Winter Weather outlook

[OhYouBadBadKitten]

Disclaimer: I'm only a weather enthusiast, not a professional meterologist. Take anything I say with a good pinch of salt, I do get things wrong sometimes!

In a normal year I wouldn't dream of starting a winter weather outlook thread at the beginning of September. This year there is a great deal of anxiety and interest about what the weather may hold for us.

Outlooks at this point can only ever be rough hand waving exercises, taking into consideration lots of factors and are likely to be inaccurate. I've been doing a lot of thinking and research over the last couple of weeks as to what might happen this winter. At this point the honest answer is: I haven't a scooby! (this might make this thread a bit pointless at this time!)

Looking at various long term models, solutions range from wet, mild and stormy, to cold and blocked or cold and snowy! I have an instinct that we are more likely to end up with a milder, dry scenario, with some colder incursions at times, but that is instinct and not based on anything quantifiable.

For someone who can talk through the various factors at depth, watch Gavin's winter outlook videos on Youtube.

I live on a cul de sac which is on the face of it very friendly, whatsapp group since covid etc.

I suggested today next time it snows maybe we could (if able) clear the snow on our pavements in front of each house. It's sooooo slippery and we also have several older neighbours.

Tumbleweed. Pretty depressing tbh.

In ye olden days this was just what you did. Everyone did their own front and ‘their’ bit of pavement. Joint effort to keep the road clear. Elderly neighbours got their bits done.

I was the only one this week. And back in the day, I’d have been nearly elderly enough to have mine done for me!

I did my elderly neighbours drive (she's fab) despite being ill (and posting on street whatsapp that morning as struggling to find penicillin). It's depressing.

Friend lived in Minnesota. There you were expected to clear up snow ice in front of your home. It was a fineable offence if you didn't. OH has taken salt and grit out of the yellow bin at the top of our cul de sac and done elderly neighbours paths and pavements. I mentioned it on Facebook and was howled down rudely because it's for roads and nothing else. Nasty selfish folks

@colouringindoors Proves my point really Only matters when its Covid

Incredibly cold out there this morning.

-8.5C where I am.

The only one I know is WeatherQuest weatherquest.co.uk/snowdepth/map who rely on reports from people and feeds back reports from the past 24 hours. I don't seem to be able to find a way of going back further in time.

-6.6C here (Leicester) this morning. I'm looking forward to the slightly warmer few days that's coming at the weekend - it'll be almost be like a heatwave after all this!

Another couple of very cold days to come, followed by a warm up at the weekend. Some areas will feel a little warmer on Saturday, all by Sunday when wet and windy weather sweeps in. It may be heralded by some transient snow or sleet before turning to rain. I'm not certain about northern Scotland to be honest and how much would turn to rain. Take care as it arrives and falls onto icy surfaces.

Into next week temperatures dip some, but generally looks to be staying close to average in the south and fairly chilly in northern England, cold in northern Scotland. Chance of hill snow in northern England and Scotland at times through the week. Perhaps over hilly areas of North Wales too.

According to that snow depth map, the only place in the UK with snow is the south east.

Definitely snow in North East Scotland. Can see it on the snowgate cameras.

www.snowgatecameras.co.uk

As I said, it relies on user reports and I think those tend to be biased towards East Anglia because of where the company is based - therefore have social media outreach to.

If you have snow lying, please do input it into the map, it will make it more useful.

The met office do not record lying snow depths as a whole across its network.

This shows current temperatures: www.realweather.co.uk/temps.php

I can confirm that west Oxfordshire is absolutely freezing this morning.

As I said, it relies on user reports

Yeah, it just made me laugh that the only snow was shown in that one area.

There doesn't seem to be anything for the spot I'm looking for. Thanks for trying. I did find one snow report for the same town and had a moment until I realised it was 'same spot name', Canada.

It's like UKSnowmap which shows where it is currently snowing. As it is user gathered information it tends to only show densely populated areas.

Metcheck I think has a model for accumulated snow but I would wonder how accurate that is.

It's fascinating how quickly the forecasts change. Comparing a couple of Apps, The Weather Channel has seemed to be a lot more accurate than the Met office over the past year. Is it one you know @OhYouBadBadKitten and do you know what modelling systems they are using?

Did get to -9 and was still that at 8sm when I had to de-ice the car

Any thoughts on the weather at the weekend for Cheshire @OhYouBadBadKitten? We've just got a weather warning and the local paper has attached a snowmageddon warning to it!

Sunday looks temporarily quite awful. Warnings are out now for that ice risk and transient snow I mentioned
www.metoffice.gov.uk/weather/warnings-and-advice/uk-warnings#?date=2022-12-18

I'm afraid I don't know how the Weather Channel produce their app forecasts I'm afraid. I sometimes use the met office app - mostly for their warnings and just to confirm I'm on the right sort of track with my thoughts. But generally I read the words rather than using the little symbols (meteogram), especially in showery situations. Those apps are much much better for frontal rain, when the only question tends to be around timings, rather than whether something will happen or not.

For my rainfall radar on the go, I use either netweather or rain today.

If it's possibly going to be thunderstormy and I'm out in the open I'll also turn on a lightning alert app, so I can get to a safer location if anything looks to be approaching. That might be overkill for many!

This thread is getting pretty long and unwieldy, so if it's not done by Christmas I'll start a fresh one then for Winter Part 2.