Luke Best

This one could be good - incoming? https://www.feratel.com/en/webcams/netherlands/drimmelen.html

Rain now turning to big sleet in north Bournemouth. Thank heavens - my nerves are shredded!!!

Please can you provide a link to the dedicated cold spell thread? TIA.

If memory serves that was a polar low that dropped down and stalled in the English Channel. Bournemouth was under a Met O Red Warning but the low tracked a little too far east before stalling and we ended up getting naff all snow whilst the A3 corridor took a pasting.

Mother Of All Storms going off right now in the North Adriatic, off the coast of Venice.

And that's a 20% chance of the all-time UK record being broken!!! 30% chance of the July record being broken, according to the Met O's Chief Forecaster.

High pressure is becoming so dominant it's now taking over the Icelandic low pressure!

Torrential downpour just west of Poole. Thunder heard.

Thor's just put 50p in the meter!

I'm on Bournemouth's West Cliff and there's loooaaads more lightning out in the Channel than is being picked up by the lightning apps.

I'm torn. Champion's League or out chasing the storms. I've git a feeling they could be a bit special this evening.

Yes, thing happening all of a sudden here in Bournemouth. Looking very good!

That's the Blitzortung app.

Blitzortung WAAAAY off the mark. The lightning is non stop. Continental style!

On Bournemouth clifftop. CONSTANT lightning. It's April. Bloody insane!!

Walking back from the shop earlier this evening and big (positive?) CG came out of the back of the cloud/blue right down 100-200m in front of me. MASSIVE thunderclap - loudest I've heard for many years. Can't believe BFTE2 was only a few weeks ago!

I'm still very hopeful for this weekend but from an IMBY point of view (and yours I suspect), my fear is that the frontal snow will be more prevalent in the far SW, with most of the convection in the NE, leaving us in a drier middle section.

Here's an interesting excerpt: "We have not seen such an absence of deep cold pool events since the 1970s, and therefore, in spite of global warming, who is to say that, following 1956 and 1987, the next extremely deep cold pool event will not visit us in January or February 2018?" Considering that was written in Jan 2011, that's not a bad call!

Although in fairness, the CFS showed an easterly and very cold start to March a long, long way back if memory serves me right.

Also worth bumping is yesterday's excellent blog by Nick Finnis, which I found extremely informative and helped demystify the MJO. https://www.netweather.tv/weather-forecasts/news/8716-analysis-of-whats-behind-the-pattern-change-bringing-deep-cold-to-uk-next-week

It would be interesting to repeat this exercise next Wednesday, when we compare these charts with the T0 charts.

GFS spawns a Super Typhoon in the northern Atlantic. Er, no! (Edit - I've deleted phil nw's text to shorten my post. For the record, I'm laughing at the GFS' output - not phil nw's excellent post. Apologies if my post reads wrong & out of context...)

Our snowman from earlier - the posh Surrey variety with strawberries for eyes! ?

Last one from me. As Blue says, altitude is key. Anyone thinking of travelling in the search of snow would do well to go somewhere well above sea level - Portadown Hill,Butsor Hill got to be a good shout. Living in Bournemouth, we're truly snow starved. I'll never forget as a small kid when my Dad drove me up to Shaftesbury one winter. (1981?). Bournemouth had nothing, there was a dusting 10 miles inland and by the time we'd got to the hills of Shaftesbury, there were snow drifts several foot deep by the sides of the road. I was wonderstruck and that has never left me!

Yes, top of a hill! Edit: Snowing very heavily - huge flakes coming down hard. Easily 2-3 inches has settled.