The Weather

[Deathray 2,940]

You may have heard the BBC hinting at some colder weather. Their being hesitant about it as it could not materialise, but if what the weather models and some of our best forecasting companies are predicting does materialise it's going to be almost certainly the coldest weather and most widespread snow for five years.

 

Supposedly we're in for some cold weather towards the back end of the month and into the beginning of next month. Weather charts rarely verify exactly as shown beyond 120 hours however they often verify within the general pattern of all models, and there within what's termed the "semi-reliable" weather model time frame, the country is likely to experience it's coldest March for many many years and it's coldest winter weather for quite a few years. Currently all models are veering towards and easterly flow, meaning Scandinavian and Russian air being channelled over the country. No need for the barbecues, then.

 

There's more reason to believe this is actually likely to happen with these charts as they come on the back of Sudden Stratospheric Warming (SSW) (this is basically the air above the north pole drastically increasing in temperature) - you may have heard the express or star referring to this in their latest "Snowmaggeden is inbound, buy your shovels and hats" headlines. Well, stopped clocks are right twice a day I suppose. The SSW has been showing to have a casual relationship - roughly 60% - between it happening and cold air in the UK and western Europe.

 

So what are we potentially looking at. Quite simply, deep cold and the potential for heavy snowfall. So maximum temperatures of between -1 and -5 - and lows much lower than that if the snowfields are in action or "ice days". There is also the potential of heavy snowfall (think in 2010, March 2013 or 1987 terms not BBC frightened cat terms every winter). 

 

This is not guaranteed to happening - but there's a strong signal it will from all the things weather nuts look at - but it might be worth making sure you've got enough to top your central heating up from mid next week and there's a snow shovel around for the back end of next week. As said further up it can equally fall apart and be a load of mild dross with a slight change in position of the high pressure system (over Greenland) that would open up the floodgates to the cold eastern air. One to watch.

 

Just for fun here's one of the directions it could go from an ensemble run, the blues and purples are cold weather. The numbers are upper air temperatures (not the ground temperatures, which will be about 9-11 degrees higher but still cold).

 

 

[Boudicca 702]

On 09/02/2018 at 15:39, Phantom of the Midway said:

That reminds me of that time freshman year we had to run a mile around the football field when it was snowing.

Played hockey in deep snow at school. The ball was lost after a few minutes. Random running about. "Oh we won three nil Miss" 

 

Deathray's link reminds me of our IYG getting mixed up in hurricane Rita and Anubis the Jackals classic comment 

 

[msc 18,479]

Right, story paraphrased somewhat after nearly 2 decades, but anyhow...

 

Head of Games at school was one of the those PE stereotypes. This day was quite bad, even for Glasgow. Thunder, lightning, pissing down and bouncing right up in the air (hell, as a Scot, I have a closer relationship with rain than half my family, but this day was particularly mental even then), hail, you name it. Meant to be doing rugby practice. "Only useless wankers hide from a wee bit of rain" yelled the Head from under his umbrella before going to inspect the kids actually good at sports. After 5 mins of this, one of the softer teachers decided "sod this" and brought us all in. Didn't clear up after 10, so we got told to pack up.

 

So got my uniform back on, when into the dressing room walks scowling Head of Games. "What you lot fucking doing in here?"

"Hiding from a wee bit of rain with the rest of the useless wankers, Sir" was my reply without thinking about it.

 

Alas, only one of us found it funny. Luckily, because I'm a jammy sod, I got the detention appealed because the Deputy Head thought it was hilarious.

[charon 4,943]

 

You had me on your side........

 

 

 

Until the word 'rugby' came into it.

 

 

 

Yer da's either politzi , a fermer or a dentist.

 

 

 

Hope you got pneumonia.

[msc 18,479]

 

Wrong on all 3, sorry. NHS, actually, so I'll assume your general point stands! Private schools used to (still do?) take on one pupil per year from each "deprived" bit of Glasgow sans the tuition fees hence the rugby (which I was shite at).

 

 

[Deathray 2,940]

Remember how I said blue is cold and purple is really really fucking cold. It may be downgraded but the latest model run puts this out, we're on the cusp of something wonderful (or horrible depending on your outlook) - again temps are upper air temperatures but you're looking at persistent ice days across the UK and heavy snowfall if this verifies:

 

 

 

[msc 18,479]

So, you actually are Tomasz Schafernaker, and keep voting for yourself in the Crowdsourced. Makes sense.

[Deathray 2,940]

2 minutes ago, msc said:

So, you actually are Tomasz Schafernaker, and keep voting for yourself in the Crowdsourced. Makes sense.

 

Nope! I'm just a sad person who looks at this stuff for fun when I've got nothing else to do. It's all available for free online, so why not? I wouldn't normally share it with you because it doesn't normally show up some of the most severe wintry weather in two generations in the runs and there's rarely as much unanimity among the models as there is on the current runs, it's going to take a severe switcharoo from them for there not to be any cold, even downgrades from this will feel very bitter and produce snow. 

 

There's an internet forum for it, like any other weird hobby that someone might have like I don't know predicting celebrity deaths...

[msc 18,479]

Yeah, 2010 being the coldest winter in 100 years or something daft like that really annoyed the oldest members of my family who liked to say "Call this cold? It's nothing on the Winter of 47!"

[Deathray 2,940]

4 minutes ago, msc said:

Yeah, 2010 being the coldest winter in 100 years or something daft like that really annoyed the oldest members of my family who liked to say "Call this cold? It's nothing on the Winter of 47!"

 

Yup. Notice I used the words "some of". It would be as snowy if not snowier than 1947 (which was substantially more snowy than 2010). It's still a long way out in weather terms though. I'll stop posting about it here for fear of jinxing it until it's nailed on or written off.

[Deathray 2,940]

 

Milk, soup and bread. Milk, soup and Bread. Get your milk, soup and bread while you can still reach the corner shop. 

 

Days on end of this sort of chart:

 

As close as we have to surface temperatures, these are night-time in city centres, rurally your talking much lower especially with lying snow! Also bear in mind a biting wind-chill and it'll feel a good few degrees colder than evening these numbers!

 

 

This extends a bit further west than some other charts, but up to a cm an hour, for hours on end. Could see over a foot of snow on the south east coast.

 

 

And those upper air temperatures. Remember purple is cold as fuck.

 

 

In all seriousness this is not 100% guaranteed even at this stage, but literally everything a weather forecaster looks at is pointing at some serious cold weather across the UK and heavy snow for the eastern side of the country from this weekend to the end of current model output (10-15 days depending on the model). It can all fall apart even at this late stage though, and has done in situations like this in the past.

 

To sum up be aware, it might get cold with a bit of snow this weekend into next week.

[Toast 16,150]

Meh.  Not being a teenager any more, I shall just wear more clothes.   And bung an extra duvet on.

[Deathray 2,940]

9 minutes ago, Toast said:

Meh.  Not being a teenager any more, I shall just wear more clothes.   And bung an extra duvet on.

 

You want to be careful! The very elderly are advised to take the most care in these sort of set-ups. 

[charon 4,943]

Lolol. Unseasonably warm today.

 

Looking to next Monday on Witchfinder, which I find to be most accurate, its warm during the night and 0/-1° during the day.

Slightly different to yours.

 

Anything more than a 3 day cast is usually phoey.

 

Heard a bit of a new computer model which hoped to get a 4 day accuracy one, and they hoped to get an extra days accuracy added every decade or so......

[Toast 16,150]

1 hour ago, Deathray said:

 

You want to be careful! The very elderly are advised to take the most care in these sort of set-ups. 

Probably because the older you get, the less you give a fuck.

[msc 18,479]

Dunno. Last freeze, I phoned up my Aunt (oldest living relative) to see how she was coping. 90 now.

 

Her response? "Freezer's stocked up, enough tins of food to last a fortnight, and I've got the heating on full blast.."

 

Smarter than most of us, imo.

[charon 4,943]

Stupid boot.

 

Why stock up the freezer in an Ice Age?

 

Last big one in 2010/11, used the bath to store meat etc.

[Joey Russ 7,228]

There is currently freezing rain from where I’m at in the US. A lot of people are able to check out at school early because of the hazards. However, I personally don’t expect to be check out for a while yet...

[Joey Russ 7,228]

Well, there’s no school tomorrow. Tbh, I’m not sure whether I should feel relieved or annoyed. On the one hand, I am able to sleep in. I also get to focus on the school I need to work on instead of only being able to work during certain classes. And it gives me some time to research my cup team (like gcreptile and Death Impends, the research I have done this time comes up with almost nothing). On the negative side, however, the only way I am able to communicate almost all my teachers is email, and that could take a while for them to respond, especially since I don’t check my email that often. It also means that I can’t do any socializing either, since I don’t have a lot of friends due to personal issues (along with the anxiety I have, there’s also some other personal issues that I don’t feel ready to mention yet since I believe I would be mocked if I said them) and the ones I do have live far away, which sucks since there’s ice on the roads... 

[Joey Russ 7,228]

Well, school just got cancelled for tomorrow as well. The annoying thing is that the event that I am helping run on Friday might not happen this year...

[themaninblack 2,112]

Those weather charts, DR are a Peter Saville album cover in the making...

[Deathray 2,940]

13 hours ago, themaninblack said:

Those weather charts, DR are a Peter Saville album cover in the making...

 

Had to google him, but I can certainly see why you could see that. 

 

Not much change and all change in many ways at this point. You may have seen the big weather forecasting companies saying that there is going to be cold air coming in next week as explained above. They are also hinting the chance of snow "but it's difficult to predict at this point exactly how much, where and when". What they actually mean is completely impossible to predict due to the small size of the UK and resulting massive variations in weather as a result. The main focus is the possibility of a low pressure system hitting us once the cold air has hit. This would result in significant snowfall for much of the country, in addition to already significant snowfall in the east of the country from snow showers forming in the North Sea. We're looking at March 2013, however the snow would be drier and therefore accumulate far quicker due to the extreme cold. 

 

Even charon might want to pay attention to this part - as the coldest uppers are now making their way in at 102-120 hours (Sunday-Monay)  - which is less than his 4 days of accuracy. Snowfall will be limited to the eastern side of the country to begin with but as even colder air makes way there's a strong possibility - being flirted with by many models - that low pressure systems could traverse the country bringing significant snowfall to pretty much anywhere - what people classify as significant will vary from place to place - but you're looking at upwards of half a foot. 

 

One possibility - and the most favoured at present by models is that we will take a direct hit from the coldest air as it traverses western Europe, resulting in temperatures well below average for the time of year; and significant snow. Not to alarm anyone but a possibility - and it's just a possibility - shown by this mornings run for Wednesday. 

 

As a guide to how extreme this could be - and note at this point we're talking worst case scenario (or best case if like me you love snow) here's a snow depth chart for Tuesday from the ECM

To demonstrate this - in the short time we're looking at a bit of snowfall, not unusual for the UK; take this from Tuesday 1-3 inches of snow.

 

 

The ECM then models the low pressures hitting us by the end of the week and into early March, things get more interesting. Some of the admittedly more extreme examples from the last run are here:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

But on the other hand it will be "dry snow"; so nice and easy to dig your way out of.

 

Just in case you not aware those charts tend to underestimate snow depths for the synoptics they are showing. However the synoptics themselves have probably been overestimated in this instance, thankfully.

[Toast 16,150]

Snow is fine if we get lots and it continues for a long time, because we get into the routine of it.

If it's just a one-off I prefer it to look pretty for a day or two and then disappear quickly.

[charon 4,943]

Thought its a balmy +5° or so in Siberia most of February deathers?

 

I'd take that, be an improvement.

[msc 18,479]

Weather was about 3 degrees at night most this week, but expected to become Four,  Tops, by weekend.