Lake District Blizzards

Interesting observation today - Great Dun fell has a good covering of snow above 1500ft on the top like many other mountains in Cumbria, the temperature today reached 10.5c at 2800ft obviously with blazing sunshine and very little wind. The Dewpoint mid-afternoon was -16.3c giving a humidity reading of 13.5% Now down at this altitude, even a foot of snow would melt within about half an hour under blazing sunshine and 10c Is the low humidity and resultant dewpoint the main factor in preserving the snow in such high temperatures? What is the warmest it could get before you ended up with a rapid mega melt?

Cumbria is a very large county... It easily has the snowiest lowland parts of England (along with snowiest part of the uplands) looking at the met office climate maps, (possibly on par with Northumberland/Durham) Up here the SE feed thing is useless, creates a rainshadow effect with no evaporative cooling or anything to suppress the temperatures. ends with light sleety nothing recent decent snowfalls here are 17th Jan 2016 - 9cm, 29th Jan 2015 - 6cm, 21st Jan 2013 - 11cm, all from totally different directions / setups i think.

wind direction here is SW

going by the met office forecast, there will be nothing for most of Cumbria at all mainly no precipitation forecast, and temperatures shown to be 2c/3c/4c wind direction forecast to be WSW

your max's aren't bad but surely those minimums are going to keep the average temperature on the mild side of normal?

10 / 19 days have reached double figures, several of them 13-14c. a fair few of those days the minimum temp was not much short of the maximum. 7th for example max was 13.0c min was 11.0c December is currently 3.4c warmer than November

nothing mild? For here the overnight lows forecast for the next few days are 5c 4c 5c 5c December average low here is 1c, so thats 3-4c above average still The overnight lows are almost the same as what should be the daily high (6c) very very mild to me. Mean here is 7.4c which is 3.5c above average.

Just looked through all my data from this month and thought id compare it to December 2015 which had an anomaly of 3.9c above average here. Now last December was by far the mildest by a huge margin i think, back to god knows when. (warmest on record since 1910 UK and warmest since 1659 CET) scarily the anomaly this month is sitting at 3.5c and is not far off that 2015 figure at all. Anyone else got such a close match between this year and last?

No ice days yet here but we are in the middle of a rather severe frosty spell A while since the countryside / roads etc have been this frozen, lasting all day in most places barely thawed by the sun. hoar frost in valley bottoms and frost pockets -4c / -5c in the lower lying valleys has been achieved a few times in the last week or so. stunning early winter weather

i know, i was just trying to make it clear what the OP was trying to get at.

I think seaskayaker is also basing it on day length over anything else, so... The shortest day marks the middle of winter. If winter was still 3 months long, then December 21st would be the 46th day of winter. Therefore winter would begin on the 5th November and end on the 5th February. is this what you mean seakayaker?

i get what seakayaker is trying to say, and think it best fits a phenological model whereas the seasons can greatly shift depending on the year to year weather patterns etc. Autumn can start in August when the first berries ripen, fungi start to appear even some trees start to turn. The period now is arguably transitional into winter - many trees are now bare (marking the end of autumn) and here at least we have had snow/frost for the last week or two. likewise spring can start in mid February or as late as mid April (2013 for example)

Can someone explain how when the upper air temperature is 15c + , it has only managed to be 20c here It has been sunny all day the wind direction has been NE'ly

June good July poor August - reasonable / ok

A months rain in one day hardly consists of a "typical August" You are right about May and June but the extent to which August has become wet in recent years is phenomenally beyond the climatic norm.