Gerry

Top post informative and succinct as ever, lets just hope this thread doesn't deteriorate into "whens it going to snow" . Mods I posted a link to this thread in the mod. discus. thread can replies in here be monitored and moved/ deleted to keep this valuable knowledge resource intact.

Ooops yes objective not subjective am sure Steve knew what I meant, still back to the models....

Nick mighty fast fingers... doesn't help that I am watching match of the day as well as working and keeping an eye on the n. hemisphere who said men couldn't multi task

No problem good to see you being subjective amongst all the flan flinging personally cant be bothered posting any more, one hell of an omega block to end the 18z just about sums up the gfs output at the moment, anyway heres the link www.weathercast.co.uk/latest-model-forecasts/gfs-ncep.html regards Gerry

Steve these? these?

Sorry that was me I renewed my subscription and then it broke Well the oz has brought forward the frontal snow event to saturday night when we still have -10 850's in place so any talk of marginality based on tis ot put is nonse of course its only one run. Convective showers for next 2 days seems the order of the day plenty of instability although pressure is a little too high for the North sea snow machine to really start firing

Sounds all very familliar I decided to take 6 weeks off work to enjoy the days you never get back I need a holiday and a spell in the Betty Ford to get over it. That is a vey good question we have one whole inch here in Ashford its a good job I wnt panic buying today for essentials and bought a generator. Despite being an avid model and weather nut I take the view now that i will wait until it starts snowing before I get remotely excited, from an imby perspective this does not compare to winters of old.

I've given up going to bed having been kept up for the past 6 weeks I've forgotton what sleep is he's a little darling until the sun goes down then he turns into the

pleasure although all my knowledge is gained from the learned members of this forum, am awaiting my sons 3.am feed

A true polar low is sourced from within ice free waters of the polar region the main criteria for their formation is temperatures at or below -40c at the 500hpa level, using the 12z ecm 500hpa plots for the north sea for 3.oo am today we can clearly see that this feature has formed on the boundary of the small finger of -40c ( marked in red). In addition to the 500hpa criteria we also need temps of below -10-12 at the 850 hpa layer the same time frame plot clearly identifies tha this criteria is also met as the temp at 850 hpa is progeed to be in the region of -12 So essentially you could argue that its meets true polar low criteria however I very much doubt it will generate the massive amount of energy associated with these features, it is indeed however worth watching and will no doubt result in quite significant convective snow fall where it makes landfall it will however run out of steam pretty quickly as the upper air profile does not support continued development. You will note that the ecm pics this feature up on the precip charts and it can clearly be seen on the msl pressure charts as a 1002mb shortwave. Hope this helps essentioally it is a short wave that has formed in the easterly flow but it is adopting thE PL characteristics due the the steep temperature gradient caused by the warm seas and very unstable upper air mass.

UKMO following GFS at 144 growing consensus for a scandi high and long fetch easterly?

Agree, the amount of blocking in the later stages is quite remarkable and would return a CT well below zero ties in with stewarts thoughts for the latter stages of Jan, we d have a very stickly moment/hurdle to get over through later in the week with the high sinking, given the back ground drivers it would be just our luck to either get the high bang over us or to end up on the wrong side of the block. Still plenty of old school weather between now and then, will be very interesting to see how the infrastructure holds up. My parents were at the Oracle the night Reading and Basingstoke ground to a halt they even closed the M20 here in Ashford for 1.5 inches of lying snow yesterday. Dont know if anyone has caught the BBC news 24 forecast talking of cold snap lasting 2 weeks read into that what you will but I can never recall the BBC ever stating such a thing.

Its broadly the same evolution as last evenings ecm although this variance would see the cold pool mixed out very quickly due to the source of the easterly not having a deep pool of cold air, would be nice if this is a trend only time will tell

At short range all the model precip charts are fairly consistent i.e 24hrs but beyond that they are pretty much next to useless witrh regard to volume beyond this timeframe they are merely indicative of probable location of rain/snow fall. Using Dublin as an example with the current and progged set up at 24hrs both ecm and gfs are broadly the same 24hrs by 72hrs again the distribution is simillar however greater variance is evident in intensity with the GFs widely recognised as overplating convection and the ecm always underplaying By 144 we have reached a different synoptic set up so both distribution volume are not comparable. The best model for short range precip is probably the WNM or Meto. I will say that if last nights 1wz ecm verifies Dublin will do well from convective showers

Here you go Jim -40 uppers at 500hpa covering CET zone on 12z ecm from 120-168 accompanied by 850's of -10 to -14 accompanying precip charts are seriously underplaying the convective potential.

Ahh you let my secret out of the bag whole of ecm is available in 3hr time slots from T0 - t240, precip, 850 500's to name but a few also on a vey local level such as the north sea for example: Have been using this resource on a professional level for quite some time shame KCC dont subscribe to them then they wouldn't have only ordered and budgeted for 22 days of road salt for the entire winter!! Things may well get quite interesting on kent non HA roads over the commng weeks

Hi Personally I run an oregan scientific wmr200 which is outside of your budget, the Ventus w831 uses the same sensor suite i.e rain gauage, anenometer and hygrometer as the Nexus range and many others on the market and are proven to be reliable. we bought my father in law one 2 years ago and it has been faultless compared to my oregan that has been back a number of times the only downside to the lower end stations is the transmission rate is every 15 seconds or so rather than 1 -2 seconds. However that said they are perfectly good for an entry level station, personally I found the weathershop 0845 680 1805 a good source of information and the staff more than willing to offer good experience backed advice. Best of luck its a bug takes hold of you

Morning Steve must say its been a joy to follow your posts whilst seeing through my self imposed excile from netweather, these synoptics really are boy in a sweet shop scenarios of old. just to add weight to the night time minima Steve quoted last night attached are the ecm and gfs 2 metre temps for 12z on the 8th jan they really do portray bone chilling cold the ecm raw output gives dew points of -8 for the central swathe of the mainland from Glasgow to London at 12z on the 8th. As a veteran of the 70's and 80's winters if this output verified some on this forum may well be cursing that their dreams have come true, as someone who works within the highway infrastructure management in Kent the coming weeks are going to be a real test for current operational policy

Hate to put too much of a dampner on the mood in here but the models always progged any snow to the south of london very unlikely especially on sunday, there is a chance of some back edge snow as the channel low clears away on tuesday evening.its Beyond that is where the real interest lies for the southeast with winds progged to back northerly on wednesday and then northeasterly towards the weekend with a weather front stalling along the spine of the country with cold air from the east trying to push it backwards. This is of course 6 days away with the usual subject to change caveat but the evolution really is quite probable. So the key is dont expect much between now and thursday friday onwards could be very interesting

CWD of the 23rd, that gives us a potential of 15 days minimum when blocking is most likely to occur, with propogation time of maybe 10 + days this event has every chance of seeing us through into March before its statrs to deminish. Keep up the good work all of you its been fascinating

No joy for me any timeline on these Beta issues being resolved, previous vids have all been viewable for me

Random height rises spawning throughout northern latitudes with pressure rises lineing up north of the equator, outlook could very quickly change as polar blocking becomes more organised, in our favour we already have the scandi trough and southerly jet. Some atlantic influence should be expected as the atmosphere in my view is just starting to shuffle its cards before dealing the killer hand. CPC output this evening for 8-10 days does have similarities with that 12z, its a fine balance at the mo and way too close to call at this early stage

Hanging onto snow here in Ashford, melt rate seems faster than accumulation though, radar has us within the sleet zone temp 0.9 dp -0.3 that pretty close but this has been stable for 2 hours now, will she go up or down thats the question

Fax and ensembles are out my god!!! rather than repeat my self follow this link to my post in the mod thread http://www.netweather.tv/forum/index.php?s...t&p=1451596

Glorious run isn't it, whats the depth in Bexley I have a few of my team due in at 8.00 am tomorrow no doubt they use the weather as an excuse, here in tropical Ashford (in comparision) we have about an inch or so