The difference seems to be lack of easterlies, when they do occur e.g. December 2010 there is still plenty of cold air.
Winter now seems most often dominated by something similar to conditions today.
2010 is a sore point around here - yes, it was cold but that was largely due to calm winds, clear nights and a little snowcover, rather than the advection of deep cold. The 850s did fall as low as -10C or -11C for approximately 60 hours at the start of the month, but thereafter they struggled to reach -5C, let alone -10C. A deep cold easterly, of the sort we don't seem to get any more, would deliver negative teens - and it's these, in conjunction with strong winds coming off the sea, which gave the infamous "lake effect" snow down here.
It's all about getting deep cold uppers for as long as possible so as to create instability. Annoyingly in 2010 they remained just out of reach to the east, with just the merest hint here. Further inland it was a different story, but here near the coast it's nigh on impossible to get the sort of winters I remember as a child without having some seriously cold air aloft.
Feb 2005 is the closest we've come to it, but it was just that little bit too late. Here there were 14 days of sopping wet snowfall, with lots of convection off the North Sea due to 850s of -14C - but even that couldn't deliver ice days. Two weeks earlier, mind you, it'd have been a different story!
Here's the chart for the 28th Feb 2005.
http://old.wetterzentrale.de/pics/archive/ra/2005/Rrea00220050228.gif
This was a very snowy day here, far more so than anything 2010 had to offer. Outside of coastal Kent, though, you'd be forgiven for wondering what the fuss was all about!
Edited by user
01 October 2017 13:40:51
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