothing historic about it. Most of the snow depths I've seen reported have occurred here countless times. We had close to a foot in January 2013 and March 2013 and even that wasn't historic (well, the March snowfall was pretty historic for the time of year).

Not that I'm not pissed off, mind you, but I think it's fair to say that Leeds often does very well in terms of snow. Over on Netweather, Shrewsbury apparently has 28cm of snow, that's about the level we had in January 2013, but that's the deepest snow they've seen since 1991 or something. That's how crappy some places are for snow. I don't think we can complain too much. As we talked about earlier, we had over 80cm of snow that winter.

Still, there's nothing more annoying than deep snow down south. It's like Scotland being the hottest place in the country, it just goes against all logic.  

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There was one year (that might even have been last year in 2016) when that actually happened in June. What happened then was that the south of England was under low pressure which gave a lot of rain down there whilst an a blocking area of high pressure to our north gave us much drier weather with a lot of sunshine. The resulting easterly wind (if only, we could have got that right now) made it quite cool here on the east coast whereas more sheltered parts of NW Scotland in particular were very hot with temperatures not all that far short of 30°C. Meanwhile, the south of England under the rain was a lot cooler.

That is of course, something which very rarely happens and during the rest of that summer, normal service was then resumed with the south of England having much better weather whilst Scotland went on to endure rather a poor summer. However, this is still enough to show that it is actually possible for Scotland to end up being the hottest place in the country if the right synoptics for that are in place for that to happen. I do agree though that this does go against logic because the fact that the south of England is closer to the Equator than what we are means that you would expect it to be hotter down there.

 

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Yeah, it can happen, though it seems to be more common in spring because Scotland can get fohn winds while in the south of England there are of course no mountain ranges.

Much rarer in summer.

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December 11th and I've almost certainly I've already had my heaviest snowfall of the winter. Quite possibly the only snowfall of the winter. Despite that it's still getting darker and I can't start looking forward to spring until December 22nd. Yuck. 

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My heart bleeds for you - at least you saw the white stuff

Can I report you for trolling?

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i can’t imagine that will stay positive much longer!

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I'm not sure if that was a true Fohn Wind though in the sense of how that is defined. When I think of a Fohn Wind, I think of really mild SSW winds which on its windward side on southern and western coasts give a lot of orographic rainfall. On the leeward side of high ground, the air dries out and often becomes a lot sunnier with temperatures then shooting up to around 15°C or so as far north as Inverness in the middle of winter.

To me, that is what meets the definition of a Fohn Wind which according to what I was taught in school, is what a mild and damp wind basically becomes once it reaches the leeward side of any high ground which is in its way. With those easterlies which I described though, there was no damp air to begin with and even though it was cooler along the east coast, it was still sunny there as I discovered when I went to sit outside in the sunshine, only to find that it was rather chilly with that wind. This means that there was certainly no orographic rainfall here.

However, I can still see that there would be a warming effect once those winds reached the other side of any high ground which in this case, would result in the temperatures shooting up in NW Scotland. Nevertheless, do we still refer to them as Fohn Winds if they weren't actually damp to begin with on the windward side?

 

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2C with the 'Holy Grail' of a Channel Low complete with NE wind but it's tipping down with rain.

 

 

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Don't worry Brian - spring is nearing and that feeling from the 22nd is a nice, warming one 

I am too old for cold/damp now. Sun, heat and the thunder potential is far more fun 

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Early sleet turned back to cold rain.. Temps on the up now, and any remote hope of a slushy covering have vanished.

Maybe not a true fohn wind, but more or less the same, and resulting in the same thingi.e higher temperatures on the leeward side of high ground. 

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