A.J

Nice to see you in the thread mate..Us midlanders appreciate your input & knowledge far more than those 'up-north nancies'.... :w00t:

A question of waiting & seeing I guess, with a good dose of radar watching for good measure come friday....I guess the further to the NW of the region you are the better..CC would be in a good position IMO, for me it's touch & go....Another area of interest is on Sunday night, the 06z GFS run develops what looks to be a trough (denoted by the kinks in the isobars) passing through our region sunday evening....It looks a bit marginal to me TBH but worth keeping an eye on subsequent model runs

I see Mark (echobase) is lurking away at the bottom of the page...Nice to see you back mate, plenty of late night drunken banter in the months to come!... :w00t:

Struggling to see the westerly flow there Mark TBH, looks bang on NWerly to me..The trough if forecasted correctly will sink SSE pepping up shower activity as it does.....Ok changing the emphasis of attention away from snow potential now to wind potential, the next 36 hours or so are going to see some unusually strong winds as a deep low tracks to the north of Scotland then into the north sea and even in the generally placid Midlands, it would not surprise me to see gusts in excess of 60 mph in exposed places, one to most certainly watch out for

Some interesting debate on this thread re. cheshire gap streamers...It should be noted that overnight for example we had surface and upper winds of a WNW origin which one would expect to take showers away to the far north and east of region, when the eventuality was that we got pummeled by heavy shower after heavy shower blown through from NW Wales

With respect Mark, but sometimes your weather mood goes up and down more time than a nuns knickers, and with respect again, whilst Ian has a good knowledge of synoptic modelling, it's fair to say that there is often an underlying mild bias to his posts, remember last winter?..they'll be no snow near Stafford?..ring any bells? If memory serves me correctly you were quite vocal in disagreeing with his posts, and you were right!

Thanks for the link, as you said an interesting interview...All we need now is Physicists to come up with a grand unified theory of particle physics so that we might be able to do something about propulsion systems for interstellar travel! (it might be a long wait...lol).....I'm really hoping though that the ongoing discoveries by Kepler will persuade US Congress to finally grant funding for TPF and a VLA of space born telescopes so we might be able to directly image some of these smaller exoplanets

Looking promising at this stage Luke....There were a couple of decent snow showers that passed through the early hours leaving a coating in Penkridge, Cannock, & Cannock chase (looked very picturesque whilst driving up to see my suppliers earlier this morning!)

An update from the ongoing Kepler mission, NASA announced yesterday a discovery of an exoplanet which is the closest yet to an earth analogue... Kepler 22b has a radius of 2.4 times that of earth and lays on the inner edge of its parent star's habitable zone, but it over 600 light years away...I'm not convinced about NASA's reports on its projected climate though. Their assumptions are based on it having a similar geology & atmospheric conditions to earth, which at this juncture is pure speculation...Still, an exciting confirmation, just hoping that Kepler can confirm Gliese 581g soon

interest is still there for a period from thursday night to saturday morning for parts of the west midlands & north midlands...The Met Office have issued an early severe weather warning for the West Midlands, more especially Staffs,Salop, & Cheshire...text as follows... "Issued at - 06 Dec 2011, 12:04 Valid from - 08 Dec 2011, 18:00 Valid to - 09 Dec 2011, 23:59 Snow showers are expected late on Thursday and through Friday. The public should be aware that these will be heavy at times, and may give significant accumulations that could disrupt travel. Gale or severe gale force northwesterly winds will accompany the snow showers, perhaps leading to drifting over high ground, but these winds will slowly moderate during Friday" © Met Office

Yep, it certainly did snow last night....All the cars here have the frozen snow on the windscreens and a very icy/frozen snowy mess on the pavements making the trip of taking the kids to school a very hazardous exercise!!

GFS18z & FAX18z singing off the same hymn sheep, at least to my untrained eye...Doesn't look great for us up to T120, showery rain tomorrow, & again on thursday a few showers following then a WNW flow thursday night which will keep most showers away to the north of our region..A ridge of high pressure noses in from the SW on friday killing shower activity before giving way to atlantic frontal system saturday into sunday....So it seems regarding anything wintry on friday, its GFS & FAX/UKMO v's ECM......IMO

A nice batch of showers blowing in off the Irish Sea into the Wirral on a slightly more southerly point of origin than previous showers, I'd expect these to give accs over the Peak District in the next hour or two before fizzling as they head towards Notts

Oh well, we live in hope! :smiliz19:

Thanks Phil....It's out to T72 currently on NW...synoptics look broadly the same at this time frame...I noticed on the previous run that at T120 (12z friday) the secondary LP was shown and was centered off northern Scotland with troughs spiraling into the Northern Isles and heading into Northern Ireland, the 12z ECM has this secondary LP further to the west

Yes indeed it may well be Phil...My eyes are quite what they used to be but it looks like the 500-100hpa thickness of between 528-534 DAM which would be probably just the wrong side of marginal for lower elevations, with T850's of around -5C....Still, in what has been an otherwise slow start to the winter season for us all, it's nice to have charts showing potential at a reasonable time frame...BTW any idea of when the FAX charts roll out?

Here you go...

Well, blink and you missed it sums up the snow potential from this little cold snap, and it certainly was chilly outside today...Looking further afield, what has caught my eye is the 12z ECM model run (admittedly only one specific run) which shows a secondary Low pressure sliding down the western side of the uk on friday into the English Channel on saturday...As already mentioned in the Model Discussion Thread, this could be a snow event for the Midlands...Definitely worth keeping an eye on the model outputs for the next few runs to see if this particular ECM run gains any support

Its very cold out there today, just took the kids to school and that NW'erly feels icy!.....Also plenty of ice of the pavements, as I found out! :blush: As far as any wintryness goes, it looks like it's reserved for more northern and north-eastern parts of our region

Yes, the NW radar is showing an odd sferic not too far from you Dave, about an hour or so ago

There's quite an active area of showery ppn knocking on the door of Stafford, looks to be heading towards Burton-Upon-trent/Tamworth area and maybe onto Leicester...The NW radar precip overlay is showing it as sleet so would be interested in any reports in those areas..(It's passing a few miles to my NE, can see an anvil top quite clearly to my NE....close, but no cigar!)

Some quite heavy wintry showers also starting to filter further to the south of our region through the welsh mountains heading towards the English border, if they can hold together then they may well affect Worcestershire & Herefordshire over the next 2-3 hours

Indeed Tony...It's going to be marginal in our region, that's for sure, but a glance at some current unofficial weather stations across the region are showing DP's ranging from +3C to -1C especially in areas likely to be affected by the Mersey streamer. Given the DP's, borderline T850's & lower atmosphere thickness parameters then I would expect some snowfall, the higher one's local elevation, the better...Whether any ppn would settle is another matter

You asked for it, now you've got it! After months of hibernation, permission has been granted to start a regional midlands discussion As it stands at the moment the forecasted cold spell is not expected to last long, so the thread may go back into hibernation temporarily, but in the meantime, take off your coats, grab a drink at the bar, take the weight off your feet on our comfy community chairs, and chat away about all things white & cold... Ok, I'll start you off....Sleet & Wet snow showers are already being reported in the north of our region, and there's a chance of some other Midlands folks seeing a few flakes of the white stuff over the next 24 hours!

Indeed, in fact, I'm watching it closely as the showers are edging ever closer to me (I'm about 20 miles south of Stoke)