I will break this down into a number of elements and then give my overall score from that.
SNOW
I spent just about all winter looking for snow and getting frustrated in the end when I wasn't seeing that here, especially when there were other parts of the country were getting it. It then took a long time for everything to kick in and for a while, I was convinced that the whole thing was going to end up being a complete non-event, especially since there has been so many occasions in the result past when the models have pointed those phantom easterlies which never happened. Once it started snowing though, it just wouldn't stop and as a result of that, this is actually the first time since December 2010 that we have had really deep snow in this part of the world which has lasted for any length of time. In the end though, there has just been so much snow recently that I will be more than glad to see the back of it.
TEMPERATURES
This again was something which took a long time to kick in, in terms of getting any sort of low temperatures and that was the case even for a few days after starting to get that easterly wind. In the end though, we ended up with an official ice day at all three of my local stations and even another ice day at Edinburgh Gogarbank on the following day as well. The one disappointing aspect of this was there were no really low temperatures at night here due to there continuing to be too much cloud and too wind which as has happened all too often during the winter, resulted in the temperatures just refusing to drop at night. For that reason, I will have to deduct some marks for that.
TIMING
If this really cold spell had happened at around Christmas, this would have gone on to be a classic spell of winter weather in my book. However, the big issue which I had with this cold spell was the fact that it came right at the end of the winter and then carried on to what is supposed to be spring. I am looking outside my window and still seeing a lot of lying snow around and yet, we are now into the time of time when it is supposed to be starting to warm up. The fact that one of local stations recorded an official ice day on a day which isn't even officially part of winter was also ridiculous in my book, especially since the number of official air frosts which we got during the winter was rather poor and below the 1981-2010 average for that. I know that there are some members of this forum who actually liked the fact that this has carried on into the spring. These members are entitled to have that opinion, but that is not how I see it because to me, I would rather be seeing more of that sort of weather during the winter which is where it belongs and once meteorological winter ends, I would much rather be getting on with spring, thank you very much. That is therefore, something which I will be taking a few marks off for.
CONCLUSION
When you all of the above is taken into consideration, I will give this cold spell 7/10, but I will stress that it would have scored much higher, had it occurred earlier on, and not dragged into the spring in this fashion.
The north of Edinburgh, usually always missing out on snow events which occur not just within the rest of Scotland or the UK, but also within the rest of Edinburgh.