How did Edinburgh do out of this spell? good snowy spell last week evening? What about this morning?

Most probably, John.

Well happy birthday for Tuesday - When was the last official white birthday of yours? 

Looks like the many parts of the north have done well for snow this winter but perhaps maintaining the cold and snow has been the issue because most of the snow has been transient and temporary.

Once this horrible wet and zonal' week is out the way I look forward to a drier Feb even if it doesn't provide snow - at least it will put an end to days of relentless wind and rain and at least i won't get woken up by howling winds and icy rain/hail hitting the window etc in early hours every night and hearing all the bins being blown down outside etc,. We really need some dry, frosty weather and cold weather - cold crisp and dry to freeze all these cold flu/bugs that are going around everyone.

I hear ya!

When the colder air is supposed to be standing from north to south, it's especially frustrating when areas to the south of us get more snow than we do. I'm not that bothered in this instance, as the snow hasn't amounted to much outside of Scotland and the far north of England anyway, and quickly gone/washed away outside of that region. But as a general rule, it's teeth-grindingly annoying.

Met Office and TWO radars not working/updating this morning? 

https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/public/weather/observation/map/u134qs6zb#?map=WeatherCode&zoom=8&lon=-0.19&lat=52.45&fcTime=1516654800.

https://www.theweatheroutlook.com/twodata/uk-rainfall-radar.aspx.

Woke up to a +14.5c and it's now +15c and it's not even 12 midday yet. This is honestly dire to wake up to such dark miserable overcast mild dross! YUCK! I can cope with 9 or 10c but +14 or +15c in mid winter (January) is surely a little unseasonal! At least it's not stormy, wet and windy anymore and I am not being woken up by the rain or hail! But goodness me - this is so mild and unseasonal and it feels strange and with light winds i felt warm with a coat on earlier when walking this morning. Need to turn all heating off and open all windows. Just remarkable indeed. I hate this weather in January. and Guess what? Come March we will see max temps of like 2 or +3c during the daytime. - Just when we want spring to start and when we would all be longing for milder and drier weather we will get a block and northerly and north easterly which will be a rubbish start to spring and we shall have a cool and wet May with easterly winds.

TYPICAL!! 

At least you can take a day out in the Peak District or Lake District. Even that isn't an option here. We southerners hear those from the Midlands sounding off about what a great winter for snowfall - we don't have it and by the time we might get organised for a visit to their snowfields it'a all melting again.

Just popped into the shopping centre to get some bits for the new bathroom and am wondering how could 0.0000001 mm of drizzle make everything (including me) so damp through. Joys of us being under a tropical maritime type airflow but at least it isn't properly pouring down with gale force winds . . . oh, wait, that's yet to come tomorrow. 

A shame as yesterday was lovely with Spring-like sunshine.

Not an option here either as this winter is so dire that even places as far inland as Ballater and Aboyne, which are supposedly amongst the snowiest in the country, have no lying snow

Would have to go to Braemar which is almost two hours away and, with the sun still disappearing behind the mountains by 1:30pm, it’s just not worth it until mid-February. Besides which the snow has now gone and doesn’t look like returning any time soon.

This winter is beyond a joke really. Less than 60mm precipitation which is on a par with 1988/89. Only one proper day of snow (8th December) which is ridiculous given the cold weather. Used to be a clear relationship with winters tending to be mild/dry or cold/wet(snowy). Now we have to suffer useless dry polar westerlies year in year out and horrid mild wet SE’lies though even they have just been producing drizzle this year rather than the usual deluges.

Would like to think this dry spell will last all year, or all of the next four years given the wetness of the past four years, but it’s a near certainty the horrendous wet stuff will return in time for summer when at least one month is now guaranteed to bring record or near record rainfall

Just a quick rant - more the fact that this so far at least for the south west is a dejavu of previous cooler or chillier spells.

Like not cold enough for snow or frost or ice days etc.

What bugs me the most about this right now is the fact that we are at the awkward no-mans precipitation (No soft hail/Hail/wet snow or pure rain) just icy muck/rain then ice pellets followed by heavy rain with sleet and more rain as precipitation get's lighter - So it's annoying weather as it doesn't know what it wants to do. Be it rain, sleet, soft hail or hail but it sounds icy from time to time! Where by temperatures haven't fallen enough for it to be pure wet snow which is visible so when a wintry shower comes along then it will fall as rain as temperature rises - a bit like beginning of Jan and 8th or 9th December 17 as well as previous cooler snaps. Tonight is a prime example!

It was cold and the car was frosted up at 9pm until a shower of rain and hail/sleet arrive - the temperature rose from +2.7c to now +4.7c that's a 2c rise in temperature and now the precipitation is all rain or icy! YUCK!

This cooler snap is another joke so let's hope these models /forecasts for snow/ice days materialise on Saturday if not then next week and heres to the SSW that may occur.

Yes, the worst month of the year is done! Happy February, and not much of winter left now!

Couldn’t agree more. 5.1C max and 4.6C currently aren't remotely cold temperatures. This is even worse than the feeble flop in late December which did at least eventually give some snow. Should have got a decent snowfall out of today’s synoptics. Instead the vilest most unspeakably bad and unpleasant day of another totally rank non-winter. You could fill a toilet roll listing godawful days like this over the past four years whereas a stamp would suffice to outline the good stuff.

Absolutely disgusting beyond words. Wet, windy, dark and depressing. The worst weather bar none. Morning walk to work was turned in to an impromptu audition for ‘It’s a Knockout’, having to navigate an obstacle course of blown down wheelie bins while at the same time trying to hold off the onslaught of horizontal water. 9mm of rain and by far the worst winds of the winter. Has helped this winter edge closer to the top of the list of my most detested of all time. Still a long way off 2013/14 but it’s battling it out for second place with 2015/16 and 2016/17. Certainly nothing pre-2013 would come close that’s for sure.

I must say that even in 2013/14 when we had almost continuous gloom and rain for the last fortnight of January we still managed a frost on the 24th. This year has seen no frost since the 21st Jan – now 11 days. It’s not even come close, having failed to go lower than +1.3C and I’m struggling to ever recall such a dire spell at this time of year. No snow for over a month and very little mild weather either. Just atrocious 5C windy rubbish pretty much day in day out for the fifth non-winter in a row.

The stats for January since 2005 are just abysmal. Just two falls of snow greater than 5cm in that time and one January that managed 100 hours frost compared to two Marches. When it comes to genuine mild weather the absence of that has been even more acute. There has not been a properly mild January (at least 1C above average) since 2007 and only 2014 and 2017 have been at least 0.5C above average. In both cases it was due to minima as the maximum anomaly was only +0.2C in 2014 and +0.4C last year. So no January with mild day temperatures since 2007 and this is on course to be the first decade since the 1960s when it hasn’t recorded 14C. About the only time it even gets to 10C is during the overnight period. By contrast the 90s and 2000s produced lots of very mild weather but had more in the way of frost and snow too. Far more desirable and interesting than endless 5C tripe.

I’ve said this before but the 2010s are the decade the weather died and extremes just stopped happening

What I'm really getting fed up with just now though, is of BBC forecasts at both the UK level and on BBC Scotland, constantly mentioning that it will be cold or even "chilly" when the temperatures which they are forecasting (as an example of that, tonight's BBC Scotland forecast had a temperature of +3°C forecast for 8am tomorrow morning), aren't even the slightly bit cold or chilly.

As I write, we haven't had a single official air frost here in Edinburgh since 21 January 2018.

At the moment though, we are under quite a decent area of high pressure (as shown by the fact that as at 8pm tonight, the pressure at Edinburgh Gogarbank had gone up to 1,033.2mb), and we don't have those easterlies which the south of England is getting.

As a result of being under this area of high pressure, the winds are light and we have also been under increasingly clear skies as the day has gone on.

You would think that these would therefore, be the perfect conditions for that duck to finally be broken so that we finally get that elusive air frost and indeed, we have come very close to doing do with the temperature going down to 0.9°C at both Edinburgh Gogarbank and the botanic gardens in Edinburgh as at 7pm this evening.

However, I have just looked outside and discovered that it has become cloudy once again, and the result of this is that the temperatures are refusing to drop once again so that as at 8pm, the temperature at Edinburgh Gogarbank remains unchanged from the previous hour at 0.9°C, and has gone up slightly to 1.2°C at the botanic gardens in Edinburgh.

That in turn, makes me wonder what on Earth, it is going to take for us to finally get an official air frost in this part of the world.

EDIT:

Temperature at 9pm has now gone up to 1.1°C at Edinburgh Gogarbank and 2.1°C at the botanic gardens in Edinburgh as if to emphasise that point, that we just CANNOT get an official air frost here in Edinburgh any more.

Seriously dude get a grip.. 2 weeks without an air frost is nothing 😂😂 

Not nowadays it would appear, but this is supposed to be the coldest time of the year on average. Since I also live much further north than you do, I should have a right to expect more in the way of air frosts than you just in the same manner in which I would expect it to be hotter on average during the summer where you are, than it is here for the same reason.

Added to that is the fact that the number of official frosts which we had during January was a long way short of the 1981-2010 average, I would then hope that you will at least begin to understand why I feel a bit short-changed in this department just now. That in turn, makes it all the frustrating that we have had a situation during tonight under high pressure where you would think that we could never possibly have a better chance of getting that air frost, only to find that we still narrowly fail to do so.

EDIT:

I am fully aware that I'm beginning to sound a bit like Richard from Aberdeen here but then, this is the moaning thread after all.

I’m bored of it all now. Booking myself into rehab - a whole two weeks without a single 500hPa anomaly chart or incorrect ppn distribution or anyone moaning about not being high enough above sea level. For all I care they can all carry on squabbling as they paw over a slight shift here or a degree there - and thinking we all understand what a QBO differential torque is. I don’t care because I’ll be free to live again. Read a book; listen to the other half and maybe even respond; see the sky for what it is not what it might produce. And the daffs will flower, the sun will shine and it’ll all be over for another year.
😉

Steady on, Neil!

I know things are bad, but it's never that bad.

I do wonder if I'll ever see my dream - a catastrophic snowfall event. Ideally around 72-96 hours of heavy snowfall, dumping several feet across the entire UK (I imagine Portsmouth, Exeter, Leysdown and The Wirral may just get moderate sleet). The whole country crippled, a national emergency declared, all roads impassable. And it lasts for 2-3 weeks

Just as long as I'd had ample warning to stock up on a couple of generators, fuel, food and a camping stove.

Hi Saint!

If the atmospheric hosepipe that delivered the boxing day floods here in 2015 had encountered cold air below we'd have seen over 1m of snow that night!

With the weather turning ever more WACCy be careful what you wish for!!!

I wonder what happened to the frequent heavy snow showers. A few in Kent early this morning but zilch on the radar now. I've had one air frost (-0.6C for a couple of hours) since start of January.