Metoffice News Release Re: Cold Snap

[Summer of 95]

Just stumbled across this feature on the MO site:

http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/climate/uk/interesting/jan2010/

which gives an in-depth summary of the cold snap. What I find most interesting is the maps showing the snow-depths; it seems that a far wider area than I'd believed from the reports on here received distinctly unremarkable depths from the 5-7 Jan events. Looking at the 7th Jan snow depths it seems that very few places in the Midlands or East Anglia had 10cm or more, with less than 5 widespread (I'd thought the latter was more or less confined to Shropshire and parts of Staffs and Leics, judging from the posts on here- seems like it affected many places further east too). It still shows the tendency for the central part of England to miss the greatest depths, but not just the western part of that region as I imagined was the case. Feb 1991 as I recall gave over 10cm to pretty much all of this region, and over 15 to much of it.

When the snow-lying maps for December come out they will surely show how poorly the western Midlands did compared to, well, everywhere else- a map showing the greatest depth recorded the whole winter would be interesting too.

[SteveElbows]

Interesting stuff. The snow depths are roughly what I would expect as I didnt get the sense at the time that it was only the West Mids which missed out on the heaviest action. Being in the middle of the Midlands, I was looking East a fair bit and there were plenty of complaints about snowshields from those areas too, and I think Birmingham to my West fared better than I did during that time. The best action seemed to be south and north and wales, which those cover maps seem to confirm.

For my location Feb 09 was a slightly better opportunity for some snow photography and making stuff out of the snow, but this January's cold spell was certainly memorable for how long it lasted.

[Optimus Prime]

A few record maximum temperatures were recorded then;

Hawarden (Flintshire)

-7.8 °C Coldest since 28 December 2000 (-8.3 °C)

Coldest since 28 December 2000 (-8.3 °C)Preston (Lancashire)

-6.4 °C

Coldest on record (previous record -4.6 °C on 12 January 1987)Chivenor (Devon)

-5.7 °C

Coldest on record (previous record -3.7 °C on 12 January 1987)Carlisle (Cumbria)

-5.6 °C

Coldest on record (previous record -4.6 °C on 12 January 1987)Santon Downham (Norfolk)

-4.5 °C

Coldest on record (previous record -2.8 °C on 7 February 1991)Pembrey Sands (Carmarthenshire)

-4.0 °C

Coldest since 26 December 1995 (-4.1 °C)

Incredibly beating 1987. Of course all of those areas well away from the sprawling Metropolis where in recent years the warming has accelerated. They don't include 1895 in that record, I guess because it was unreliable in their eyes.

Even C.London dropped to -6.4c. The record there is -9.1c in January 1987.

Edited February 10, 2010 by Optimus Prime

[osmposm]

.......Even C.London dropped to -6.4c. The record there is -9.1c in January 1987.

Cetainly some exceptional temps recorded nationwide. However, that -6.4C figure is not for central London. After studying a blown-up image of the map, I'm pretty sure the figure is for Hampstead: the two central London ones (?St James's Park & London Weather Centre) are the double blob below & slightly right, close to the river. Not sure where to access their figures, but their minima would have been nowhere near as low. The -7.9C to the left, by the way, must be Northolt (I think).

Hampstead is classified as Inner London, but not Central. It is about 4 miles NW of Charing Cross, in the very large (790 acres) and undeveloped Hampstead Heath. It is also much the highest station in the metropolis at 128m asl.

It generally records temps much lower than any other true London station, and the -6.4C is only the lowest since Jan 1996 (which equalled it). In the last fifty years or so for which data is easily accessible (see here http://www.weather-uk.com/hampstead/data.htm ), lower minima than that were recorded in 14 winters throughout the 60s (5), 70s (3) & 80s (4), including temps below -10C in Feb 1956 & Jan 1963, and the record -11.9C on 13th Jan 1987. There had been a marked scarcity of low temps recorded in the years since '96, but 2008/9 finally broke the run with -6.0C on 7th Jan last year.

[Thundery wintry showers]

Norwich had about 6cm on the morning of the 7th January, and Cleadon had 13cm. Note the large contrasts in snow depths across Tyne & Wear/Northumberland/Durham between inland areas and the coastal fringe. I think that may be largely down to the night of the 5th/6th, which had frequent heavy snow showers driven inland by ENE winds, but while inland areas stayed below freezing and had significant accumulations, at Cleadon the temperature rose to 2-3C in clear intervals and fell to 1C during snow showers, resulting in only slight net accumulations.

The 9th January would have been more interesting because I think snow depths were widely larger on that day following two days of sunshine with snow showers in the east. Cleadon had 24cm level snow and Norwich had 12cm.

I note in the "impacts" that all of the impacts given are negative, there is no discussion of positive impacts, but I can't criticise the MetO too much for that as the same could equally be said for every other UK media outlet.