Peter H

It’s been miserable here in South Antrim today. Cloudy with continuous steady rain all day. At least the wind has died down.

Of the recent mild winters, I think this has been one of the worst. Not really like winter at all, with virtually no frost and zero snow. I just hope we get a mild dry spring now. 4 weeks until March, the start of meteorological spring and less than 8 weeks until the clocks go forward. The brighter evenings really can’t come quick enough. Even the predicted slightly chillier spell at the end of this week has vanished without a trace. it really is one of the worst in recent years.

According to my late mum, the winter of 1938/39 was a very cold one.

“The moon and weather may change together, but a change in the moon doesn’t mean a change in the weather”. Or something like that.

Indeed. I was in hospital for a few days earlier in the week and didn’t even look at the models for a few days. When I got home, no difference whatsoever. As others have said, I gave up too when the predicted Christmas cold spell disappeared virtually overnight. I thought that was a bad sign.

The interesting thing with persistent high pressure areas is they can suddenly shift position all of a sudden and without warning, which I think is what happened during the winters of 1946/47, 1962/63, and 1985/86 ( which had a really cold but largely snowless February here ). A shame this one isn’t over Greenland/Iceland or Scandinavia. We’d be getting a record breaking cold winter if that was the case. Every now and again the runs tease us with a cold scenario so you never know, but this is a very odd set up for January.

We had a white Christmas that season here in Northern Ireland, at least over east Antrim and north Down. I remember taking the dog for a walk on Christmas Eve 1995 and it was snowing, which was very festive indeed.

I notice Weather Online have given up on anything remotely cold and snowy for the whole of January, February, and even March, and we haven’t had a “10 day snow bomb to hit the U.K.” headline from James Madden in the Daily Express for a while now. That’s a really bad sign for the rest of the winter, surely ?

The so called “Lough Neagh basin” is notorious for dense and persistent fog, freezing or otherwise i.e. the areas surrounding Lough Neagh.

The record breaking winter of 1947 didn’t start until the last week in January that year, and the early part of the month was very mild. Also, the winter of 1986 had a really cold February, after a fairly mild December and January. I also remember the winter of 1995 having a very cold snowy spell in February as well. But I’m not optimistic at all this year. The jet stream really does appear to be very strong with no signs of the Atlantic weather systems letting up until at least the middle of January, and that takes us to the half way stage of the season. Still, there does appear to be some very cold air not that far away in Europe and certainly over Scandinavia so there’s always some hope. Some winters the mild air extends right the way to Moscow, and it’s very cold at the moment. Just a slight change in these circumstances can make all the difference, but the Atlantic really does need to slow down.

Yes, after keeping us all going with really cold weather models next week and the possibility of snow right up until Thursday, the models suddenly flipped Thursday morning to mild and wet all next week. The latest runs have mild, wet, and windy westerly / westerlies right up until the 9th January. The Met Office further outlook, which now goes up until the 23rd January has mild, wet, and windy weather up until then. Almost two thirds of the way through the season. In a couple of weeks we’ll be at the half way stage of the season. So far, no snow and very little frost here in South Antrim. In fact, it’s been that mild since I last cut the grass in the middle of October it actually needs cut again, but it’s far too wet. Shaping up to be yet another mild, frost free, and snowless winter. I honestly wish the seasonal forecasters would give up, because they’ve been generally wrong on everything for the last lot of years. I hate and detest this weather in any season, but especially the winter. Sadly, it seems to be the norm now.

Yep, me too. Heavy snow showers here on Monday evening, but it didn’t lie. Slight covering on the roof of my shed yesterday morning, and snow showers throughout the day, but no lying snow, other than on the hills behind me. Last night was quite icy. I’m really getting fed up with this winter now, but we’ve still another 7 weeks of the dark evenings. Winter really does drag at this point.

Over the last 60 years ( I’m 64 now ) I’ve noticed a real change in winter weather. when I was young in the 60’s, we always had at least two or three snow events per season, and that was outside the winter of 62/63. When it wasn’t snowing we had long cold frosty days, when you could put water on the ground and it would freeze almost instantly, or the frost never lifted throughout the day. Either that or there was always snow preceding rain, or cold cloudy days with snow flurries. i thought the 90’s and 00’s were bad for cold winters, but the last decade was worse with the only winter remotely resembling my childhood 2017/18. How long does it have to be before the average temperature for January is adjusted upwards ? I think in these parts it’s around 6 degrees C, but we rarely have constant maximum temperatures in January at those levels, and often continually at 10 or 11.

Same here.

None so far here in South Antrim. Not even a single flake. Last snow we had was late February 2018 Only a few nights of frost as well, about 4 or 5 at most. Grass hasn’t stopped growing since the end of last October and needs cut again. They’re speculating this winter will be one of the top 10 mildest on record.