Sunny Leith

Can you take the same photo from Arthur's Seat at the end of next week ? Mind and take your ice axe !

I'm so hyped up on this now I'm thinking that "only" 20cms could end up as a disappointment.

There's been a few good ones in my memory but Feb 1978 here was biblical at points and is 2nd in my mind to Dec 2010.

Yay you're back ! We've got the full house Will someone be relaying back reports from the Freuchie met station ?

Can only speak for Embra in Feb 1991 easterly. 2-3 weekdays of heavy snow showers then on the Saturday afternoon into the Sunday a heavy and long fall. Decent depths, I'd have to find the pictures I took in town on that Sunday (didn't do digital photography back then!).

"Settling in places". LOL.

Same as last time.

Day 10 in the snowed in Catch household. "Mummy this mince tastes funny".

Got any pets in the hoose ? I'd start ranking them now in terms of edibility.

Wee hark-back to March/April 2013 and why I have no concerns next week about increasing sun-strength, North Sea temperatures etc View ootside the hoose onto the powder snow mean streets of Leith on March 11th. Then the baltic day of March 23rd with temperature stuck at 33F for a solid 24hrs+ with a non-stop 20MPH easterly. Then April 2nd up at Balerno looking out over The Pentlands. Bottom line if its cold enough then there's not a lot that March can do to moderate it all that much.

TBH a NE flow rarely works here. The sticky-oot bit of Fife breaks things up and it all goes east and south of us. From experience I'd say there's about a 30 degree range on the compass between north east by east and due-east where I'd be sure we'd land something decent. Any other direction and most of it get's stolen by the well-kent snow-thiefs on this forum Anyway, I think (hope) we have 48-72 hours next week where we're in the game flow wise.

I don't grudge them getting more than Leith as long as we get 10cms to their 40cms You should definitely do well next week in Currie.

Aye we'll all nervy here until we're 24-48 hours away from it hitting us Tim. Right now we're 4-5 days away from it, so enough time for everything to shift 200 miles and leave us cold but dry. But model consistency has been remarkable and I'm a heartbeat away from just outright expectation that it's going to hit us the way we all want it.

Let me say again...take no notice of BBC/MetOffice snow forecasts for east and central Scotland 5,6,7 days away from now. These forecasted synpotics will deliver as long as they actually materialise.

I spent most of my time here in the 2009/10 and 2010/11 winters, both had many notable snow events then in Scotland as we all remember. but as we also remember the BBC/MetOffice were regularly wrong about where, when and how much snow would fall. Often they were very wrong even in the 6-12 hours before lots of us got dumped on. They're particularly poor when it comes to easterlies here and virtually any snow forecast they make for here next week I would ignore at this point. If these favourable charts from Mon/Tues onwards come to pass, I have no doubt we'll see plenty snow in east/central areas, at which point the BBC/Metoffice will play catch up by nowcasting. Which is what we'll all be doing anyway in conjunction with the radar !

Yeah same as you, I'm fearing that a maximum-strength snow-shield will be assembled with specially reinforced deflectors over a 10 mile radius of Edinburgh Castle, with huge snowy radar blobs going north, south, east and west of us. But if these charts do come to pass at the start of next week then I'd say its close to impossible that we'd be able to avoid snow here.

If these easterly synpotics play out as we hope, then for east coasters/central scotlanders it always takes a day or two for reality to catch up with these legendarily and confusingly poor precipitation forecasts. Going by previous outbreaks then often nothing better than wintry showers / snow flurries are indicated here on forecasts. I expect by sometime monday into Tuesday then the radar and now-casting will tell an entirely different story

Even allowing for the fact that it's just supercomputers churning out 1's and 0's, I think that GFS 18z has to be the most amazing cold/snow run I've ever seen. It's off the scale. Epic bordering on cataclysmic. Any downgrades to come would make it only moderately severe...

God that went well. Anyway, what I meant to say was I'm hoping for a re-run of Dec 2010, The last time Arthurs seat/Salisbury crags was a ski-park and the only-time I heard a genuine avalanche warning being issued

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/lRJldrUKaDs" frameborder="0" allow="autoplay; encrypted-media" allowfullscreen></iframe>

In a heartbeat you would !

Absolutely. From recent-ish experience (winter 2010/11 and parts of 2009/10) we all know that's more than sufficient. -8 850's or colder will do the trick here. Need an ENE flow for the jackpot, we don't want Fifers and folk from Berwickshire stealing our snaw !

Good thinking ! I don't feel confident enough yet to call it from a local perspective. It could still turn out to be a chiefly southerners event or even hold-off to the east... But suffice to say if the models hold true then there's no doubt in my mind we'll see very similar snow impacts and depths to previous easterly outbreaks of this type. They're often heralded by BBC forecasts that don't indicate there'll be much snow here, when the synoptics are screaming otherwise. It's been a permanent blind spot in their forecasting.

And long overdue ! Radar shows another nice big blob approaching Dunblane/Stirling, looks like it might follow the same track as the wee snaw-bomb we just had here.

Tailing off now but it was a good one. Will hardly be digging out here in the morning but another one or two direct hits overnight would be welcome. Anyway, I feel we've joined the party now