Jackfrost

andymusic Sadly I've been burnt too many times over the years to allow myself "good feelings" about snow in this country! My hunch is that what we'll see tomorrow is rain on the coast, periods of more persistent rain, sleet and wet snow further inland with some slushy deposits here and there, and significant settling only on genuine high ground (above ~250-300m).

The prospect of some significant falls here, and not just on highest ground: I'm sceptical as it's still on the wrong side of marginal for most, but it's that margin which will make tomorrow's weather-watching worthwhile.

Do we have the rarest of rarities - a snow scenario moving in our favour the closer it gets, instead of away from it? As of now I'm a bit reluctant to guess at settling and depths as the whole thing is still firming up and is highly marginal, but I'd expect at the very least some persistent falling wet snow on Friday. Areas most likely to see this would be the Valleys, Mid and inland North Wales.

It does seem early in the season to be talking about a potential significant snowfall event, but the models are showing (and forecasters are increasingly saying) what they are! Some caveats do apply, not least the fact that countless times we've been burnt much later in the season in similar set-ups and with SSTs lower than they currently are, but, in our favour, things are quite synoptically different this month compared to previous years. Also, inland south and mid Wales tend to benefit more than the rest of southern Britain in these low-bumping-against-cold scenarios. An interesting week ahead.

Just wanted to add to this, as the post got quite a few likes: Please don't take my "2-10 cm over a wide area" remark as gospel. As I said, showers are hard to forecast, there will be local variation, the higher you go the more favourable, and there'll likely be fewer of those showers in southeast Wales in the lee of the Brecon Beacons. Still, showers over a fairly wide area with settling due to temperatures just below zero is likely.

Interesting. Let's see if it's still there this time tomorrow! Whether or not it does snow on Friday, the weekend looks like a bit of a no man's land with neither high or low pressure dominating over Wales. One thing seems more and more likely, and that's the Atlantic is not about to come barrelling its way back as was thought previously.

I think so, yes, but touch-and-go as to whether it's for ice with snow showers the contributing factor, or for snow as the main reason for the warning.

Tomorrow night and into Wednesday looks promising for most of Wales, away from immediate coasts and above ~100 m. Hard to predict accumulations due to the nature of showers, but 2-10 cm over a wide area, with local variations, seems reasonable.

Given the GFS's unreliability of late, can we disregard what's showing in the latest run? Because if not, that's a pretty significant snow event in Ireland, Wales and southern England moving into the reliable.

There's a fair bit of shower activity moving down the Irish Sea that's now starting to make contact with the coast. Crucially for us further south and east, as of now it's holding itself together and not disintegrating. As the low over us is so slack you can expect it to be a good few hours until the showers reach southeast Wales, if they do at all. Still?! You really lucked out tonight.

Not at all jealous of you lot slightly to my south! It's amazing to see Cilfynydd white and Abercynon green... there's only a few hundred metres between them. Suppose I can't really complain though, as the northern Valleys almost always do better for snow with the rain/snow line usually somewhere between Treforest and Cilfynydd as you drive up the A470. That said, as the line of snow was clearing, the northern edge clipped the Abercynon and Nelson areas for a bit, so we have that sugary dusting you get when it's well below zero and settles on impact. The ice later this morning will be lethal. I've also got my eye on what's currently over Cardigan Bay and moving southeastwards. Not convinced it'll survive the high ground, but we'll see.

Being snowed in in Cwm-Pen-Ôl with the cast of High Hopes would be heaven or hell, depending on your outlook. Fochriw, the village in the opening credits, is a unique place: very isolated and bleak in winter, but in the best way. Anyway, there are now more opportunities for snow in Wales coming into the reliable than there were this time yesterday. It's all far from certain but chances are rising.

Don't want to excite anybody unnecessarily, but there are currently showers forming in the Bristol Channel. I'm not convinced they'll affect anywhere other than the VoG based on the current wind direction, but it's worth keeping an eye on if you're on the NW night shift. This was the set-up that delivered a surprise heavy fall to the Valleys on the night of 17/12/09.

Latest GFS is a snowy old run (well, relatively speaking compared to previous runs) for Wales. A signal for snow showers across Wales this weekend, and then a feature moving in from the southwest late on Tuesday. Meanwhile, the ICON brings snow into south Wales from the south on Wednesday. Two things about this: it goes without saying that at this range it's subject to corrections; and if south Wales does find itself on the northern edge of the feature (as is currently shown, with the main thrust across southern England), you can all but guarantee that marginality won't be an issue, right down to the coast. The cold is the main talking point here tonight, feels genuinely quite intense and there's already a heavy frost. -5.2° this morning, I'm expecting tonight to possibly be colder. Also, look at all those showers streaming into north and northeast Wales! Anyone from the area to confirm what they're falling as? The Netweather radar shows them as rain and sleet away from high ground, but I know it's not fully accurate.

Thanks for sharing those 2010 memories, everyone. Unfortunately I wasn't around to experience 1981-82, and I'm too young to have any memories of Feb. '96, so that third week of Dec. 2010 is my most perfect winter memory*. The deep snow cover, the metre-long icicles, the crystal blue skies, walking around town late at night in minus double-digit temperatures while the Christmas lights shone... it was close to nirvana. Is anyone aware of an archive of radar captures going back that far? I'd love to revisit it. *Storm Emma is a close second: a greater amount of snow fell from that, but it was powdery and drifted heavily which left some areas bare. Also, instead of a run of crystal-clear days, it was grey and murky and it all started melting after three days.

This is true. I suppose it's inevitable as the bulk of the UK's population lives in the southeast, Midlands, northwest and Yorkshire, but it does trigger some eye-rolling when seemingly all of the talk is about scenarios that aren't very relevant to us "forgotten" peoples. And yes, while I take interest in easterlies, give me an unstable, long-draw northerly any day. They often deliver for the whole of Wales, not just the north and west coasts. Did the Swansea area experience the streamer of Dec. 18th 2010 at all? That was from a northerly with a northwesterly component and there was ~40 cm of snow in the Valleys from that.

As is often the case in these battleground events, South and Mid Wales are in the sweet spot. The usual caveats apply (ten, (well, nine) days out, subject to much change etc), but the signal has been there for some kind of wintriness in the second week of the month for a few days now. Also, the friendly annual reminder going into this cold period that the rest of the site, especially the MOD/MAD thread, comes with a strong NIMBYist streak in which Wales is all but invisible, and not to take every development to heart. Hypothetically, the bulk of Wales could widely see 40 cm of snow (the same could apply to our equally overlooked friends in southwest England), but a patchy, slushy covering in the Midlands and southeast from the same system would render it all a "non-event".

Does anybody on here have recollections of this, or any info on the synoptic background? The relative lack of any real information makes me think it must have been localised to my corner of southeast Wales, but gosh, what a downpour it was. Truly extraordinary. I remember this event for one very good reason: our house was badly flooded by overflowing drains for the first (and hopefully last - it was a miserable experience and left the house uninhabitable) time. Information online about it, though, is limited, except for a vague news story buried deep in archives here and there and a few references to it in BBC forecasts uploaded to Youtube. I was 18 at the time and weather-watching was not my top priority, so I was taken by surprise. I recall the preceding few days being quiet and cool, but once the rain arrived it was so intense that visibility was limited. Thunder and lightning were frequent and it continued for over an hour, causing violent flash flooding in the area, road closures, numerous home evacuations and small landslides; a Mexican friend in town said that it reminded her of the tropical downpours they have in Yucatan. There were further spells of heavy rain over the following day, but nothing compared to that Saturday afternoon deluge. In all honesty, this was the event that has caused me to be wary of unstable, thundery weather. While I enjoy a good light show as much as anyone, the thought of going through a flash flood again fills me with dread. Edit: I just rewatched the BBC forecast for clarity and it does seem that areas of England adjacent to southeast Wales were affected.

The squall line has fragmented to next-to-nothing here in southeast Wales and the remains of it seem to have moved through without much drama, just some gusty winds. It's been an absolute soaker of a day though, with driving, moderate-to-heavy rain since the early hours of this morning. The rain should clear quickly from the west now. I'm just thankful we've avoided flooding, or anything close to it; we live in a house prone to flash flooding from overwhelmed drains in sudden downpours, like the kind that come from a squall. I do find extreme weather endlessly interesting, but it can be trying when flooding is a big worry. Wondering if I can squeeze in a walk to check on the river heights before it becomes too dark.

Well, the red warning has now expired. While it hasn't been as bad here in the Valleys as I was fearing (shelter from all of the hills/mountains, I expect), I do think the red warning was fully justified considering some of the gusts (122 mph!) and damage we've seen elsewhere. The Met Office's hourly forecast now seems to be suggesting that the worst has passed here (Nelson), with a slow decline in gust speeds throughout the afternoon, but it'll still be very gusty in south Wales and with the worst still very much to come in the rest of southern Britain.

I rarely venture away from the Wales regional discussion these days but I have to admit that I'm struggling with weather-related anxiety this morning: I've barely slept and keep going over worst case scenarios in my mind, like the roof blowing off. I've found the build up to Eunice fascinating to watch, but, having had our house badly flooded several times previously plus sustaining wind damage from the storms of early 2014, I'm no longer on good terms with extreme weather. To my eye, this storm bears a striking similarity to the 1990 Burns' Day storm, both synoptically and in terms of recorded wind speeds then and predicted wind speeds now, and both striking during daylight hours; rather soberingly, despite the Burns' Day storm being widely forecast, because of its daytime arrival the death toll was still far higher than in 1987.

Regarding the red warning which will probably be issued later today, I'd guess that the entire coast south from Cardigan Bay to the English border at Chepstow will be covered; whether the warning extends inland to cover more areas (ie, the Valleys and other parts of south/southwest Wales) is less certain. Also interesting to see will be how widespread the red warning is across southern Britain; red warnings usually only cover fairly localised areas, but the unusually widespread damaging winds on the horizon throw this up in the air (pun not intended).

I hate to be *that* person, and I didn't see the point in posting this in the relevant threads and causing bad feeling, but it really is frustrating and even a little bit insulting to see Wales left out of the conversation over this week's weather. Time and again, discussion about wind speeds and (potential) snowfall make reference to the Midlands, southern, southwest England and southeast England, while Wales all but ceases to exist; this is despite output showing Wales potentially seeing the worst, both in terms of windspeed and snowfall. Surely you don't even have to be a nationalist to find this a kick in the teeth. Anyway, I'd say there's a high chance of Friday developing into a serious situation Wales-wide. A red warning tomorrow seems very likely, with Eunice being the worst windstorm here since the 1990 Burns' Day storm, and if not that then the Oct. 2002 event (which I personally remember as being very severe). There's also the issue of the ICON, which has been sticking to its guns and taking the worst of the winds further south with blizzards across Wales (and the rest of central Britain too). It's on its own with this, but the other models show the potential for a wraparound after the storm moves through bringing in the potential of wintriness in the form of showers. There's also the potential of a storm surge around the Welsh coast, but particularly the Bristol Channel due to the funnel shape of the coast there; the last major storm surge there was in 1981, I believe, but look into 1607 for an extraordinarily destructive event with thousands of deaths (although it's also widely believed that this could have been a tsunami caused by a submarine landslide off the coast of Ireland). Expect closure of bridges, disruption to rail services, power cuts, and possible precautionary closures of schools if a red warning is issued tomorrow. Along with some nervousness, we really love the drama of all this, don't we?

There's no denying it's a gorgeous day today, but sitting in my garden quite comfortably in a t-shirt (with only the hint of a chill in the air) as tulips poke through and wallflowers bloom, something does feel very wrong. The only suggestion that it's January and not late March is the low sun in the sky. Still, I'd happily take this over the endless oppressive gloom of the last month, and all the worry of flooding that heavy rain brings to our house.

I'm not expecting more than sleet, or wet snow in heavier bursts, below ~200m. Could be some snowfall in the higher parts of the Valleys up through Mid Wales though, especially as this feature really is a lot further north than expected. Sleety here.