A bone of contention, sufficient to prompt comment in this thread about how "normal/seasonal" the charts are looking, has caught my attention.
I turned to my Met Office Book of the British Weather, which is an atlas of the 1971-2000 mapped averages by month, season and year. It is a must-have for any model watcher who wants to opine about what constitutes "average" or "seasonal" conditions.
It shows that falling snow in November in autumn is rare (well less than 5 days per autumn as a mean.) The mode for much of southern UK away from the northern Pennines and the Northern half of Scotland would be zero (no) days of falling snow in November, the median over a 30 year period would be no more than 1 day, probably less.
This then turned my attention to the potential of this week. IF there is falling snow (let alone laying snow) outside of the aforementioned upland areas, then in my reserached opinion, this would NOT constitute "average" or seasonal conditions.
By the standards of the mapped averages, and calculations that can be deduced from them, any falling snow that does occur this month in lowland southern UK would represent a somewhat rare occurrance, and would therefore not be seasonal as it would clearly be unrepresentative of the average for autumn.
By way of balance, I would add that any snow that does fall in November almost always falls in the latter third and there was IIRC a Buchan cold spell in this part of the month.
Originally Posted by: Whether Idle