Ian Docwra

Today's summary for my location: Max. temp. : -1.3C. Snow depth : approx. 3cm, drifts to 10cm. Weather : light snow all day. Dry, powdery snow almost everywhere but still some wet patches lower in the garden which were saturated before the cold arrived. Two ponds - upper one (in loamy soil) not frozen, lower one (in sandy soil) - partially frozen/slushy. Surrounding hills (Downs) up to 230m are more deeply covered from around 170m upwards.

Will there be enough moisture gather for the London streamer given a due easterly flow? The orange area pivoting north would suit me very well, BTW!

There's also the variable of soil type, elevation, etc. Chalky/sandy soils will lose their heat more quickly than clay, for example, and higher areas will be colder and may have drained more beforehand anyway. The retention of ground heat can be affected by many different factors.

Indeed - as I said on Saturday. The message, it seems, takes time to get through the barrage of optimism that everything would instantly freeze solid!

Clearing the "heavy cloud" won't achieve anything on its own - in sunny weather, losing cloud allows convection to start, but obviously warms the surface in the process. Now, nearly at sunset, that won't happen so the lack of cloud, if anything, chills the air near the ground and reduces convection.

This what I was saying on Saturday, before the snow arrived, and was part of the reason I was sceptical about immediate or even medium term accumulation and then longevity. The ground had been warmed for quite a while and it takes time to lose that heat. However, I was firmly assured by the experts here that, effectively, the ground would freeze instantly and not a flake would be 'wasted'. Hey ho.

I have a slight feeling one may be starting now - there is a heavy streamer in West London and an increasing intensity (over a wider area than a true streamer) from Kent westwards. We are seeing larger, and more, flakes now with a slightly lighter wind.

Is that like an increase?

We have had about 2cm overnight and this morning, blowing around a bit. -1.4C at present with light snow, increasing a little. Radar shows a large somewhat heavier area drifting across from Kent now.

Only the Amber - the Yellow remains until Wednesday. MO also shows a convergence zone from the estuary down across Kent on Wednesday.

Quite an amazing streamer currently running all the way from the North Norfolk coast to nearly Southampton!

Oh, not this again!

An interesting phenomenon here - the temperature has been at between +0.2C and +0.4C all afternoon. We have a latticed metal patio table and the snow has only sporadically settled on it, otherwise melting. Now, at +0.4C, there are long icicles hanging down. I presume the strong wind has caused evaporation from the metal and cooled it enough for freezing to occur. This may also explain some others finding metal objects with ice while snow melts - it really is that marginal.

Just been out round the garden with our dog (a Husky actually!). We have lying snow where the wind has been shielded by a stand of big conifers. The rest is soggy and green. Box Hill opposite us has a clear snow line (see picture). Snow almost stopped and the temp. has risen to +0.4C with glimpses of blue sky between thick clouds. Blustery, to say the least.

The intensities have been very variable throughout the day.

I think the issue has been the failure to get the temperatures right - the track predicition is OK but the temperatures were widely predicted to be significantly lower from the same track, which makes me wonder about the data used. The upshot has been that many have seen falling snow but not the accumulations that were implied by those who said (vehemently!) that the one thing people shouldn't worry about was that it wouldn't be cold enough.

Has the sun been out? With cloud and a strong wind, the temperature won't drop more than a tad after dark.

I have an interesting situation in my garden. Our lawn slopes up to the house significantly, and snow is lying on the higher parts while the lower area is still mostly green. I suspect the slope will be draining meltwater better to allow more settling but I also know that the freezing level is very, very close to us (my station is at the lower part and shows +0.2C). It makes me wonder if I have a snowline running across my garden! All good fun.

Quite. The surprising part of all this for me is not the exact position of the snow (that's always very hard) but that the widespread temperatures have been significantly higher than expected, when the talk was of sub-zero everywhere, meaning, of course, accumulation everywhere to some extent. It's almost as it the abnormal SST has passed the models by, because the flow direction is very much as forecast.

Yes - the tip of Kent has the shortest sea track from the continent with this flow direction. A little extra distance over ther sea warms the air more.

Yes, 'Darcy' was never going to cross/sit over us, but many were claiming that its frontal snow was going to be very significant across the region. It missed us completely and moved away to the east. You say "our region has been sub-zero", but only parts of Kent and significantly higher areas elsewhere have been - the region is the whole SE, from Oxfordshire to Kent and most of that has been in the range +0.5C to +3C, whereas it was widely predicted here that the whole region would be <0C today. While the sky remains cloudy and the wind is strong, yet with a high dewpoint, there is no reason to suppose that the temperature will drop more than a fraction overnight, unless a different flow is expected. The latter may be the case, but it isn't apparent, which means that more of the same might be expected - i.e. lying snow above, say, 100m, and slush/wet below.

Yes, you've got pretty much the shortest sea track of all there. Anywhere with a significantly longer sea track, which is most of the SE with this flow, has been less cold.

The Met Office pressure forecast map shows two wriggling convergence zones in the days ahead; one off eastern Scotland and the other off, and across, north and north-eastern England. None here in the SE, although an occlusion sits close to the Kent coast tomorrow.

I don't think very many are saying there won't be any significant snow, but the 'Darcy' phase was badly out, and the supposedly guaranteed sub-zero temperatures also haven't materialised. I suspect there may be more chances to come of sub-zero temperatures to allow whatever falls to settle, but, given the North Sea's unusual warmth this year, it's by no means certain. What leaves Holland at -3C/-2C gets here quite widely at 0C/+1C after travelling over +5/+6C water.

It seems to me that same type of immaturity that prompts some posts predicting wildly OTT stuff here will also prompt those petulant responses when their wishes are not met.