I’ll get my two penn’orth in here!  When we talk about regions, maybe we forget the small pockets with microclimates.  

I’ve had no settling snow at all this winter, just the odd flurry on two occasions!  This often happens and I put it down to being just sheltered from the West by the Pennines and sitting in a small river valley!  We seem to have our own microclimate and it’s often the case that snow can be 5 miles away but it rains here, although we do get the best of the thunder storms in summer.

If snow comes in from the East coast, there’s nothing to stop it as it crosses the flatlands of Lincolnshire, so we do OK. In 2010, a streamer came up the Humber and gave us the best snow dumping ever.  It was quite a narrow band, so there was much less five mile up and down the road. Again, I suspect the Pennines slowed it down in our favour!  

If I could just correct you there, I don't actually live in Leith although I was born, bred and brought there (which is one of the main reasons why I am such an avid Hibs fan, although I won't go into that here). These days though, I live further along the coast from there in the NW of Edinburgh (Leith on the other hand, is more towards the NE of Edinburgh). Having said that though, I do still suffer as much from a lack of snow as those people who live in Leith since I am still just about as close to the coast.

Furthermore and if my memory serves me right, I seem to be the only TWO member from this northern half of the city since you along with the rest of the Edinburgh contingent on this forum (which also includes Jerry and pdiddy) also live in those higher parts to the south where there is more snow on average.

Of course, it's not just at this time of the year that we suffer because towards the late spring in particular and the summer, we then suffer quite a lot from that east coast haar whenever we get at an easterly wind at that time of the year, or even just a local sea breeze which in this part of the world, tends to be from the ENE.

Even if we don't get the east coast haar at those times, we still tend to suffer from cooler temperatures under those conditions. That even came to the fore on one day during last summer when the temperature during that morning had got to 28°C only for that local sea breeze to set in and thus, resulting in the temperatures refusing to rise any further during that day. That in turn, had scuppered our chances of possibly getting a maximum temperature of over 30°C which we had at one point in time, had looked set to get.

At the same time as we get that east coast haar and/or cooler temperature, places not all that much further inland (and possibly even in the south of Edinburgh) can then be sunny (and much sunnier than here if we have that low cloud and/or haar) and baking hot.

The family and I moved from Romsey Hants in 1969 to Frome where most of my Fathers work was based, it was known that the South West was renowned for it's snowy winters, during the 70's and early 80's that was certainly the case, but now we very rarely see prolonged snow like back then.

They are very detailed considering the number of stations available. They must be based on a number of assumptions.

A couple of years ago in the summer, we drove back from down south, it was about 24C on the border near Gretna and the sky was blue the whole way until we got to about Carlops on the A702. The mist from there on in just got denser and denser until in Edinburgh it was pretty much fog and the temperature was 12C :-C - it was like something out of HP Lovecraft

Hi Gary 🙂 - enjoy! 

Yes it was great here on Wednesday. A near perfect streamer off the Irish Sea, WNW’ly wind. 

Ideally we’d get a streamer like that on and off for over a week, leading to over a foot of snow. 

It’s possible from the east, but unfortunately not very from the west ;) 

Law of averages Aberdeen has some notably snowy winters in the early 00s including the snow fest of 2000/01 and even the 1990s had some notable snowfalls, and the 80s winters were up there with the 50s and 60s for snow. Curiously nobody ever mentions the 70s in snow discussions so wondering if that was a relatively snowless period in the NE? 

I sometimes wonder though whether or not, richardabdn lives in the part of Aberdeen which gets the least amount of snow with doctormog being in a part of Aberdeen which does rather better in that respect. The reason why I mention that is because I have often compared the reports from both of these members on various threads on this forum and from there, there has been many times when these reports have been so different that it can be hard to believe that they actually both in the same city. On those occasions, the only which is then consistent is the fact that it is always Richard who takes the more pessimistic view of things.

No, I live right on the western outskirts which is the snowiest part. I dread to think how awful the snow stats have been for more coastal parts of the city in recent years. 

Even the last time we had decent snow here in January 2013 there was 11cm lying one day yet a mile further east, on the other side of Anderson Drive, nothing at all.

The 70s had a normal mix of winters like the 80s and 2000s. It's just the 90s and this decade post 2010 that have been very poor for snow although at least in the 90s, while there were fewer snowfalls, what we did get was worth getting unlike the frequent 2cm specials that this decade has been renowned for.

Snow lying days for Dyce in the 70s:

1970: 37

1971: 11

1972: 6

1973: 25

1974: 5

1975: 10

1976: 27

1977: 22

1978: 24

1979: 34