Scotland - Weather Chat

[moffatross]

The Met Office weather warnings have quietly been lifted too ...

[November13]

Yes agree the front has disintegrated. METO obviously haven't revised their forecast. There is zero chance of anything from that now.

[November13]

The good news is that snow is expected on Friday night with no mild blip now forecast. Looking at 0c all the way through the week and weekend.

[Ravelin]

Woke up to 2cm of fresh snow this morning...looking at the radar, it looks as though a heavy shower passed through around 5am. Nightmare journey into the city this morning...total gridlock in places.

 

The ice in our work car park in Dyce now has a nice covering of snow, but nowhere near 2cm so it looks as if you got lucky. At home in Kemnay it's no more than an additional 'dusting'. Overnight low there was a respectable -3.7C, with it still sat at round -2.5C when I left the house around 8:45am. Roads not too bad in the shire this morning and was in work only a little later than normal due to having to drop my daughter off in Inverurie as her bus was posted missing. Other than the temperature, it's calm, sunny with just a little cloud around so at least it has a wintery feel.

 

Took a snapshot from my Cam just now, this is about as white as my garden has looked all winter so far. frozen solid but rather lacking in snow.

 

[GraemeB]

The good news is that snow is expected on Friday night with no mild blip now forecast. Looking at 0c all the way through the week and weekend.

 

Stirling progged for +7 and a min of 0 - so I'd hazard a guess that we'll be getting rained on all Friday...

[GrangemouthBairn]

-3.3 when I left the house at 9. Overnight low of -4.9 so I beat last night by 0.1c. The BBC forecast showed the snow passing over central areas tonight rather than this afternoon but there doesn't look much. The BBC weather twitter feed tweeted earlier on that snow is expected across central Scotland as well as other areas between midnight and midday tomorrow

Edited January 20, 2015 by GrangemouthBairn

[November13]

Stirling progged for +7 and a min of 0 - so I'd hazard a guess that we'll be getting rained on all Friday...

Yes Graeme I think it has been revised today showing a max of 4c now with sleet snow and rain. Looks like just a few hours at 4c.

[Altostratus]

The ice in our work car park in Dyce now has a nice covering of snow, but nowhere near 2cm so it looks as if you got lucky. At home in Kemnay it's no more than an additional 'dusting'. Overnight low there was a respectable -3.7C, with it still sat at round -2.5C when I left the house around 8:45am. Roads not too bad in the shire this morning and was in work only a little later than normal due to having to drop my daughter off in Inverurie as her bus was posted missing. Other than the temperature, it's calm, sunny with just a little cloud around so at least it has a wintery feel.

 

Took a snapshot from my Cam just now, this is about as white as my garden has looked all winter so far. frozen solid but rather lacking in snow.

 

 

Amazing the difference a few miles makes. When I left Kingswells/Westhill area this morning, there was a good 2 inches of snow cover. That's the problem with these isolated showers...it really is pot luck.

[GraemeB]

I just wonder how the BBC(MO) could have been so wide of the mark, and not seen the front/s stalling/dying out over Ireland ?

 

They were still forecasting snow up until the back of 9 this morning.

[November13]

I know we all saw it stalling all day yesterday and predicted it wouldn't make it. I still don't see it coming in the afternoon!

[edo]

will anxiously await the next precipitation updates but I feel it may be the same...the fronts are hitting a stronger wall than expected

[blitzen]

The Met Office's "new found increased accuracy " that was being discussed on the MT doesn't sit right with me that's for sure!   The fault has to be with the modelling and they were taken in by some of it just like the rest of us.  Were they not? At least the heavy snow forecast yesterday for this area both afternoon and evening has now been removed. That is not accurate in my book. That is down to within the realms of now casting! If the modelling is wrong, the forecast is wrong?

Edited January 20, 2015 by Blitzen

[Hairy Celt]

Temp still hovering around freezing here, grey sky and a nagging wind in exposed places. Crap eh.

[November13]

Signs of activity in the Islay area. Some blobs appearing. Will see how far it progresses east.

[November13]

Well well well it appears that heavy precipitation is gathering pace in the West. We might just get something out of today.

[Frozen Britain]

It looks like some blobs of white are developing to the west and pushing west towards Arran. Not yet reached Arran but from the radar but it looks headed in that direction. Fingers crossed for later on. Frozen snow cover still here. It hasn't shifted at all since it stopped falling on Friday night.

[scott_anthony_glasgow]

Yeah noticed blob out to west seems to be gwtting its act together.heres hoping

[November13]

Also activity in the Skye/Lochalsh area.

[snowidea]

The Met Office's "new found increased accuracy " that was being discussed on the MT doesn't sit right with me that's for sure!   The fault has to be with the modelling and they were taken in by some of it just like the rest of us.  Were they not? At least the heavy snow forecast yesterday for this area both afternoon and evening has now been removed. That is not accurate in my book. That is down to within the realms of now casting! If the modelling is wrong, the forecast is wrong?

Every time I look at my MO app the forecast seems to change.

[GraemeB]

The Met Office's "new found increased accuracy " that was being discussed on the MT doesn't sit right with me that's for sure!   The fault has to be with the modelling and they were taken in by some of it just like the rest of us.  Were they not? At least the heavy snow forecast yesterday for this area both afternoon and evening has now been removed. That is not accurate in my book. That is down to within the realms of now casting! If the modelling is wrong, the forecast is wrong?

 

Well said.

 

In this day and age of access to models etc, they should not, with the best will in the world, be "nowcasting".

 

People rely on accurate forecasts - for instance, my boss put off a trip from Bristol to Rosyth, simply on the strength of the BBC forecasting snow through the day.

[snowy owl]

Still frozen over here! The chooks are needing a refill again as their water keeps freezing over.

[November13]

Yep agree Graeme. How much money is pumped into the met office and sometimes us guys on here can see better than them!

[edo]

I see the snow warning is back...yet the euro 4 shows very little...all very weird

Yep agree Graeme. How much money is pumped into the met office and sometimes us guys on here can see better than them!

I think they see it but the culture of social media has almost lead to a fear of making difficult call forecasts for fear of them being wrong...well I hope that's the case....

[LomondSnowstorm]

The Met Office's "new found increased accuracy " that was being discussed on the MT doesn't sit right with me that's for sure!   The fault has to be with the modelling and they were taken in by some of it just like the rest of us.  Were they not? At least the heavy snow forecast yesterday for this area both afternoon and evening has now been removed. That is not accurate in my book. That is down to within the realms of now casting! If the modelling is wrong, the forecast is wrong?

Pretty much, I mean I did suspect that it might end up further south west than was initially modelled, although at one point I did think we might have just about managed to get the front to stall over us, but it's yet another lesson that Steve Murr and TEITS are forecasting gods when it comes to sliders, with SM calling the right trajectory on Friday evening. Still a fair chance we could see the front getting at least as far as Glasgow though - the EURO4 overnight has this as the eastward exten, which tallies pretty well with the warning area:

and I know that the ECM has been consistently modelling the front getting further east than the other models http://www.yr.no/kart/#lat=56.59652&lon=-1.61549&zoom=6&laga=nedb%C3%B8r&proj=900913

We did see some snow on the immediate east coast last night too - apparently there was a covering in Cupar and a dusting in St Andrews, so the extent of places seeing snow cover over the last week is pretty close to 100%, and it has been notably cold, but obviously a lot of us have yet to see any 'proper' snowfalls yet as we did in 2009/10 and 2010/11. Still, we are only about half way through winter and to this point it is still better than most of the winters I can remember - 2004/05 didn't have much sustained cold or snow until about mid February, 05/06 was quite cold but mostly dry, other than the Boxing Day easterly, until the March cold spell so I think we've probably done marginally better than that, 06/07 was dire other than a mid February easterly which was locally pretty decent, 07/08 probably wasn't far off this one with some snow around New Year but I don't remember much of it other than the March cold spell, 08/09 had an alright late November-early December spell, a localised easterly snowfall at the start of January and then a lot of marginal frontal snowfalls which never really came off before the main cold spell early February, 09/10 was obviously superb almost throughout, 10/11 was pretty much done by this point, 11/12 was alright for early December but rather disappointing until the start of April which was our biggest snowfall of the year on the east coast, 12/13 had a similarly frustrating cold spell to this one early December and then at this point we were in a spell of southeasterlies which were very snowy for modestly high ground but a bit more slushy to low levels, 13/14 was a total write off, so other than the two proper classics this winter compares pretty well to most other recent first halves of winters.

I still expect at least one major blocking episode to come good through February though - the strat is hotting up again and you'd have to hope that we wouldn't be as unlucky as we were with the earlier warming, when the first Greenland warming for a while perversely ended up helping reform the vortex:

So plenty to play for, not least tonight which could still give a good covering/top up for the western half of the country.

[GrangemouthBairn]

It's amazing how much that weather front out west has reformed over the last couple of hours. Think it could be a good night for the western half of the country and hopefully its recent eastward progression will continue.