October 2008 snow in south England - Part 1

Introduction
To see snow falling in England during October is unusual. To see snow falling in southern England during October is extremely unusual.  To see snow falling and accumulating in southern England during October is extraordinary.  To see snow falling and settling in central London during October is almost unheard of!

Background
On 28th October 2008 very cold air of arctic origin was covering the whole of the UK bringing unseasonably cold weather. Computer forecasting models had for close to a week been suggesting this development, and some were indicating that a band of precipitation would sink south across the country and be embedded in very cold air. I had been watching this for several days and highlighted the possibility of snow falling in parts of England as early as Wednesday 22nd October on this site. Ridiculous as it may have seemed, I was confident the computer models were onto something. There were 3 reasons for this:
1) The air to the north of the UK had been colder than normal for this time of year meaning that if a northerly air stream did develop it would be colder than is usually the case
2) The forecasting models were suggesting such cold air that there was some scope for it to be milder than expected still be cold enough for snow
3) Consistent output. Every day a number of computer forecasting models are run in different countries and often there is inconsistency in the guidance they are offering and the forecaster has to make a decision on the most likely outcome. This time there was a high degree of consistency between the different models.

The day itself
During Tuesday 28th the band of precipitation did develop and moved southwards to affect large parts of the Midlands and the home counties in particular. The precipitation started off as rain, but this quickly changed to snow in many places and started to settle. The area of rain, sleet and snow became very slow moving, with areas just north of London in the Chilterns stuck right under it for several hours. Many places had several cms of snow, and even central London was covered. As the skies cleared during the night temperatures fell well below 0C freezing the snow. Wednesday brought a bitterly cold, but sunny day for much of southern and central England, and amazingly the snow lingered all day in places.
In my view this is one of the 10 most remarkable weather events that I have witnessed in the UK. Here are a few picture to help remember what is now already weather history.

In images



Heavy snow falling in the Chilterns


Several cms of snow quickly accumulated


Several cms of snow quickly accumulated

See part 2 for more images. Issued 29/10/2008 © Brian Gaze