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South West and Central Southern England Regional Weather Discussion 22/02/2018 Onwards


BlueHedgehog074

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Posted
  • Location: Redlynch, Wiltshire / 110m asl
  • Weather Preferences: Cold snowy winters, warm springs, hot summers, warm then stormy autumn
  • Location: Redlynch, Wiltshire / 110m asl

Dark clouds coming my way

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Posted
  • Location: Barton on Sea, Hampshire
  • Weather Preferences: Snowy winter, warm/hot summer with the odd storm thrown in
  • Location: Barton on Sea, Hampshire
2 minutes ago, EllyTech said:

OMG what happened there ?

You liked it so much you wanted to see it 4 times. 

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Posted
  • Location: Redlynch, Wiltshire / 110m asl
  • Weather Preferences: Cold snowy winters, warm springs, hot summers, warm then stormy autumn
  • Location: Redlynch, Wiltshire / 110m asl

Starting again! My phone will probably turn off soon as usual 

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Posted
  • Location: Weston-Super-Mare, North Somerset
  • Weather Preferences: Thunderstorms in the summer, frost fog & snow in winter.
  • Location: Weston-Super-Mare, North Somerset

Still chucking it down and settling nicely. 

20180227_172251.jpg

Edited by Smartie
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Posted
  • Location: Colyton, Devon
  • Weather Preferences: Old Fashioned Traditional Seasons
  • Location: Colyton, Devon
27 minutes ago, Bring Back1962-63 said:

Just a shorter (EDIT: hardly :D) update from me. As promised, I'll take a look at temps this time but first of all  there's some excellent news. Everything is looking great for "tomorrow" (we can worry about Thursday a little later on). The Met O briefly dropped their yellow warning for Wednesday but they quickly put it back as an amber warning for south Devon and South Cornwall (but read on). The dropping was most likely to have been an error anyway. So, what about "our" Channel streamer. Well  it's currently out there bashing Guernsey and Alderney.  Their airports were closed. Some reports (perhaps exaggerated, perhaps not) suggested about 25 cm of snow in under 6 hours and it's still snowing there. Do we have a member who can give us an unbiased account?  For headings and explanations about these type of charts, please refer to several of my earlier posts (eg: the one on page 106).

lastsnowradar_uk.gif   anim_ir_color.gif   anim_ir.gif

The snow showers are becoming much more frequent and some are reaching into our region. This will continue. With the pool of lowest temps (surface and 850s) about to move in from the east later this evening and overnight when the whole country "might" see an increase in shower activity. Just look at that expanse of thicker cloud over northern and north-west Europe. That contain a lot of snow showers that will be further enhanced as they cross the North Sea. Remember that this "low level convection" is caused by frigid air crossing a much warmer sea and is why the showers do not lose intensity overnight (unlike standard convection which depends on the solar heating of land surfaces).

Whilst all that is very encouraging, I have suggested in all my posts so far that "Wednesday" will be important in terms of snow for many of us. I think of "our" streamer waiting out there in the Channel, gathering in intensity, biding its time, until it heads straight at us. This requires the flow to veer from just north of east to just south of east. I posted the "live" and the "GIF 24 hour to 0850"  pressure maps in my last post. So let's focus on two "frozen" (not literally but in this pattern perhaps they are :D) charts:

                  Feb 27th 0050                                              Feb 27th 1550                             Met O Fax for 0600 Feb 28th                     Met O Fax for 1200 Feb 28th 

pression2_eur2-00.png    pression2_eur2-15.png    20180227.1030.PPVE89.png    20180227.0521.PPVG89.png

It might look like very little change but there are key differences - all going in the right direction for us. The Scandi  HP continues to intensify more or less in situ. A great trend if it continues to help maintain the cold block against the Thursday attack from the south and to ward off any less cold intrusions (one to monitor closely). Then the increased isobar gradient, strengthening the easterly flow just as the coldest air moves in. A bitter combination and I would expect windchill temps to be well below those currently forecast (of -7c to -10c) perhaps sub -15c or even lower (see later). If that's all good, the most important change is the direction of the flow. Look how over the nearby continent it has already shifted from east-north-east to east-south-east. Over the eastern Channel it has shifted into the east and is halfway there. This has just cut off and stopped their snow streamer.

The Met O faxes for tomorrow complete the change with the east-south-easterly flow now blowing straight out of NW France and across the full length of the Channel.  Remember, the air flow only has to cross about 10 miles of water to pick up sufficient moisture from the sea in its lowest layers to produce low level convection - initially building clouds, then light showers and then much heavier showers. Look at the standard satellite imagery along all of the north-west European coast and you can see that there is a short clear zone and then with increasing cloud. As I said this morning this will push our streamer right up to our south-western shores but it is not just the streamer. Just as the east coast benefits from their on-shore easterlies from the North Sea with snow showers pushing a long way inland, then we will too. That means that roughly from Brighton westwards "should" be in the firing line and the further west one goes the longer the sea fetch is. Another reason why Channel streamers in our region are so rare, is that convective easterlies need a very cold source and northwest France is often not as cold as slightly further north. Not this time though, the coldest 850s and lowest surface temps that are moving across the UK tonight and tomorrow are moving right down into central France too (which is also further help for Thursday's LP to pick up some early dense cold air into its circulation before it gets anywhere near to us - every little helps :)). As long as this convection source is there and the flow remains just south of east (both of which now look to be odds on)  we may get over 24 hours with this exposure.

Those (mostly) light snow showers and flurries that have been reaching all the way down here today (I just had my first very light shower just now but not enough to settle) have crossed all the way from around the Lincolnshire and north Norfolk coasts and the Wash and originated from a few miles off north Holland. Imagine us being much nearer to the source and just do the maths. If the Met O doesn't extend our amber warning further east along the south coast or even produce at least a yellow warning, then I will right now :D Here's a badly annotated chart. I had to use print screen, then save it into paint, edit it there, crop/enlarge/annotate, save it as a PNG doc and upload it into the pre-submit part of this post. Despite using loads of charts, I still think that I'm doing something wrong in this process and I'm unsure if you can enlarge it to view it properly (and the white run through arrows may not work either). If so, I can only apologise. I have annotated the map to demonstrate my points. The dreadful looking red arrows should be the approximate direction of the on-shore winds - they might even be very slightly more easterly than south-easterly but this is near enough. The green line is my minimum impact line - how far inland the showers go before fizzling out.  The purple line is my estimate for their maximum extent. if anything, I may have been too conservative with this. using today as a yardstick, even the north Somerset coast may get some decent showers and then our friends in south Wales (who have generally done better than us so far) will benefit from the flow picking up more moisture again as it passes over the Bristol Channel. I have stuck my neck right out with this forecast and only time will tell. If you want to shoot the messenger tomorrow, I've just emigrated to the South Pole :) 

          5a957c222665a_snowchart.thumb.png.ad50697af9df6a096c204207648d0eb7.png    sstuk.gif     2018-02-22uk.gif

Now that I've hinted at the sea surface temperatures (SSTs), i do not want anyone to be curious. i did a full review of these in my Eurasia temperature report on the MOD last week. While I was just using that chart to do the annotations, I noticed that the SSTs had fallen back already by about 1 c in the last 4 days all around our southern and eastern shores. They would normally take a few weeks to drop back this far. This just shows the effect of the very cold air stream. For our sea to freeze close to our coasts, we would need another month or more of this level a cold. Only in the end of our epic winters (like in '62/'63) does this happen. That story this morning about the sea freezing over at Weston-Super-Mare is ridiculous! I imagine what happened was the tide was out, the very low dew points dried out the beach rapidly and then a heavy snow shower dumped several centimetres there. The tide comes in very quickly over those long flat beaches. So, just near the tide line there would be pieces of slush and snow caught up in the advancing waves for a few minutes before they melted. A photographer could show ice flows but don't believe the news reports. Was it the Daily Express (other "usual" suspects are available) who stated this?

Finally, some of the latest temperature charts (without comments for a change):

                     Live 2 M Temps                            2 M Temps GIF 24 hours to 1610                             Live 2 M Temps                                   2 M Temps GIF 24 hours to 1610      

temp_uk.png      tempresult_hqm5.gif        temp_eur2.png         tempresult_miy8.gif

          Live Dew Point Temps                            Dew Point Temps GIF 24 hours to 1610            Live Windchill Temps                                 Windchill GIF 24 hours to 1610      

pointrosee_eur2.png      tempresult_vbh0.gif        windchill_eur2.png        tempresult_ldt2.gif

Well just one comment! The UK "GIF" temp map should end near to the daily maximums but look how the temp has already dropped for the last 2 hours or so - an early indication of the coldest air moving in. I'll let someone else post an 850s chart. Will we see lower than sub -14s - perhaps some sub -16s early tomorrow? 

I'll be back with a really brief update around 11 pm or so. 

David

EDIT: My annotated such does work properly. Now we just need it to be right :) 

Very interesting and informative post - I do have one issue, you say there is a met office amber warning for South Devon and South Cornwall that has been reinstated (Quote:'The Met O briefly dropped their yellow warning for Wednesday but they quickly put it back as an amber warning for south Devon and South Cornwall').  I cannot see this on Met Office warnings, only a yellow warning for parts of Devon and Cornwall. Could you explain please?

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Posted
  • Location: Stoke Gifford, Bristol
  • Weather Preferences: Snow, Thunderstorms, Heat Waves, Tornadoes.
  • Location: Stoke Gifford, Bristol

As the sun sets... a light covering shall remain. It will be a slippery bike ride home tonight!

20180227_172020.jpg

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Posted
  • Location: Weston-Super-Mare, North Somerset
  • Weather Preferences: Thunderstorms in the summer, frost fog & snow in winter.
  • Location: Weston-Super-Mare, North Somerset

As del boy would say, lovely jubbly 

20180227_172631.mp4

Edited by Smartie
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Posted
  • Location: Coalpit Heath, South Gloucestershire
  • Location: Coalpit Heath, South Gloucestershire

Just hope we don't get the freezing rain. I remember it from Jan 1996.......accidents galore and people falling over like ninepins. Horrendous stuff. ???

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Posted
  • Location: Cheltenham, Gloucs.
  • Location: Cheltenham, Gloucs.
4 minutes ago, matt111 said:

You liked it so much you wanted to see it 4 times. 

It was lovely to see that for the coastal folk.

(We do have a dusting here but nothing that warranted a yellow warn. Time yet though. Getting colder.)

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Posted
  • Location: Yate, Bristol
  • Weather Preferences: Harsh Frosts & Heavy Snow
  • Location: Yate, Bristol
Just now, Smartie said:

As del boy world say, lovely jubbly 

20180227_172631.mp4

Wow! You did well from that shower. We got a dusting here but not that much.

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Posted
  • Location: Weston-Super-Mare, North Somerset
  • Weather Preferences: Thunderstorms in the summer, frost fog & snow in winter.
  • Location: Weston-Super-Mare, North Somerset

I can see why places near the east cost get  buried from shower after shower like that! 

20180227_173304.jpg

Edited by Smartie
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Posted
  • Location: Coalpit Heath, South Gloucestershire
  • Location: Coalpit Heath, South Gloucestershire

Cracking lot of cloud just arrived from the East here....getting ready for a really good hefty shower by the looks of it. ?

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Posted
  • Location: Weston-Super-Mare, North Somerset
  • Weather Preferences: Thunderstorms in the summer, frost fog & snow in winter.
  • Location: Weston-Super-Mare, North Somerset

And now we have huge flakes falling again, shower clearing away now though. 

The side roads round here are going to be lethal tonight I'd say. 

Edited by Smartie
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Posted
  • Location: Axminster Devon.
  • Location: Axminster Devon.
3 hours ago, Bring Back1962-63 said:

Hello,perhaps this will cheer you up a little :) I was going to mention tomorrow's snow again in my next update this afternoon. Ignore the removed weather warnings which can often be quite fickle. The snow streamer is getting much more intense now and Guernsey should get a foot or more of snow in just a few hours today. That streamer "should" turn its attention on most us in the mainland West Country early tomorrow as the wind and flow swing "should" (in fact highly likely) into a more east-south-easterly direction which would be the perfect scenario (as per my detailed post on page 106 this morning). I think we'll see an amber warning for us issued by late this evening for all of tomorrow. With this snow fix, many should then be less concerned about Thursday which could either be a memorable blizzard or a complete flop.  Enjoy.   David

EDIT: latest working radar:

lastsnowradar_uk.gif

Hello David, ah yes that looks much nicer, thank you!!

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Posted
  • Location: Colyton, Devon
  • Weather Preferences: Old Fashioned Traditional Seasons
  • Location: Colyton, Devon
54 minutes ago, Bring Back1962-63 said:

Just a shorter (EDIT: hardly :D) update from me. As promised, I'll take a look at temps this time but first of all  there's some excellent news. Everything is looking great for "tomorrow" (we can worry about Thursday a little later on). The Met O briefly dropped their yellow warning for Wednesday but they quickly put it back as an amber warning for south Devon and South Cornwall (but read on). The dropping was most likely to have been an error anyway. So, what about "our" Channel streamer. Well  it's currently out there bashing Guernsey and Alderney.  Their airports were closed. Some reports (perhaps exaggerated, perhaps not) suggested about 25 cm of snow in under 6 hours and it's still snowing there. Do we have a member who can give us an unbiased account?  For headings and explanations about these type of charts, please refer to several of my earlier posts (eg: the one on page 106).

lastsnowradar_uk.gif   anim_ir_color.gif   anim_ir.gif

The snow showers are becoming much more frequent and some are reaching into our region. This will continue. With the pool of lowest temps (surface and 850s) about to move in from the east later this evening and overnight when the whole country "might" see an increase in shower activity. Just look at that expanse of thicker cloud over northern and north-west Europe. That contain a lot of snow showers that will be further enhanced as they cross the North Sea. Remember that this "low level convection" is caused by frigid air crossing a much warmer sea and is why the showers do not lose intensity overnight (unlike standard convection which depends on the solar heating of land surfaces).

Whilst all that is very encouraging, I have suggested in all my posts so far that "Wednesday" will be important in terms of snow for many of us. I think of "our" streamer waiting out there in the Channel, gathering in intensity, biding its time, until it heads straight at us. This requires the flow to veer from just north of east to just south of east. I posted the "live" and the "GIF 24 hour to 0850"  pressure maps in my last post. So let's focus on two "frozen" (not literally but in this pattern perhaps they are :D) charts:

                  Feb 27th 0050                                              Feb 27th 1550                             Met O Fax for 0600 Feb 28th                     Met O Fax for 1200 Feb 28th 

pression2_eur2-00.png    pression2_eur2-15.png    20180227.1030.PPVE89.png    20180227.0521.PPVG89.png

It might look like very little change but there are key differences - all going in the right direction for us. The Scandi  HP continues to intensify more or less in situ. A great trend if it continues to help maintain the cold block against the Thursday attack from the south and to ward off any less cold intrusions (one to monitor closely). Then the increased isobar gradient, strengthening the easterly flow just as the coldest air moves in. A bitter combination and I would expect windchill temps to be well below those currently forecast (of -7c to -10c) perhaps sub -15c or even lower (see later). If that's all good, the most important change is the direction of the flow. Look how over the nearby continent it has already shifted from east-north-east to east-south-east. Over the eastern Channel it has shifted into the east and is halfway there. This has just cut off and stopped their snow streamer.

The Met O faxes for tomorrow complete the change with the east-south-easterly flow now blowing straight out of NW France and across the full length of the Channel.  Remember, the air flow only has to cross about 10 miles of water to pick up sufficient moisture from the sea in its lowest layers to produce low level convection - initially building clouds, then light showers and then much heavier showers. Look at the standard satellite imagery along all of the north-west European coast and you can see that there is a short clear zone and then with increasing cloud. As I said this morning this will push our streamer right up to our south-western shores but it is not just the streamer. Just as the east coast benefits from their on-shore easterlies from the North Sea with snow showers pushing a long way inland, then we will too. That means that roughly from Brighton westwards "should" be in the firing line and the further west one goes the longer the sea fetch is. Another reason why Channel streamers in our region are so rare, is that convective easterlies need a very cold source and northwest France is often not as cold as slightly further north. Not this time though, the coldest 850s and lowest surface temps that are moving across the UK tonight and tomorrow are moving right down into central France too (which is also further help for Thursday's LP to pick up some early dense cold air into its circulation before it gets anywhere near to us - every little helps :)). As long as this convection source is there and the flow remains just south of east (both of which now look to be odds on)  we may get over 24 hours with this exposure.

Those (mostly) light snow showers and flurries that have been reaching all the way down here today (I just had my first very light shower just now but not enough to settle) have crossed all the way from around the Lincolnshire and north Norfolk coasts and the Wash and originated from a few miles off north Holland. Imagine us being much nearer to the source and just do the maths. If the Met O doesn't extend our amber warning further east along the south coast or even produce at least a yellow warning, then I will right now :D Here's a badly annotated chart. I had to use print screen, then save it into paint, edit it there, crop/enlarge/annotate, save it as a PNG doc and upload it into the pre-submit part of this post. Despite using loads of charts, I still think that I'm doing something wrong in this process and I'm unsure if you can enlarge it to view it properly (and the white run through arrows may not work either). If so, I can only apologise. I have annotated the map to demonstrate my points. The dreadful looking red arrows should be the approximate direction of the on-shore winds - they might even be very slightly more easterly than south-easterly but this is near enough. The green line is my minimum impact line - how far inland the showers go before fizzling out.  The purple line is my estimate for their maximum extent. if anything, I may have been too conservative with this. using today as a yardstick, even the north Somerset coast may get some decent showers and then our friends in south Wales (who have generally done better than us so far) will benefit from the flow picking up more moisture again as it passes over the Bristol Channel. I have stuck my neck right out with this forecast and only time will tell. If you want to shoot the messenger tomorrow, I've just emigrated to the South Pole :) 

          5a957c222665a_snowchart.thumb.png.ad50697af9df6a096c204207648d0eb7.png    sstuk.gif     2018-02-22uk.gif

Now that I've hinted at the sea surface temperatures (SSTs), i do not want anyone to be curious. i did a full review of these in my Eurasia temperature report on the MOD last week. While I was just using that chart to do the annotations, I noticed that the SSTs had fallen back already by about 1 c in the last 4 days all around our southern and eastern shores. They would normally take a few weeks to drop back this far. This just shows the effect of the very cold air stream. For our sea to freeze close to our coasts, we would need another month or more of this level a cold. Only in the end of our epic winters (like in '62/'63) does this happen. That story this morning about the sea freezing over at Weston-Super-Mare is ridiculous! I imagine what happened was the tide was out, the very low dew points dried out the beach rapidly and then a heavy snow shower dumped several centimetres there. The tide comes in very quickly over those long flat beaches. So, just near the tide line there would be pieces of slush and snow caught up in the advancing waves for a few minutes before they melted. A photographer could show ice flows but don't believe the news reports. Was it the Daily Express (other "usual" suspects are available) who stated this?

Finally, some of the latest temperature charts (without comments for a change):

                     Live 2 M Temps                            2 M Temps GIF 24 hours to 1610                             Live 2 M Temps                                   2 M Temps GIF 24 hours to 1610      

temp_uk.png      tempresult_hqm5.gif        temp_eur2.png         tempresult_miy8.gif

          Live Dew Point Temps                            Dew Point Temps GIF 24 hours to 1610            Live Windchill Temps                                 Windchill GIF 24 hours to 1610      

pointrosee_eur2.png      tempresult_vbh0.gif        windchill_eur2.png        tempresult_ldt2.gif

Well just one comment! The UK "GIF" temp map should end near to the daily maximums but look how the temp has already dropped for the last 2 hours or so - an early indication of the coldest air moving in. I'll let someone else post an 850s chart. Will we see lower than sub -14s - perhaps some sub -16s early tomorrow? 

I'll be back with a really brief update around 11 pm or so. 

David

EDIT: My annotated such does work properly. Now we just need it to be right :) 

Sorry, just found the Amber warning for Wednesday - it is actually under the heading for Thursday!! Bit confusing! Edit - no it isn't that is for Thursday's more general snow.

Edited by Timer
Needed to calrify my comments
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Posted
  • Location: Axminster Devon.
  • Location: Axminster Devon.

Someone else asked this question but not sure what the reply was, if someone says they have a snow shower how do we know if they are near to us without going into the profiles? I' sure it used to say down the side what area the poster was from.

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Posted
  • Location: Benson, Oxfordshire
  • Location: Benson, Oxfordshire

Most worrying thing about these weather warnings...the possibility of losing power and mobile phone signals!! 

In all seriousness, though, I'm doing a late shift Thursday in an isolated rural area. There are two routes in- one over a hill which will be impassable and one over a bridge into the village. Again in poor conditions the bridge will be impassable except by foot. At some point I may have to make a call to shut up shop if it looks like a whiteout. Or else take candles, blankets and gin to work!!!

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