SnOwFeSt

Winds have really picked up over the past 30 minutes. It was howling all last night then calmed this morning.. now it’s really ramping up! an interesting 48 hours of weather to come for sure.

I put £10 at 8-1 for xmas day snow in London last week when it was looking very promising. I dont regret making it.. a couple of hundred miles difference and I would have been in!! A fairly decent, but very wet covering here in west Leeds! I'm not sure whether it came before midnight as I was asleep!

Fascinating model watching and lots of extreme mood swings on here based on the latest outputs. Its one of these potentially high risk-high reward situations, which might come down to the day.. especially in the north of england northwards.. Some fabulous snow totals could accumulate if we can just squeeze a couple of degrees lower and get those lower heights (with lower dew points) in.

tbf even when i've been in the alps and its -5c during the day the snow still melts on the road/ cars etc as the solar radiation takes patches of ice/snow above freezing. It quickly refreezes when in the shade/ under cloud though!

Wow. Unbelievable amount of snow. And this is just the start for them. You wonder at what point people need evacuating from this- I mean no food, house buried and presumably no way in or out. Unless they’ve stocked up and are just hunkering down for the next few weeks?!

Looks like this weird dragon streamer thing is snow bearing. And we’re on for a direct hit!

Low pressure is showing as much weaker mid-week on GFS. From memory of past cold spells, they always struggle much more to break through once the cold air in entrenched. Lets hope the trend continues! Ideal scenario would be we get a slider pushed over us with subsequent snow dumping! I'm still looking at the chunk of vortex north of scandi. If the atlantic bits of vortex are weaker and further south and keep tranding this way, we could see a reload from the north!

Seems to be a bit of a north south divide. Up here in Leeds it has been a very cold and snowy winter so far. Just 7 above average days, 12 max temps below 2c, 22 min temps below 0 and 3 ice days and (from vague memory) at least 8 days with at least 50% snow cover. Our average temp for the month was 1.84. Remove the 4 warmest days and the average for the month would have 1.1c

About 15 cm of snow here at work. Only just made it in this morning. I live 6 miles away, so may well have to walk home as roads are all gridlocked and its still throwing it down..

Looks real knife edge stuff doesn't it? I think it will come down to nowcasting. It currently looks the wrong side of marginal, but has been trending in the right direction in very tiny increments!

Heavy snow and settling despite the very wet ground this morning in west Leeds. Very marginal, but I think ourt 140m above sea level has helped. Though not quite the epic BFTE style weather, this is our 4th settling snow fall so far this winter (many more sleetly/ wet snow events), and temps well below average, so its just great to see good solid, consistent seasonal weather. I see the 'mild spell' on the forecast is not as mild as previously forecast. Now forecast to get no higher than 6c, with continued night frosts, before dropping back (and potentially much colder) from next week onwards. I do think the persistence of the cold has lowered the ground temps - ground frosts appear very readily now and the tap water temp is absolutely freezing!

We’ve had snow all day and fun out sledding and making snowmen with the kids today. ..None of which was forecast until this morning. With low pressure and deep cold air around anything can happen at short notice!

Very snowy run and not miles out in FI for a change. I think gfs is picking up on the ssw response- with more arctic heights and reversal in tropospheric winds. I don’t want to call things too early, but this is really starting to look like a classic winter. More runs needed as ever!

Love it when snow just develops in situ. I’m guessing it is being caused by slightly milder, moisture laden air running into colder air over land. I’m hopeful we’ll get some snow within the next couple of hours. Surface conditions look good too. Currently -2c and no rise yet.