Snow watch!

[OhYouBadBadKitten]

I know it will seem quite crackers to start this when the weekend has been so lovely, but we are starting to get some model consistency on GFS for the potential for snow Friday night into Saturday as a northerly plunge looks set to take place.

Primary risk areas are obviously for hillier parts of Scotland and also Wales, but higher ground in the south and south east including over dartmoor and down the east coast may also see some sleet or wet snow.

Iwantedthatname19 ~ I think OYBBK's said that those symbols are automated, so they come straight from whatever model/s those people use but without any/much 'human thoughts' put into them. The bit you really need on the metoffice website, is underneath ~ the written bit for your region ~ that gives a more detailed forecast.

oogle ~ if you're right on the coast, probably rain/might be sleet.

whywontthey ~ for the London area, I think it depends on what the temperatures do as to what falls. At the moment, it looks like the band of rain gets to the London area when temperatures are marginal, so if those fall/other conditions are right, you might get some snow.

Well, the Met Office forecast for London now seems to be sleet/snow with rain either side of it. That's not stopping the Evening Standard from reporting a coming 'whiteout" over London!

It is worth noting that GFS is much keener on persistent snow to low levels even in the south this evening than the met office. Because of this, I'd bear any snow ramping in mind that you may see on twitter from people who are over reliant on one model.

Thank you Gloria and Badkitten for all your wisdom.

The Met Office has downgraded us to an evening of sleet, instead of the beautiful blizzard they'd been promising. I'm taking the news badly. I probably ought to step away from the weather forecasts for a while!

(South Oxfordshire, here.)

tapdancingmum, who is the weather chap you follow?

Gloria is right - there is no human input that goes into those little symbols and they are from one computer model only. Forecasters examine not only one model, but they look at multiple runs from those models to see whether the forecast is likely to be accurate and if not, what the variations might be.

OYBBK do you think we’ll get any in Merseyside/Cheshire? DD has to get from Wirral to Nantwich tonight (and I need to get to Runcorn and back 😕)

Squirrel, if it doesn't happen tonight, then perhaps thursday evening for you.

Remember things could change back to snow. Just like we saw a week or so ago, heavy rain turned to snow unexpectedly and caught forecasters out. This can happen if precipitation is heavy enough and if it falls through dry air - causing something known as evaporative cooling (as moisture evaporates it cools down)

Susie you may see some light snow showers (as well as sleet) mid to late evening (and perhaps in to tomorrow) It's separate really from this main slush band.

Thanks Gloria! The written met forecast doesn't seem to be predicting too much lying snow on Wednesday - though I see that what there is will melt slowly because of the cold.

So I'm hoping that it will mean delayed rather than non-existent trains in London/SE!

yes OYBBK, I'd noticed it (whatever it turns out to be!) seems to have been brought forward from early tomorrow morning to this evening. Still going to be checking from time to time. I didn't know about gfs - good to double-check sources!

@squirrel it's Manor Estates Groundcare. Between him, @Gloria and @OYBBK I have the correct weather at my fingertips 😀 They are all amazing and I take my hat off to them as I wouldn't know where to start.

OYBBK - What's Stafford looking like for today and the next few days?!? I travel a fair bit with work... is it going to be hellish for this area of not too bad?!?

OYBBK, thanks. 🙂 I promise that I'm a sane and rational adult in most other areas of my life!

tapdancingmum, thank you! I'll go and have a look.

PAtothegruesometwosom (hope you don't mind me answering)
Today ~ rain/sleet to start with, chance of snow perhaps with some settling later.
Tomorrow ~ sunny but chilly
Thursday daytime ~ sunny/chilly but perhaps something more of a snow event occuring Thursday night. One to watch there.
Friday ~ perhaps the odd wintry shower but depending on snow amounts after Thursday night, there might be issues with travel that day.

Thats a good summary :)

Schools are starting to close early today. My weatherman hasn't sent his children to school today!! That tells you something.

Ooo, I'm glad a got the summary right, OYBBK!

That's an interesting move on the part of schools, tapdancingmum. I think the system is coming in a bit quicker than forecast originally and while it could go either way, no one wants children stuck at school if it all turns to snow and there's a lot of it.

Updated warnings, including for Thursday and Friday for most of England and Wales.

Urgh. Yet again our forecast snow in East Surrey has pretty much all turned to rain :( I think it was nicer back when we didn't get the weather forecast much (just at the 6 oclock news) so we didn't get pointlessly excited then disappointed. Poor DS loves snow and he rarely gets to see it.

The warnings are ermm, well there's quite a lot of them now. It's easy to get fooled by them when you see massive swathes of yellow. The devil is in the warnings matrix grid.

So you see in the picture, that the SE for instance only has a low probability of this event producing disruptive snow. Probability and potential impact are two distinct different things.

unfortunately, once again the met office site is creaking under the strain. It's very frustrating that it doesn't have the server capacity to host the increase of interest during winter weather.

South Surrey here and we’re mostly forecast rain now too. There’s quite a lot of it though, so if it did suddenly turn to snow it could be quite interesting.

Oh dear, that weather warning says possible snow in London on Saturday. That’s the one day I really don’t want it!

No snow in West Yorkshire now. Showing clear and just rain. Ahh well :(

Met Eireann has issued a snow/ice warning for the entire country from today until SATURDAY!!! Not that it looks like we'll get much most of that time - perhaps on higher ground or further west.

That said, the Dublin Mountains we can see from the office window do have an "icing sugar" sprinkling on them at the top.

But it is wet and feels much warmer today than yesterday (there was significant wind chill and clear skies). OK, actually, it WAS wet, now mostly bright skies again, and there is wind picking up again so I assume the real feel will be significantly lower than air temps.

I need to bring DD across the city in rush hour in the morning, the joys, and if anything does fall, part of the route is quite steep (but at least it's very busy so likely to be gritted well).

DH is in the UK again today (I didn't hear where this time - just the 4am "morning" grunt as he left), but back tonight. He has to get to Galway early on Thursday, so might end up going tomorrow afternoon instead if the forecast is dicey.

Mostly, I feel sorry for the Scouts, as they are doing their annual "Commando Course" inter-watch competition on Saturday in the Wicklow mountains (on the lake where the Vikings was filmed - spectacular but bleak!) - covered in mud and getting into wet ditches as part of a pretty strenuous assault course.

Sorry, I meant to add that it was 6 degrees at 10pm last night when I was coming home, and although down to 1.5 degrees this morning, didn't feel nearly as bitter.

By the time I was getting my train at 9am, it was up to 4 degrees.

It's now 5 degrees, and 15 knots of wind (F4).

The commando course sounds hideous!!!

Just rain here so far (Somerset/Dorset border) but the temperature has dropped. 90% chance of heavy snow on Thursday evening apparently!