Since we have just entered into a brand new meteorological season, it is now time to get this thread up and running.

Going by the latest model output, it may well be the case that in meteorological terms, there will be far fewer moans in the coming weeks and far moan gloats and even Brian in his last video on YouTube had indicated that we might well be about to witness our coldest start to any winter since 2010 if that model output ends up being correct.

As we know though, that is always a very big "if", especially at this time of the year and of course, we always have to keep reminding ourselves about what happened last year when the models right up until around Christmas were going for some really cold weather ahead, only for that to be cancelled at the very last minute with the winter as a whole, being mild after that.

This year though, there is also another twist to the tale. I don't want to bring politics into this discussion as this isn;t the appropriate place for that. However, there is an ongoing cost of living crisis at the moment which means that even a lot of people who would normally be looking for a cold winter, and now so concerned about the resulting impact on their heating and energy costs that they are actually happy to forego any prospect of a cold winter for now, just in order to get by and that might also have an impact on how people moan or gloat about the situation as it unfolds.

However all of this pans out though, this is the very place to give your rants or gloats and just get whatever off your chest that you need to.

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Absolutely horrendous start to winter. So breathtakingly awful it makes the worst that we've had to endure over the past decade seem palatable by comparison 🤢

Horrifically mild, horrifically dull, horrifically wet. 3 days in and it hasn't dropped below a ludicrous 5.4C, it's been drizzling/raining constantly during the daylight hours under a suicide-inducing blanket of featureless muck that hasn't lifted since Wednesday 💩

It doesn't get any worse than this. The most rancid possible synoptics contuning the abject horror of autumn. In fact just like 2002 a catastrophically bad November has gone on to be followed by an even more repulsive start to December against all reasonable expectations. 

How much more of this filth can we be expected to take. This has gone on for three months with almost no break whatsoever. Just the first 13 days of October that brought anything close to acceptable. I'm struggling to recall when there was ever a more consistently dreadful period 🤮

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Yes, I can't stand this modern Easterly. 10 days now of thick grey clouds. At least in 1963 if it wasn't clear blue skies you had two foot of snow on the ground to provide some reflected light. For the photographers out there my camera is showing 1/100th sec at f8 and ISO 6400 pointing at a light to mid-tone object in my garden at noon ☹

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Yes, I can't stand this modern Easterly. 10 days now of thick grey clouds. At least in 1963 if it wasn't clear blue skies you had two foot of snow on the ground to provide some reflected light. For the photographers out there my camera is showing 1/100th sec at f8 and ISO 6400 pointing at a light to mid-tone object in my garden at noon ☹

Have you moved to Aberdeen? 😁

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Yes, I can't stand this modern Easterly. 10 days now of thick grey clouds. At least in 1963 if it wasn't clear blue skies you had two foot of snow on the ground to provide some reflected light. For the photographers out there my camera is showing 1/100th sec at f8 and ISO 6400 pointing at a light to mid-tone object in my garden at noon ☹

I'm pretty sure the winter of 1962/63 was a very dull one. I'm sure someone has the stats somewhere.

Easterlies are always dull affairs, snowy or otherwise. March 2013 was very cold & snowy and also exceptionally cloudy - I think we had under 100 hours that month!

It's northerlies that deliver sunshine. 

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Where on Earth is all of our cold weather suddenly disappearing to?😡

Last night was looking so rosy for a while as the temperature at Edinburgh Airport dropped to around -2°C by as early as 7pm yesterday evening. At that time, it was all looking so good for last night to then go down as our coldest night of the winter so far, and possibly even the coldest night of this year so far.

As we have gone into the early hours of this morning though, it has then clouded over which in itself, wouldn't be so bad if there was actually some snow falling out of those clouds. The radar map kept on showing light snow over here and yet, the actual stark reality of the situation is that absolutely nothing has been falling out of the sky here at ground level, and that it therefore remains as bone dry as usual (in other words, typical boring and uninteresting "Edinburgh" weather).😡

To make matters even worse, the temperatures have also jumped back up to above freezing, so there is already no chance of today being an ice day here 😡(I mentioned that here because possible ice days in parts of the country has been a big subject on another thread on this forum).

As at 5am GMT (05:00 UTC) the temperature at Edinburgh Gogarbank was up to around +1°C but it is even worse than that just to my north. At Leuchars on the East Neuk of Fife near St. Andrews, the temperature had gone up to around +3°C and at Strathallan Air Field near Auchterarder (which should at least be a lot colder as a result of being much further inland), the temperature had also gone up to around 3°C at that time.😡

Could there possibly be some less cold air around which has got into the mix, which none of the forecasts or model output actually picked up on?

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I'm pretty sure the winter of 1962/63 was a very dull one. I'm sure someone has the stats somewhere. Easterlies are always dull affairs, snowy or otherwise. March 2013 was very cold & snowy and also exceptionally cloudy - I think we had under 100 hours that month! It's northerlies that deliver sunshine.

I actually watched a live stream the other day with Aidan McGivern from the Met Office, and he said that 1962/63 was the sunniest winter on record. 
Couldn't quite believe it, but that is what he said.

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I actually watched a live stream the other day with Aidan McGivern from the Met Office, and he said that 1962/63 was the sunniest winter on record. 
Couldn't quite believe it, but that is what he said.

Data available here for a range of years and a range of variables including sunshine, but presented as eye-straining graphs. Might be useful to compare with this winter for a better-founded moan or otherwise.
https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/research/climate/maps-and-data/uk-temperature-rainfall-and-sunshine-time-series 

As for 1963, the graphs show a sunny December (very much so, perhaps enough to skew the statistics)  and January; but cloudy for February and (outside meteorological winter but still cold that year) March. This matches my recollection, which includes a brilliantly sunny week with skiing on powder snow in Scotland at New Year but cloudy in Cambridge later. There could well be an IMBY factor in people's memories, the synoptics suggesting a cloudier east and sunnier west

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What a poisonous, totally useless, dire and depressing sorry excuse for a cold spell this is. Just unbelievable.

Yesterdays snow quickly turned to vile slush under soul destroying grey skies with nothing but a few useless flurries to top it up. In the city centre it was raining 🤮

Windy all night meaning the temperature ludicrously failed to drop below freezing yet again and now I've woken up to more slate grey skies and sleety rain. Absolutley disgusting. Can't remember the last time I woke up to clear skies. Certainly wasn't during this grotesquely dull and depressing abomination of a December.

This is more like an easterly than a northerly. Utterly hideous. I thought the snowy spell at the start of December last year wasn't great but it was miles better than this which is just unbelievably bad.

One frost this month of -0.7C for a total of 2.6 hours below freezing. Even December 2015 did better than that and at least that awful month was able to produce dry days something which have been entirely absent from this horrifically grim December.

I truly detest winter now. It's just an unrelenting ordeal that can't end soon enough. Truly desperate stuff this dross masquerading as a northerly 😡🤢

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In West Sussex, we've got used to - and resigned to - Kent hogging all the snow on a NE-ly and only dribs and drabs gettingscross the county border. Now, for Sunday, just for a change, there's a disturbance coming in from the SW. So does Sussex get a bit of snow? Not on your life! 

The disturbance stays mid-Channel until it spots the Kentish coast, and promptly nips ashore to give the North Downs a good dump! So Kent gets snow from NE and SW and W Sussex is left out in the cold(?) TANJ!

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Data available here for a range of years and a range of variables including sunshine, but presented as eye-straining graphs. Might be useful to compare with this winter for a better-founded moan or otherwise.
https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/research/climate/maps-and-data/uk-temperature-rainfall-and-sunshine-time-series 

As for 1963, the graphs show a sunny December (very much so, perhaps enough to skew the statistics)  and January; but cloudy for February and (outside meteorological winter but still cold that year) March. This matches my recollection, which includes a brilliantly sunny week with skiing on powder snow in Scotland at New Year but cloudy in Cambridge later. There could well be an IMBY factor in people's memories, the synoptics suggesting a cloudier east and sunnier west

Thanks for that link David, the graph for the winter does seem to conform the sunniest on record statistic: https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/pub/data/weather/uk/climate/actualmonthly/16/Sunshine/UK.gif 

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The breakdown of this cold spell is going to fall into the 'utterly rubbish' bracket.

We've already risen from -1c at just after 12pm to +3c.

There's been a bit of melting on the fringes of snow patches where the sun reaches it.

Tomorrow we are due sleet and cold rain showers - a full day before the front that will bring back depressing mild, wet and windy dirge. This from a little feature moving south, which is initially wrapped in cold air but sucks in milder air by the time it reaches England.

Then the 'destroyer' front comes in on Sunday with possible a brief period of snow at best, then turning to rain. That's both days of the last weekend before Xmas written off for outdoor stuff.

When you look back, we got giddy about some cold temps and meagre levels of snow (away from Scotland and a few small areas in the SE). For just over a week.

Our climate is really sh*te.



 

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On the flipside, it's actually been a very decent cold spell here. Snow lying for a week, near enough 5 straight ice days and some bright winter sunshine at times. Can't really complain at that and I'm glad it's happened in December this time, instead of February/March when I want it to start warming up.

Looking ahead, I'm not really bothered that it's turning milder. A lot of the lying snow has turned into that nasty compacted, glazed ice now and could do with being shifted. Also the pipes to the washer in the garage have frozen, so that needs sorting. Overall though, definitely a memorable spell of weather.

After getting climatised to cold, 14°C on Monday will probably feel like a warm May afternoon!

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On the flipside, it's actually been a very decent cold spell here.

I gave it 7/10 in the other thread. I'm just narked because the breakdown is going to be another squib (and we lose Saturday as a useable outdoor day)


 

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On the flipside, it's actually been a very decent cold spell here. Snow lying for a week, near enough 5 straight ice days and some bright winter sunshine at times. Can't really complain at that and I'm glad it's happened in December this time, instead of February/March when I want it to start warming up.

Looking ahead, I'm not really bothered that it's turning milder. A lot of the lying snow has turned into that nasty compacted, glazed ice now and could do with being shifted. Also the pipes to the washer in the garage have frozen, so that needs sorting. Overall though, definitely a memorable spell of weather.

After getting climatised to cold, 14°C on Monday will probably feel like a warm May afternoon!

Agreed. There was 5cm snow which has lasted pretty much intact for a week and some sparkling clear & sunny winter days. Last night produced a min of -8.5C and the previous one -9.1C. That doesn't happen very often. Not up with the classics like the Beast or Dec 2010 of course but a lot more significant than your average bog standard winter cold spell. When snow has to go I much prefer it was swept away quickly with very mild conditions and rain, rather than a painful week long slow thaw, with attendant slushfest.

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The breakdown of this cold spell is going to fall into the 'utterly rubbish' bracket.

We've already risen from -1c at just after 12pm to +3c.

There's been a bit of melting on the fringes of snow patches where the sun reaches it.

Tomorrow we are due sleet and cold rain showers - a full day before the front that will bring back depressing mild, wet and windy dirge. This from a little feature moving south, which is initially wrapped in cold air but sucks in milder air by the time it reaches England.

Then the 'destroyer' front comes in on Sunday with possible a brief period of snow at best, then turning to rain. That's both days of the last weekend before Xmas written off for outdoor stuff.

When you look back, we got giddy about some cold temps and meagre levels of snow (away from Scotland and a few small areas in the SE). For just over a week.

Our climate is really sh*te.



 

Absolutely and will never invest a expensive weather station in this country anymore.  Just a simple Max and Min thermometer on standby for interesting heatwave or cold spell with snow.  Last used in July and August heatwaves and in winter Jan 21 when I recorded -10C on the snow surface for 2 nights in the row.   It now sitting inside the living room on the organizer as did not used it on this boring bone dry frosty spell because the are the same frost found in Spring as well.

Don't understand why we been told many times that cold dense air on surface are hard to shift but when mild air come in it easily push away, is the opposite way that mild are very difficult to shift it.  Good bye to this horrible bone dry spell and good riddance.

Last Saturday we only managed a partial dusting in what could have been a very promising streamer setup.

Last night I went to bed with a temp of -1.7 at midnight knowing we were due precipitation in the morning. Woke up at 8am to a temp of +1.8 and heavy sleet bouncing off the windows. 

Still pouring down with sleet now and a temp of 2.7. Could have had 4 inches of snow today if things weren’t against us yet again.

Not had more than 2 inches of lying snow here since BFTE part 2 in 2018. Very poor

Been a long time since we had a traditional snowy breakdown. Tomorrow will probably bring more heavy sleet. 

Shame to see a very notable cold spell go out like this.

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Last Saturday we only managed a partial dusting in what could have been a very promising streamer setup.

Last night I went to bed with a temp of -1.7 at midnight knowing we were due precipitation in the morning. Woke up at 8am to a temp of +1.8 and heavy sleet bouncing off the windows. 

Still pouring down with sleet now and a temp of 2.7. Could have had 4 inches of snow today if things weren’t against us yet again.

Not had more than 2 inches of lying snow here since BFTE part 2 in 2018. Very poor

Been a long time since we had a traditional snowy breakdown. Tomorrow will probably bring more heavy sleet. 

Shame to see a very notable cold spell go out like this.

Agree with all you've said (but we had 1cm+)

And, whilst we've had quite a number of snowfalls settling in recent years, none have topped 2" since March 2013.

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Today has been mostly dry here (which isn't a bad thing as it would have been rain/sleet  unless we had got one of those pre-dawn streamers) So ok to be outside. 
Tomorrow looks horrendous , there is an amber warning for freezing rain, which means unlikely we will take the chance to go out and do something Christmassy unless the radar looks dry , which is a possibility looking at how weak the front is now due to be.  
I find freezing rain quite boring, we had hours of it in Dec 18,  it doesn't look pretty or change the landscape like Snow, it's just an inconvenience, you can't even walk down the street.  
 

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https://www.livefromiceland.is/webcams/reykjavikurtjorn 

How I wish to see this in here during the first day of this cold spell arrived.  Beautiful landscape and real winter and cold snowy weather.    One day we will get this snowy weather.