Still a few trying to cast their dark shadow. It's like a disease. Lighten up a little and rather than looking for an end which MAY be a whole week away enjoy charts you may never ever see again.

ISTR that it was in January 1982 that the flat roof of a leisure centre in either Swansea or Cardiff collapsed under the weight of snow. Fortunately it happened overnight, and there was nobody in the building at the time.

As long as any snow lasts through next weekend so we can enjoy it, I expect most of us will be looking forward to spring weather come 5th March.

I advise you to screen shot this because this is the best graph ever and my long waited to see proper ice days and powdery snow since 1991 to be happening again.  

Op run doesn't know what it wants to do after Sunday - looks very messy indeed. 

Checked the 00z charts this morning and was borderline stunned at how cold they were. The ECM FI is just a crazy set of charts

Fun to think that today is quite cold, with a hard frost, and next week it'll be even colder

I'll be watching the shorter range models soon to check if I'm going to see snowfall - can be a doubt for me if the winds are straight easterlies, so hoping for a more ENE or NE tilt to steer showers across and through Kent. If we do see snowfall given the ground is being nicely chilled it should settle readily and won't be melting due to the ground temps at least.

Longer term and I see the idea of an incursion from the SW remains strong with the GFS Op at least. Be interesting to see how that plays out - usually things correct south and most of the precip misses us. 

It's certainly been a fun couple of weeks model watching - seeing the easterly signal waxing and waning in the GFS ens and the ECM once we got to the 10 day range.

Now we're basically there - chilly/cold until late Sunday, cold for at least 5 days or so with the likelihood of ice days for many 

P.S Did anyone fancy having a go at a snow map thread? Would be a case of people posting in it just once to confirm if they have lying snow, where they're based and how much snow. They can edit their posts to update if they get more snowfall and the map can be marked with a circle at their location and a number for the CMs of lying snow. Would be quite cool to see, if anyone good with doing such things fancies it?

We should remember that Europe is only a small proportion of the world's (or even of the Northern Hemisphere's) land surface. Also if Spring is delayed by a month over Europe, it could be at least partly counterbalanced by it being brought forward by a month over eastern North America.

Pffft! Are you mad? Perhaps 5th April. Maybe. If it's been a historically severe March.

Given how successive model runs have forecasted in the longer term, there's potential for the north at least to continue to enjoy a cold airflow well into March.

I also remember how in Jan 2010 (which followed a fortnight'ish cold/snowy spell in December), we had snow on the ground from the fall on the 5th (?) into Feb, despite us getting no top-up amounts and the air temp not being particularly cold.

👍👍👍👍

nice to have you back Neil.

The trouble with any snow predictions Mon-Wed is that the showers will tend to line themselves up and affect some areas much more than others, but due to uncertainty regarding the exact wind direction, it's impossible to specify which areas will be the lucky/unlucky (delete as appropriate) ones.

For example, where I live, I know that the famous 'Thames Streamer' is capable of bringing frequent spells of light snow, but only if the wind direction is just right and of course of sufficient strength, plus the upper air is cold enough (sufficient instability).

At this stage it appears the wind will be stronger and the upper air colder than when I last saw snow from a Thames Streamer (Feb 2009) so it looks hopeful - yet I'm not counting my chickens as I know that a kink in the flow related to a disturbance moving through could either cut off the streamer and leave me high and dry, or replace it with a more prolonged spell of snow, depending on where the disturbance is going.

Such disturbances will crop up at short notice in such an unstable situation over the N. Sea, as very small-scale imbalances amplify rapidly (chaos theory at its finest!). These are so hard for models to capture that it's not unknown for the high-res runs on the morning of the day itself to miss them!

So no wonder that the Met Office can only put out a yellow, low impact warning for easternmost areas at this stage, as it would be ridiculous to try honing in on specific zones and issuing higher-level warnings in distinct bands extending inland from the east coast.

Meanwhile the model output itself can only explore one possibility per operational run or ensemble member, and tends to fall short on capturing the full extent of shower development in cold setups anyway, so there will indeed be a lot of applications depicting a very dry spell of weather, as they are typically taking data directly from these model runs - and not only that, usually GFS, which has among the worst track records with convection!

So please, don't take anything they show seriously - but equally, don't go expecting a substantial dumping of snow unless you're within the already Met Office-warned areas - you may as well flip a coin as to whether a disturbance in the flow will pay you a visit or not (yes, even if you're a good way west; the flow (currently, at least ) looks strong enough to carry them a good way inland).

Rant over 

Brian may be right about this having more semi-permanent affects on the NH bigger picture

http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/CFSv2/htmls/euT2me3Mon.html

ALL of the above average values have disappeared!? (In our neck of the woods)

Looks like Switzerland retains it's neutrality with temperatures as well - cold all around

The op strops on 5th March!?

Also i can't seem to get this 06z  ensembles up despite refreshing the page!?

The automated MetO forecasts are really ramping things up now.

Check London out!

https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/public/weather/forecast/gcpvj0v07#?date=2018-02-28

Wednesday and Thursday both ice days with heavy snow showers Wednesday AM.

Good news but why does it only show precipitation of up to 10% or whatever until Thursday? Hopefully upgrades to come. 

Also worth considering is the enhanced volcanic activity in the Indonesian archipelago - the effects are mostly felt in NH summers with depressed temperatures.

Checked quite a few locations - very little snow in the current outlook, but that will change as the resolution increases - we need to wait until Sunday to get a clearer picture of snowfall locations and amounts.

We need to understand that yellow warnings are not all low impact. Warnings should be read in their entirety and on this occasion the early yellow warnings are for medium impacts, albeit with a very low likelihood at this range.

Rant over.