Penellype's Weather Channel

[Penellype]

The Met Office have issues a red warning of snow for the central belt of Scotland. Really nasty conditions out there in places - stay safe!

Multiple yellow and amber warnings (snow, ice, wind) in other areas - keep checking your area as these keep changing. Freezing rain may become an additional severe hazard as the weather starts to warm up later in the week, particularly in the south (on current forecasts).


https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/public/weather/warnings

[1Bee]

It's quite rare for us to have snow here...

[Penellype]

Nice icicles

[Penellype]

Another red warning has been issued for parts of the south west from 3pm today until 2am tomorrow for blizzards, wind and freezing rain. Keep checking for updates wherever you live as this really is seriously bad weather.

https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/public/weather/warnings

There is also a red warning for the whole of the Republic of Ireland:

http://www.met.ie/nationalwarnings/default.asp

Stay safe.

[burnie]

We still have very strong winds which has blown most of the snow away, also covering everywhere with soil off the fields, our windows are filthy.

[mrswadders]

We're essentially cut off! Lane outside the house in-passable and main road closest closed because of snow,just as well pantry and freezers full!

[Lumpy]

The wind is brutal.

Made cheese, onion and basil breads plus peanut butter cookies for us and several neighbours - they are brewing soup and stews for everyone as I type.

Stay safe people.

[Penellype]

According to the Met Office daily weather extremes, yesterday saw the lowest March daytime maximum temperature on record for the UK, with -5.2C at Tredegar, Blaenau Gwent in Wales. The previous record was -4.6C at Cassley, Sutherland on 2nd March 2001, illustrating just how unusual this weather has been.

Some very nasty conditions out there this morning, very cold with gale force winds, snow/blizzards and some freezing rain reported in the south. Plenty of warnings still in force.

Temperatures will lift slowly, starting in the south, but Scotland and northern England may stay cold for some time. More snow is likely in places during the transition to milder air and snow showers are likely to continue over Scotland and north east England. Flooding may become an issue where large quantities of snow thaws. This is not a transition to spring weather - even after it has warmed up it will still be colder than average for early March, and a return to colder weather (although not as bad as this) and some snow is possible later next week.

The reason for the continuing cold conditions is not hard to see from this chart for Wednesday:



The thick black line denoting the rough position of the jet stream is way to our south, with the warmer air to the south of it. The flabby low pressure system over us is wandering about aimlessly with nowhere to go as the westerly flow is very weak (no purple colours on the map at all). If (as seems to be the general thinking) this low drifts east (a ridge is starting to poke up towards Greenland off the east coast of America), it will pull the wind into the north and it will get colder again, although I stress it is unlikely that we will return to the sort of conditions we have seen over the past few days.

Basically, although things are set to improve, spring still looks a long way off.

Update - the Met Office have confirmed the lowest recorded daily max temperature yesterday as -4.7C at Tredegar, Wales. the difference is one of timing - the previous reports were for the maximum between 6am and 6pm, but apparently the data is logged from 6am to 6am the following day, and the temperature rose over night. Still a record, but not by such a large margin.

[mrswadders]

Managed to get out today before the next lot of snow,main road clear. Got essential provisions for elderly neighbours and some more wine as our supplies are diminishing!!!!

[Penellype]

As things warm up (away from Scotland, which remains cold for now), warm air is moving over snow and frozen ground and as if we haven't enough to contend with, this is a recipe for fog. The more snow you have and the colder the ground the denser the fog will be, and it could be freezing fog depending on the temperature.

This is unfortunately the result of the somewhat milder temperatures. Fog should become less widespread as the ground warms up and the snow melts.

Still some warnings for ice around for the remainder of the weekend, and snow for Scotland.

[Penellype]

Time for an update.

Despite a lovely day in many places today, there is a yellow warning of snow for tomorrow morning for central parts of England and much of Wales. https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/public/...ate=2018-03-08

Basically we remain in a very strange weather pattern for the foreseeable future.

This is tomorrow's chart from the GFS model (all models are similar):



Pressure remains fairly high over Greenland, and there is a slight ridge over eastern Europe. The jet stream is way to the south and low pressure is wobbling about over the top of us with really nowhere to go. This means that there will be bands of rain or showers and some brighter spells in between, with fluctuations in temperature depending on the position of the low, which determines the direction of the wind. At times the wind will be from the north or have an easterly component and this could make it quite cold (although nowhere near as cold as last week).

Just how "stuck" this weather pattern appears to be can be seen by comparing the above chart with the one for 10 days time:



This is almost identical, although at this point the low has deepened somewhat and wobbled to the west a bit, drawing the air up from the south. The highs over Greenland and Europe are in similar positions and the jet stream is still well to the south. Eventually something will happen to kick us out of this situation, but I think the models are struggling with it.

Something extremely bizarre is going on with the GFS ensemble charts. I have been waiting for a decent one to post, but at the moment they all look like this:



If you ignore all the strange vertical lines you can see that the general trend is now for the upper air temperatures to be a bit warmer than average - this is a change, but why it has changed is not altogether clear, because we are still on the cold side of the jet stream. It does at least imply that we are not going to return to the level of cold that we saw last week, but cold snaps and snow cannot be ruled out as long as the jet stream is so far to the south of us.

Hopefully the ensemble charts will return to normal soon - I am assuming that they don't really mean that we are expecting an infinite amount of rain on 10th March!

[geepee]

Time for an update.

Despite a lovely day in many places today, there is a yellow warning of snow for tomorrow morning for central parts of England and much of Wales. https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/public/...ate=2018-03-08

Basically we remain in a very strange weather pattern for the foreseeable future.

This is tomorrow's chart from the GFS model (all models are similar):

[ATTACH=CONFIG]78877[/ATTACH]

Pressure remains fairly high over Greenland, and there is a slight ridge over eastern Europe. The jet stream is way to the south and low pressure is wobbling about over the top of us with really nowhere to go. This means that there will be bands of rain or showers and some brighter spells in between, with fluctuations in temperature depending on the position of the low, which determines the direction of the wind. At times the wind will be from the north or have an easterly component and this could make it quite cold (although nowhere near as cold as last week).

Just how "stuck" this weather pattern appears to be can be seen by comparing the above chart with the one for 10 days time:

[ATTACH=CONFIG]78878[/ATTACH]

This is almost identical, although at this point the low has deepened somewhat and wobbled to the west a bit, drawing the air up from the south. The highs over Greenland and Europe are in similar positions and the jet stream is still well to the south. Eventually something will happen to kick us out of this situation, but I think the models are struggling with it.

Something extremely bizarre is going on with the GFS ensemble charts. I have been waiting for a decent one to post, but at the moment they all look like this:

[ATTACH=CONFIG]78879[/ATTACH]

If you ignore all the strange vertical lines you can see that the general trend is now for the upper air temperatures to be a bit warmer than average - this is a change, but why it has changed is not altogether clear, because we are still on the cold side of the jet stream. It does at least imply that we are not going to return to the level of cold that we saw last week, but cold snaps and snow cannot be ruled out as long as the jet stream is so far to the south of us.

Hopefully the ensemble charts will return to normal soon - I am assuming that they don't really mean that we are expecting an infinite amount of rain on 10th March!

[All good stuff/info ,as always..
What significance your Ref 10th March..??

[Penellype]

[All good stuff/info ,as always..
What significance your Ref 10th March..??

10th March is the date on the ensemble chart where some of the lines go off the scale (white line goes vertical). Taken literally that would mean an infinite amount of rain. The white average temperature line gets lost in the mess as well.

Note:
"...snow cannot be ruled out as long as the jet stream is so far to the south of us."

This was what I woke up to this morning:



Still snowing now, although it is very wet, sticky stuff that looks like it could soon turn to rain.

[Penellype]

Much milder over the weekend with little chance of frost apart from high ground and Scotland. Probably a good time to get started with hardening off any indoor grown but hardy veg, like peas, onions etc. There may be cold weather later (this is uncertain) so it definitely isn't time to plant out anything that is not frost hardy.

[Penellype]

The models are looking increasingly ominous for the end of March, although this is still a long way off. The ensemble chart (which has thankfully returned to normal) shows increasing numbers of members forecasting really quite cold upper air temperatures, particularly after 21st:



In the meantime the influence of low pressure remains, with an often warm and wet southerly or south westerly flow, which could also bring some fog in places. The above chart is for York - expect more in the way of rain if you are in the south or west.

There are 2 possible ways it could turn much colder. The first is shown by the GFS operational run (thick green line on the above chart, one of the coldest members):



Here a ridge has built in the atlantic heading towards Greenland, which turns the wind into the north or north east. The -10 isotherm is over the east and south east of the country:



This is not quite as cold as the last cold spell, but it is pretty cold for late March, and not good news at all. There would be a fair amount of snow with this too.

The other possibility is shown by the ECMWF model:



Here high pressure is buliding over Scandinavia and the wind is trying to go round to the east. This is what happened last time. In this particular run of the ECM it doesn't quite happen and the next day the very cold air is diverted into southern Europe:



However it would not take much of an adjustment to send that cold air this way.

This is a long way off (although the ECM solution is only a week away) but it wants watching as the models got the cold spot on with plenty of warning last time.

It might be pleasantly warm this weekend, but winter may not have finished with us yet.