ukpaul

Huh?! It’s almost a carbon copy of the GFSP 12z which gives this - What gave you the idea it was poor? Weaker than before, yes, but no moreso than for the rest of the country.

The ICON isn’t the most accurate model for us, it has to shift northwards massively for today, for example, and has a clear southwards bias. It’s a short range German model so, really, that’s its main purpose. EURO4 is pretty decent for gauging falling snow (but rubbish for snow depths).

It isn’t southward to any real extent, it is now weakening earlier, however, so that might affect areas to the East of our region. There is the possibilty of wraparound snow for those areas later but it’s a risky proposition. Sweet spot is west of Birmingham, maybe not reaching North Yorkshire (sorry folks) and maybe not much south of the dreaded M4.

Again today I’ve been looking out of the window and staring at snow covered white fields, All of them about fifty metres higher than where I am. Textbook.

Look beyond the hopecasting and you see that the system on GFS and ECM (and others) pivots somewhere over Yorkshire. Currently a bit north of me I think. There's a lot of desperate hope to send it south but (like today) it isn't happening. I do think it is arriving a bit more slowly, though, and it might arrive some hours later than thought. Today pretty much as expected here - constant medium and heavy snow for up to four hours but with very little sticking because of daytime temperatures. Metoffice pretty much correct on temperatures, BBC on timing. Thursday is a nighttime/early morning event and it does make a difference.

Heavy snow here too. Also not settling owing to above freezing temperatures. Would need a cool down of a degree or so.

Turning to snow now (I'm up at 200 metres asl at the moment).

Sleety rain here, just started and right on the edge of the band. BBC suggests 2pm for the main band, Metoffice a couple of hours earlier, so we shall see.

Hmmm. Much better angle. Undercut plausible but maybe a few more runs needed in that direction?

ECM - Friday 1am GFS - Friday 1am Slight difference in angle but the extent of snow north and south now appears to be about the same northwards with ECM a wider band including the South East. ECM Dang, not appearing. Anyway, it's here - https://www.tameteo.com/modeles/fr-europe-ecmwf-87.htm#072 GFS

It's a little North but the major difference is it's less snowy, especially for the north Midlands. Reason being that it misses the 'wraparound' snow arriving later on Friday. Variation on a theme really.

The UKMO breaks up a bit but does reach there by end of Thursday, still too far out anyway to approach it with any certainty. The supposed higher resolution models of ICON, Arpege, Hirlam, are pretty poor performers for this part of the world I’ve always found. Euro4 is pretty decent though. If Met Office forecasts shift from their current status then we’d know if their internal models are seeing different but nothing so far on that.

How did did you do that? What’s the secret button I have to press?!?

If anything you get snow bands diminishing as more mixed signals take over. To keep them solid at a three day range is a pretty good show of consistency.

WRF, UKMO (the middle ground and most likely, stopping just short of North Yorkshire), GEM, JMA, even the mighty NAVGEM etc. are akin to GFS. Action after the pivot is more diverse so when that happens there’s a greater split. I’m not trying to be contrary, just as I pointed out in recent days that the supposed corrections south for tomorrow were only 50/50.