Badkittens and Gloria Will it snow at Christmas Thread

[OhYouBadBadKitten]

Just realised it's the 1st December!

It's a just for fun thread at this point as it's going to be highly inaccurate until we get much closer to the date.

Just a reminder that I'm only an amateur. I do this as a hobby. Please don't rely on my forecasts for decisions that matter - use the met office for those.

Also, I'm on my phone today without access to weather models, so it's a bit of a teaser start to the thread

Today's Outlook from the Metoffice...

UK Outlook for Wednesday 12 Dec 2018 to Friday 21 Dec 2018:

Many will be cloudy through Wednesday with rain in the west moving erratically eastwards, although some eastern areas will stay dry. Windy with the rain, but perhaps brightening up in the west later. Through the remainder of this period there is a fine balance between colder air to the east and milder air in the west. Overall, it is likely to be changeable with showers or longer spells of rain at times, with the threat of snow over high ground. Northern and some eastern areas may remain drier with the best of the clearer weather, leading to some overnight frost. Overall, temperatures are likely to be near to or slightly below average, but some southern areas may be slightly above normal at times.

UK Outlook for Saturday 22 Dec 2018 to Saturday 5 Jan 2019:
The early part of this period, which includes Christmas, is looking fairly changeable with showers or longer spells of rain, possibly wintry over higher ground. The best of any settled and drier conditions will probably be across northern parts of the country during this period, where overnight frosts are likely. However, later in the month and into the New Year, there is the chance of seeing high pressure becoming established close to the UK. This will bring more settled conditions, although there remains some uncertainty, with an unsettled and westerly airflow equally as likely into the New Year. Temperatures overall look rather mixed, but on the whole generally near normal.

A wise move, Hamish, it's looking a little chilly this week!

Some thoughts on this week here and an updated winter forecast here.

Christmas Eve has made it on to the GFS charts

GFS says:

Christmas eve
Wet unless you are on higher ground in Scotland. Mild in the SE, chilly in the north. Fairly windy.

9994 green bottles

and ds has proclaimed that we are not getting snow this year. (winter)

but that was probably to annoy dd who hoped for snow.

not another beast from the east please

Interesting blog entry here about the chances of festive weather as we head towards Christmas/New Year.

9993 green bottles

Interesting chart this morning from GFS... Remember it will change. It's far far too early to say that these are the scenarios that will play out, but at the moment:

Christmas Eve Mild in the south, temps in low single digits further north and in Scotland. Snow in Scotland. Basically cold westerlies.

Christmas Day Risk of snow spreads across northern England. Maybe risk spreading to the midlands and northern east anglia!!! In the south still mild and potentially fairly wet and windy.

Looking at the ensembles, there's no real trend yet, maybe a gentle drift down in temperature. An interesting little sharp dip showing on Christmas day that might indicate something.... For those not familiar with ensembles - they are collection of model runs each with a slightly different starting position (a perturbation) that can taken together indicate how stable the forecast is likely to be and can indicate general trends.

Do not get excited by this (as it's too far ahead) ~ snow risk for Christmas Day!

Ah, I see OYBBK got in there first

What is especially interesting about that discussion Gloria is that I've seen quite a few mutterings about another SSW.

We shall see!!

9992 Green bottles
Found you
I don't mind if it doesn't snow, but it's lovely to speculate

OYBBK ~ I've 'heard mutterings' too. There's a pretty knowledgeable poster on Netweather who correctly predicted what last winter was going to be like and I've just read a post by him, that he thinks after Christmas/into the New Year will be when it turns really cold. Whether this is down to an SSW is another matter but his view seems to be that something colder is coming around that time....

A little snow risk map for the 23rd December. Once again, do not get excited

9991 Green bottles

I can't remember Gloria - last winter when did they start muttering about SSW? I think it was a few weeks later than this?

I've just been through the SSW thread for last winter on Netweather (it runs to 51 pages ) but it was 11th February. I didn't realise it was that late that it happened, I thought it was earlier in the year but this confirms it (and I wish I'd found that article before going through most of that Netweather thread!)

That's dedication for you!!! It was talked about for quite a while before hand. I'll have to have a peruse.

9990 green bottles hanging on the wall...

thanks.

ok, well, this is fascinating! The models aren't settling down yet, the previous model run to this showed a different scenario from the one below.

GFS shows a high pressure to our west, giving us a northerly flow and therefore cold temperatures with some interesting potential.

The weekend before (included as I think a lot of travel will take place) A cold NW flow brings some snow showers over higher northern ground, murky and damp cold elsewhere.

Christmas Eve GFS still shows the potential for wide spread snow over the north west, much of Wales and the west midlands. Clearing rapidly through the day. Perhaps rain elsewhere. Remember snow is very hard to forecast and temps look marginal.

Christmas day Cold damp and murky under northerlies.

Boxing day similar to Christmas day.

Given the variability of the models I'd suggest the above is a knife edge situation. We could go quite cold or it could stay fairly mild. Looking at the ensembles the latest run was a cold outlier - that means that most model runs were rather milder than today's output.

Next update tomorrow am

oh and 9989 green bottles....

9988 green bottles...

for the first time in quite a while we are travelling on Christmas day and boxing day. (we could delay coming back, but santa is a bit pissed off at packing stockings and delivering somewhere else and santa wants to avoid that this year) I will watch carefully.

There's some debate over whether there might be the chance of something wintry from mid to the end of this week, as fronts attempt to come in from the west and they hit the cold air. I don't think it'll come to much ~ probably more likely in the North/over high ground but perhaps the odd flake and lower levels sort of thing.

TheWeatherOutlook's thoughts on it are here.

Netweather's thoughts on this week as well.

Oh and 9987 Green Bottles...

brrr, cold Thursday night by the look of it.

9986 green bottles... (can they be hot water botttles please?)

I get so focused on doing the Christmas forecasts at this point that often the day to day weather is a bit of surprise for me

Hmm promising... a real west east divide. I love anything except constant rain. Mind you the reservoirs need it

9985 green bottles.