YOUR FAVOURITE ARCHIVED SYNOPTIC CHART

[March Blizzard]

I don't think they go back that far, last 25 years or so of the 19th century.1871.

They only go back to 1871.

That's a shame. Oh well, cheers guys.

[iand61]

Probably the most severe blizzard I've ever seen in our part of the country and the worst, or best dependent on your opinion of the what was certainly a classic winter.

We had main roads blocked by 20 feet drifts and, helped by a council work to rule, they remained so for almost two weeks.

[Weather-history]

[Mark Neal.]

It was a Saturday, wasn't it? I remember a MetO red warning went up in the late morning. For areas just to the north and west of London. Herts, Beds, those sorts of counties.

Yes it was.. We had a forecast the night before saying it would brush past us, we would perhaps get some light snow. But last minute gave us a big surprise watching the radar was fun at 9am.!

 

 Does anyone know a site which has archived radar images from certain events, if thats even avaliable? 

[carinthian]

Probably the most severe blizzard I've ever seen in our part of the country and the worst, or best dependent on your opinion of the what was certainly a classic winter.We had main roads blocked by 20 feet drifts and, helped by a council work to rule, they remained so for almost two weeks.

 

Yes, remember that spell well. Many vehicles stranded on the Pennine crossings. Best powder snowfall I have seen in the UK, or at least on a parr with 1963. Blowing snow carried many miles off the pennines.

C

[WillinGlossop]

Yes, remember that spell well. Many vehicles stranded on the Pennine crossings. Best powder snowfall I have seen in the UK, or at least on a parr with 1963. Blowing snow carried many miles off the pennines.C

Wouldnt mind some of that for a week as first winter up here.....deep powder snow.....lush!

[Yarmy]

Christ, that first chart is oMEGA. An LP system bigger than Europe. Is this reanalysis stuff accurate?

[cheese]

Awesome. I bet that spell of cold weather was quite sunny since it is more ENE than E. Could be entirely wrong of course!

Edited September 12, 2013 by cheese

[Thundery wintry showers]

January 1881 was the coldest calendar month at Durham in records going back to the 1880s and there are some impressive charts there:

http://www.wetterzentrale.de/pics/archive/ra/1881/Rrea00118810113.gif

http://www.wetterzentrale.de/pics/archive/ra/1881/Rrea00118810120.gif

 

The stats point to a dry sunny month with just 22.3mm of precipitation and an above-average diurnal range of 7.2C, but those two charts must surely have brought some snowfall.

Edited September 12, 2013 by Thundery wintry showers

[Weather-history]

Awesome. I bet that spell of cold weather was quite sunny since it is more ENE than E. Could be entirely wrong of course!

Here are some reports from that period in 189722nd JanuaryFinchley: Snow much drifted.Kensworth: Great snow storm, drfits 15ft deep, roads and lane blockedHedsor: NE gale and much snowOxford: Blizzard at 4pm, one inch of snow fell in 20 minutesClifton: Blizzard and darkness at 3pmGloucester: BlizzardRoss-on-Wye: Blizzard at 2.30pmLouth: Thunder, lightning and snowAstle Hall: Blowing a gale from the NE, a regular blizzardHorncastle: Fearful snowstorms with deep driftsuper duperchin: Snow drifts, many roads blockedNorwich: Blinding snowstorms, driftingManchester: snowstorm on 22nd, and snow on the 24th, 25th, 26th and 29th23rd JanuaryKensington: NE gales with snow showersSheppey: Severe snow storms, 4 inches of snowRochester: Very severe blizzard from NELewes: Heavy falls of snowAddington: A very wild day with great drifts

[iand61]

Wouldnt mind some of that for a week as first winter up here.....deep powder snow.....lush!

Your certainly in the right place for getting a pasting if snow is about and like ourselves will usually be on the right side of marginal snow events.

[snowking]

Probaby my second best snow event! Had the weather front moving up from the South, It stalled over our area and pivoting, it gave us a good 6hrs of moderate snow, with a good hour 1/2 of intense and heavy snow. 

Yep remember this one well. I was still at university at the time and I had to drive back in my good old P reg ford fiesta from Cheltenham to Essex via Oxford (Headington funnily enough) to drop somebody off who couldn't get home because the buses had stopped running.

 

Approximately 2ft of snow on the A40 over the cotswolds (that was once I had got on to it - they had actually shut the entrance to the A40 in Cheltenham because it was uphill and 4x4's we're struggling to get up, so I had to re-route and join it about a mile further up navigating some completely un-gritted residential back streets). Fortunately the A40 had been ploughed that morning, but there were just solid lumps of compacted snow all the way along the road, with the grit having not touched it as the temperature was still around -10c. Got in to Headington and the level depth was easily around 15 inches. Really pretty surreal. All told that journey took me about 10 hours.

 

One of my favourite events, just purely for drama, was the thundersnow of 2004:

 

 

You can see the clearly defined frontal system within that archive chart. I remember tracking the radar all day at school with friends asking me (by this stage I was known universally as the weather man) whether it was going to be a snow day the next day. Looking at the radar returns I boldly proclaimed yes, almost certainly.

 

It got to 4pm and the front still hadn't arrived. I was waiting for the bus home when....it started to drizzle. I thought uh-oh, don't tell me its a warm sector. 10 minutes in to the bus journey I looked out the window and suddenly you couldn't see out, the snow was coming down so heavily it actually looked like thick fog. My dad was sat on a bridge over the M11 at the time and I remember him saying he could see it coming south down the M11 and it really looked like sea fog slowly moving inland. We must have had about an inch fall within the first 12 minutes, and all told I would say we ended up with around 6 inches, along with some really loud claps of thunder through the evening. Not the biggest total we have seen here (indeed almost exactly a year before this we had another big snow event in 2003 which caused chaos on the M11 as a band of snow formed in the North Sea completely unexpectedly. By the time the gritters got out everyone was panic-leaving work as the Met Office issued warnings, and the gritters got stuck in the traffic as the snow set in - we had about 9 inches from that in the end), but for pure drama certainly a memorable one!

 

SK

Edited September 13, 2013 by snowking

[Anvils in the Sky]

 Does anyone know a site which has archived radar images from certain events, if thats even avaliable? 

I, too, was thinking just that, yesterday. Had a trawl through the web, but couldn't find anything.

[The PIT]

The Burns Storm. Now that was a scary day. Remembered stood in traffic with trees leaning right over the car thinking please don't. Probably the only time I was nervous in strong winds. The factory I was working in started blowing down luckily just as the winds started dropping so further damage didn't occur.. The wall by the stairs to the canteen started to weaken and it was crumbling visabily yet management allowed people to use the canteen. I didn't use it as I knew that if the wall went then the roof would go as well and there would be a very good chance of getting injured.

The Jan 2004 Thunder snow wasn't much here went through that quickly it just left a few inches. Most noteworthy was the panic drivers got into over black ice that wasn't there. The next morning the road conditions were worse due to an overnight melt then washed the grit away and then a refreeze. This made walking across main roads interesting yet traffic moved a lot better as people presumed the roads were clear and gritted.

 

 

 

[feb1991blizzard]

Probably the most severe blizzard I've ever seen in our part of the country and the worst, or best dependent on your opinion of the what was certainly a classic winter.We had main roads blocked by 20 feet drifts and, helped by a council work to rule, they remained so for almost two weeks.

 

 

Yes, I bet there were drifts like that here as well, that chart IMO whilst not as conducive to a longer lasting spell as the heights are  not strong enough and the block was always going to collapse quickly, it is however IMO at least on a par with 87 or 91 for giving a massive dumping quickly, note the tightness of the isobars denoting a powerhouse Easterly and note the grey shades denoting the really low heights, a lethal combination, I bet Manchester even got completely belted and wouldn't even rule out PPN right the way over to the West.

[UV-RAY]

Probably the most severe blizzard I've ever seen in our part of the country and the worst, or best dependent on your opinion of the what was certainly a classic winter.We had main roads blocked by 20 feet drifts and, helped by a council work to rule, they remained so for almost two weeks.

Same here, drifts were well in excess of 20 feet. What a winter 78/79 was, we had one front after another bumping into the cold pool of air delivering us copious amounts of snow, a repeat of that winter would make up for the last 35 years  of almost non events bar February 96 for excessive snow cover.

[cheese]

26 February 1990 - when Leeds recorded a wind gust of 98mph and a sustained wind speed of 63mph. It recorded a wind gust of 94mph in Jan 1990 durng the Burns' Day storm. Probably the Aire Valley tunneling effect. The two months were very mild - Leeds Weather Ctr didn't fall below freezing at all in Jan or Feb 1990.

 

Edited September 13, 2013 by cheese

[feb1991blizzard]

Someone once posted the most awesome chart on here, it was on a forum when the reanalysis started going really far back in 2011 summer, I think it was Steve Murr who posted it but not certain, it was about a 1070mb Scandinavian high, Im sure it was a pre war chart, cant remember what year, I would love to see it again but cannot find it, just wondered if anyone has any ideas.

[Gaz1985]

Another great high pressure chart from July 2005..... 2005 was a decent Summer

 

[Weather-history]

Someone once posted the most awesome chart on here, it was on a forum when the reanalysis started going really far back in 2011 summer, I think it was Steve Murr who posted it but not certain, it was about a 1070mb Scandinavian high, Im sure it was a pre war chart, cant remember what year, I would love to see it again but cannot find it, just wondered if anyone has any ideas.

I posted a couple of pages back of a high centred over the Baltic which got to 1067mb during late January 1907

Edited September 13, 2013 by Weather-history

[cheese]

 

Look at those brutal uppers over Central/SE Europe!

 

[feb1991blizzard]

I posted a couple of pages back of a high centred over the Baltic which got to 1067mb during late January 1907

 

I posted a couple of pages back of a high centred over the Baltic which got to 1067mb during late January 1907

 

 

Cheers, I am not sure it was that one, I thought the one im thinking of was a much better orientated one but it could well be the one and it might be my memory playing tricks with me, cheers anyway.

[feb1991blizzard]

LOL, rubbish memory from me, it was a Greenland high and was one of the most famous of all time.

 

 

[Gaz1985]

Nice mild Christmas day 1988

 

[Weather-history]

Rather this for Christmas Day than 1988 one