summer blizzard

Things are not that bad yet but with average rainfall in January and March overall we have to bear in mind the extremely dry 3 weeks in February and now a good week or so setting us up for potential late summer/Autumn problems if it persists.

Spring is still a good while away but there are increasing indications that we may begin to lose the cold, albeit slowly. How dry it is forecast to be is also noteable.

Congratulations and good look. Should you move on from the job i hope you will return.

7.5C, 1C below the 1981-2010 average.

That's actually not a bad chart if it came off because at this time of year we start to see maxima shoot up under high pressure so even with cool uppers it probably wouldn't be cold. .

I don't want to sound too optimistic given the CFS forecast for April and the lack of any real warm uppers forecast but modelling over the 24 hours has seemed to indicate that the high to our north east in the coming days could bring in some mild air on its northern flank and cut the cold off at the source. That's not so say that the UK will be warm but it could explain the gradual rise on the ensembles as we see a similar flow but drag in less cold air.

To say that we had a second half to January that averaged something like -1.5C and now the coldest March in 51 years the lack of truly cold minima is astounding, i doubt we've been below -10C this winter.

The really depressing thought is that we've had one in winter, one in spring so you could say we are overdue for a truly shocking summer month, we've only got 1.5C below the 1981-2010 average in summer so far,.

Top 20 for me.. 5.6 ... mikeocarroll, Lomond Snowstorm, Ferryhill Weather, summer blizzard 5.5 ... Stationary Front, alexis j 9, Aaron 5.4 ... Roger J Smith, stewfox, Dunstable Snow 5.3 ... SteveB... ... ... ... ----- mean of all 354 years (1659-2012) ----- 5.2 ... coram ... ... ... ... ----- mean of 19th century (1801-1900) ----- 5.1 ... hillbilly, Pharoah Clutchstraw, Norrance 5.0 ... DAVID SNOW ... ... ... ... ----- mean of 18th century (1701-1800) 4.9 ... 22nov10blast, seabreeze86, Burwell Weather Watch 4.8 ... godber 4.7 ... BARRY 4.6 ... ... ... ... ... ----- mean of (CET portion of) 17th century (1659-1700) ----- 4.5 ... 4.4 ... Harve

Easterlies can generally be quite complicated. Here in Leeds a south easterly is probably the sunniest wind direction outside winter but a north easterly can see us under murk like the north east. A fine line.

Consensus at day 8 that high pressure will be to the north east of the UK, cold but dry.

What a poor dull month March has being in contrast to to March's 2010-2012.

If i had to asses the CFS anomalies then i would say April cold, May dry and then the summer synoptic looks a little weird in that you'd expect a stronger high pressure response than shown to the east of the low.

Apparently we had a strong MJO wave whilst in other years we may not have. Provided we don't get a final warming soon it does make one wonder if we get a big flip at some point. Are there any instances of very cold March's being followed by hot April/May's?

ECMWF is pretty horrible, replacing cold and dull with warmer and wet. For those of us wanting warmer weather the modeling first needs to cut off the source of cold air (being April soon it's unlikely it will rebuild), Given that the source of our cold air is just east of Scandinavia that is where it needs to be cut-off to allow the continent to warm faster and fortunately the GFS run does indicate progress in that regard... Now and in 7 days.... Cut off the source, the continent warms (nothing to dilute the plumes) and then in a few weeks we are sat down drinking Mojito's in 20C.

A bit of melt on paths here in the city center today which is good since it was iced over on Sunday. I don't expect any real showers to make it this far inland so a flurry is the best i can hope for, i'm more interested in the flow becoming clearer on Thursday if the output is correct.

GFS6z is rather nice, no precipitation for us through the entire run.

Potentially, solar activity will be low for decades. With that said, we are certainly not there yet. Since 2006 in the UK we have seen the two warmest years on record, the two warmest April's on record (by some margin), the two warmest spring's on record, the two warmest Autumn's on record, the 5th and 9th warmest January's, the 4th warmest March, the hottest month on record, the hottest july on record, the 3rd and 8th warmest October's and the 2nd and 9th warmest November's on record. In terms of top 10 cold months we have 1, December 2010. So i think it's quite important that people bear in mind that a few cool winters and summer's (and lets remember that summers 2009, 2010 and winter 2011 were all warmer than average) do not plunge us into some mini ice age at this stage, we are still getting heat just not at the normal times.

Picture from the parents, a good fall.

Snow being pretty much horizontal all night and roads covered.God i love Leeds. My parents took a photo of the garden and there's a good 10cm, i'll post it here later.

Alarmingly he'd have only had to go for 11C before 2007 but we now have 2 April's which are miles ahead of anything else.

Lovely horizontal snow.

Moving at some pace, should be good.

Another GFS run going for an epic event.

GFS6z keeps 30mm of precipitation as heavy snow.