Higher Ground

Even the biggest drifts didn't quite make it until the second Beast From The East here - though it was a close call, just a couple of days. But then again you had the Pest From The West to help tide you over, from what I remember...

Still good drifts here as well. Amazing isn't it how they've almost replicated the drifts (in the same places) from the last Beast From The East - such similar events

Walking through the woods on Monday after the Beast From The East #2, at the Lickey Hills Country Park near Birmingham:

Snow patch still hanging on in the woods at 290m altitude this morning - top of the Lickey Hills on the edge of Birmingham.

Are you sure re the dew points and precipitation? https://www.meteociel.fr/modeles/gfse_cartes.php?&ech=156&mode=2

In terms of wanting to see a historic cold & snowy spell, I actually wouldn't change a single frame of the GFS 0z op run, for my location in the Midlands at least. At any 'normal' time I suspect model-watchers would regard most of the synoptics we're seeing as phenomenal or even borderline impossible - certainly for the time of year. Surely there's a very tricky compromise between hanging onto the coldest air, and allowing enough moisture to feed in to produce snow - even though the moisture is inevitably associated with milder air. I think GFS 6z strikes this balance very well, and still leaves scope for almost everyone to see significant snow depending on subtle changes closer to the time. Tantalising as it is for those in the most southern/south-western areas, it's their knife-edge situation that corresponds to the greatest chances of a nation-wide snow fest. (As I understand things, at least).

Thank you so much for coming up with this metric, and updating it consistently over the last few days. It really helps to have an objective way of trying to determine if there really have been 'downgrades' or 'upgrades' over time.

I think you're debating an argument that I'm not making. Will say no more

I can't say on what timescale the arctic is warming, but I think those links provide some balance when it comes to understanding the teleconnections in the short to medium term.

You might also want to look at Arctic summer snow cover, which was the highest for over 10 years this June and July, and the highest for nearly 20 years this August https://climate.rutgers.edu/snowcover/chart_anom.php?ui_set=1&ui_region=nhland&ui_month=8 Also Arctic ice volume which is still up if anything since 2011 http://psc.apl.uw.edu/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/schweiger/ice_volume/cryosat_piomas_awi_ts.2011.2017.Oct.png How can you be sure high sea surface temperatures around Svalbard aren't a release of heat (cooling), rather than a warming? Bear in mind that the North Atlantic at 0-700m depth is still the coldest for 15 years despite an upturn this year www.climate4you.com/SeaTemperatures.htm#North%20Atlantic%20(60-0W,%2030-65N)%20heat%20content%200-700%20m%20depth Not wanting to go off topic either, just trying to add some more pieces to the jigsaw in understanding how it's still possible to get severe cold despite longer term warming.

Snow reached a level 10 inches deep here on the grass, in north Bromsgrove. So not quite beating 2009, 2010 or 2013, as I was living 100m higher up the hill then, and I think the snow got to at least 11 inches in some or all of those years. But the wet snow and big snowdrifts have kind of made it the most impressive looking since 1990. Here's the top of the hill (295m) at around 1pm yesterday (Sunday 10th)

Memorable late spring snow event earlier this evening.. After a couple of hail showers there was a big shower which turned to wet snow mixed with the hail. The snow didn't really settle here, but I drove up to the top of the Lickey Hills where there was a light covering of snow. I made a video of it for my running channel here

Wow that looks pretty bad. What a nightmare for those affected