I've noticed that this thread has been very quiet today, so I might as well give it some much needed attention.

In terms of the temperatures, we had our coldest December night in Edinburgh last night since 2010 when at one point in time, it had looked as though we might even see minus double figures. In contrast to that, too much cloud is preventing us with having any chance of a frost tonight and in fact, the temperatures are actually going up as the night goes on. At both Edinburgh Gogarbank and the botanic gardens in Edinburgh, this has even got to the stage where the temperatures which have been recorded at each of those locations in the last hour or so, has now become today's maximum temperature so far at the location in question.

The forecast for the rest of the week is still for it to be cold, but less cold than what it has been recently to the extent that any precipitation which we get will just be plain, boring old rain. This winter has proved conclusively that Edinburgh never gets snow any more even though there are quite a number of places who have had plenty of it. It is Sod's Law as well that those weather systems which bring snow slide away to the south and only impact the southern half of the UK whereas the weather systems which just bring rain are the ones who we do end up being affected by even if the resulting rainfall totals from that have been fairly small in this part of the world for most of the time.

I am looking at a crystal ball and trying to look ahead to what I see coming up for the rest of the winter. Many models have an increasingly mild and zonal setup in the run up to Christmas. Others have high pressure in charge but even those ones have Scotland still on the periphery of that mild air. That means that it is going to mild here either way. Looking at my crystal ball, all I'm then seeing ahead is months of mild zonality as the polar vortex finally gets its act together.

Would I therefore be right in saying that winter is now over in this part of the world?

---

I would agree with the above... The charts started hinting at a warm up several days ago and usually they tent to be right........ As this is a winter moaning thread why why why do the charts hardly ever turn forecast mild outcomes to cold but nearly always turn forecast cold outcomes to mild!!!!
Here in the far SW our winters have been very mild very grey with very little substance apart from the odd blow in 2014😙

---

Not an ‘El Classico’ for a number of reasons, the main one being we didn’t have the long fetch easterly feed of cold low dp air to feed into it. 

The halcyon days of freezing easterlies and a channel low maybe something we won’t see again for many more years - or next month. The fact is we just don’t know.

---

I can now add Edinburgh Airport to the list of stations in Edinburgh which has just recorded today's maximum temperature so far which now, completes the full set of all three stations which have done that tonight.

---

Yep there seems to be very little cold weather in Eastern Europe at the moment... It's all in Canada which is not good for us when it spills into that steaming hot pond....

---

The Ensembles video which Gavin P. did tonight shows that this situation has got even worse as the day has worn on. At least in his earlier video, everything was more towards 50:50 between a mild and zonal setup, and an anticyclonic setup. In that last video though, just about everything was pointing to a mild and zonal setup and at this rate, I can see his forecast for this month to be slightly colder than average overall going downhill very quickly with that.

 

---

I love the snow(I know strange place to live far SW) my heart hopes for cold and strong easterlies with convective snow showers... My head sees grey mild weeks ahead... To close to the European high to get weather but to far away to see blue skies and chilly nights. Last year we had nearly 4 months of the same....

---

 

The psychology is all too true what you said above Brian.

You had a flurry on 30th November and then less than two weeks later (Sunday 11th) you had a dump of 14cms? That's quite a good start to winter.

I guess the positive for us southerners (south of M4) SOUTH coast including Exeter ha! is that any snow that we could or will see will be give us something to look forward to as many of us still haven't seen a single flake yet. Snow was only confined to DARTMOOR OR Exmoor in the SW So for us to see any snow in form of flurries or showers or even soft hail would be something good as we've not seen it fall yet. SO we have something to look forward to.

Where as you have seen quite a substantial amount and 6-7" or 15cms of snow wasn't forecast in your area from this 'snow event'- so any snow that does fall throughout the rest of winter 17/18 - even if it's in form of showers and maybe totals 2-5cms would be a disappointment in comparison to what you had on Sunday!? - You mentioned quite possibly the only snowfall of winter, so I can understand that anything less than that would be disappointing? Naturally you would rate it poorly because it's far less than your previous fall. Was this the most you have seen since 2010 did you say?

The worse part is seeing the snow melting!! Hate it!

Nice photos btw - esp like the one with totem pole - thanks for sharing!

 

---

No sooner was I getting accustomed to and enjoying calm conditions with big minus numbers here in North Northumberland, and snow everywhere around about (not here though) when in comes the cloud, down comes the drizzle and up gets the west wind and the freeze has gone as swiftly as it arrived - and all this on a day and night forecast to be cold, so what'll we get when all that zonal rubbish returns next week - you bet a barbecue Christmas!

My Moan , Why do people get obsessed with it snowing during Christmas ? I dont really care too much about the weather Christmas day as most of it will be spent inside the house anyway and the family focus is on inside events eating, drinking games, Tv etc.. if I had an ideal it woud be dry bright and not too windy and cold but not icy..or wet. so the family can get out for a walk after stuffing lunch if they want.

To be honest snow on the scale of this weekend at Christmas would be a big problem as most people will be travelling, and disruptive weather of any sort would make it it miserable and stressful and remember all those families flooded out last Christmas and the one before?
Anyway for those lucky enough to have seen decent snow last weekend please don't start moaning about it disappearing too fast or you didnt get as much snow as th next town or village or there isnt another snow event on the horizon just appreciate you were lucky and a fair swathe of the country actually didnt get a flake and will have completed another snowless year.
In my part of Hampshire we had cold rain and sleet and a bit of wet snow on the very top of the downs, but hey thats better than the last few years and it was as predicted by the Met. If you live somewhere right on the coast like Portsmouth where you are surrounded by sea on 3 sides currently at a temperature of 11.7 degc, it has to be pretty damn special set of conditions for snow to lay so i think be grateful for getting sleet!

Anyway we had very fine ice granules falling this morning and a hoar frost and blue skies at the same time!, making it look festive enough !

Alan
Timsbury Hampshire
Timsbury
Hampshire

---

 

Imagery & association. I think many of us have our subconsciousnesses brainwashed into wanting the ideal Christmas scene as depicted on Xmas cards. Or something. Adds to the magic of Yuletide.

I was born in 1972 and yearned for a white Xmas when I was growing up - 1981 had snow on the ground but it was around 96 or 97 until I experienced my first snow falling on Xmas Day (and that was early hours - woke up to stunning sunshine, deep blue sky... and a frozen layer of about 1cm of snow. Roads were treacherous - but that was half the fun of doing our rounds of visiting our families.

Since then I've had snow on the day itself in 2004, along with deep snow lying in both 2009 and 2010, with a surprise snowfall (3-4cm) on Boxing Day night 2014.

It still feels more special, for some reason.

 

During December 2010, when it seemed that every potential snow event for MBY was either dissolving into nothing or missing us, it was 'diamond dust' that kept the spirits up on a few of the really cold but dry nights. I'd never seen it so abundant or clearly - and it was most apparent in our security light, which made the particles semi-suspended in the air twinkle all colours. One of the most beautiful weather phenomena I've ever seen.

 

---

Time to give the weather watching watching a break for the next two weeks? Looks like nothing wintry or cold coming our way! Or am I too pessimistic#? 😞

---

I'm really disappointed that the snow slipped further south than first predicted and pretty much completely missed us here in Greater Manchester. I know everyone feels like they are hard done to but I really do feel like we are often 50 miles on the wrong side of these events. Even when we don't miss it, we seem to get a wetter mix than people just down the road! 2010 was probably the best year I can remember as we had a good amount in January and the following December.

I'm just hoping we get lucky in January.

Raining here. Already washed away the meagre, patchy dusting of snow from late Saturday.

What joy. What a wintry spell 

---

Well the Midlands and parts of southern England had a notable heavy snowfall on Sunday and the UK as a whole had it's coldest December night since 2010 this morning... where does that point to with the modern winter theory?

---

As much as I will be pleased to get back on the road bike, there is something quite melancholic about the wintry landscape disappearing and the snowman I made with my other half and daughter slowly sliding to its demise 😞

---

It points clearly to the fact that cold spells are still going to happen. It doesn't say anything about the clear trend to higher temperatures here and particularly in the Arctic.

---

Which were supposed to have been pretty well impossible these days, that is if we had believed the claims made here by the main proponent of the said theory on this forum circa a decade ago and much more recently.

---

As the drizzle fell yesterday evening, I pondered, "The precipitation doesn't f***ing miss me when it's f***ing rain!!!"

 

---

I was talking to dad about here how hard to get snow and even if you get down to -20C here it will rain on the same day,  Was -5C yesterday morning here on the wall so I assumed around -8C in the garden.  With those temps recorded in other countries it would snow straight away and no restrictions being enorced.  It seem every time there snow they enforced restrictions where the snow can fell in places or what ever height meters they want. That is very wrong as UK whole is not a hot country so snow should freely fall in all levels and places.  Fine when they forecast snow in meter height in other warmer countries.  They used it when they predict snow in Jerusalem and Amman which sit around 600m to 1000m.   Sadly my 6 years old nephew was disappointed with the little snow we got and asking why the TV and Xmas cards kept showing snow?  It time they change to reflect wet scene Xmas cards as a reality now.

I'm curious who 'they' are

 

George, the entire Xmas thing is based on fairy stories and myths, so Xmas cards depicting snowy scenes are entirely fitting

(notwithstanding that Xmas cards first became popular during the Little Ice Age, so snowy Xmases were much more commonplace - and, of course, Dickens had a penchant for writing about snowy Xmases)

 

---

This is just so frustrating!!

The temperatures have been dropping during today and just a short while ago, we had quite a heavy shower of rain. That in itself isn't an issue. The issue is that the temperature has dropped quite a bit and with that, the dew points as well. As this shower came along, the dew points were only just above freezing so in terms of seeing something wintry, this is yet another near miss because in order for these showers to be falling as anything other than rain, we just need to those dew points to drop a little bit further so that they are then below freezing.

Had that happened, this could have been quite a nice looking snow event or at the very least, something which at least had a bit of snow missed in with it. The worse thing about it is the dew points only had to just be that teensy weensy bit lower in order for that to happen. I'm sure that there are legitimate reasons as why the air wasn't quite cold enough for that to happen, but I'm not looking to find the answer to that here.

The question which I am therefore asking myself, is whether I really am cursed during this winter in terms of never being able to see even a single snowflake whilst countless other members of this forum have already seen plenty of that during the course of this winter so far. Another way of looking at it as well is that surely, I can only keep on experiencing these near misses for so long before I am bound to finally, hit that ultimate jackpot eventually, once and for all.

To make matters worse as well, the dew points during the last hour, actually jumped back up a bit just to further add to that frustration.

 

---

 One swallow does not make a summer. It is unlikely to be  an orderly progressive warming, but the trend over the long term will be there even if there are  the odd colder spells. Well that is what i think 

---

Things have actually worked out not quite so badly in a way though because Jerry from Morningside has at least reported seeing a light shower of wet snow on the opposite side of Edinburgh from where I live on two other threads (the current conditions thread and the snow reports thread). When I look back on it, the north side of Edinburgh where I live has never been renowned for getting much in the way of snow anyway due to it being close to sea level and the coast itself, so I can't really complain too much about that.

My biggest gripe came from the fact that there hadn't been a single bit of snow in Edinburgh during this winter until tonight. OK, that still hasn't happened here where I live and OK, that was only brief and not amounting to much. However, the fact that this snow shower was reported in Edinburgh (albeit on the opposite side of the city) means that I now technically, have what I want now which was for there to be snow in Edinburgh.

Having said that though, that's still not the same as seeing it here and lying on the ground but at the end of the day, some progress has been made in that direction at long last and it's just such a shame that our winter is forecast to go down the toilet pan next week. Snow in this part of Edinburgh is actually very rare but just like anywhere else, we need the dew points to be below freezing in order for that to happen. For the last few hours though, the dew points have just kept refusing to drop to below freezing and in the last couple of hours, both the temperature and the dew points have actually went up a bit as a result of there being too much cloud cover and a bit too much wind.

 

---