Snow was falling with rain for 5 mins ts morning around 9 am.
 

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Cant believe no yellow warning for Devon/ Dartmoor. Serious crashes on main A38 road due to heavy snow...and that's at relatively low altitude south of the moor . About 3 inches here  now and still coming down very heavily

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https://trafficcameras.info/a38-lee-mill/ 

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Snow falling like I haven’t seen since Kent in the 80’s now in Barnstaple, North Devon. 

Very poor met Office forecast, Took everyone by surprise, Driving back from Exeter to Okehampton it was slushy on cars in Exeter but only 1-2 miles outside and to the west there was lying snow and it got whiter towards Okehampton had about 1-2" of wet snow so it seems and now its -0.2c. The Met office failed us, because now we have had snow falling and settling the Met Office never issued a warning or forecast! Maybe it makes up for their very poor "disruptive snow" forecast earlier in winter which never came about and if this is these so called "wintry hazards!" and disruptive snow in the SW then they are 2 months too late - take look at video for Plymouth in below link: - Looks like a good 1-2" of wet snow and Plymouth is coastal. Roads were not gritted or anything! - Well - finally, a tropospheric response to the SSW earlier this month?!

See below link of the snow in Plymouth from Plymouth Live: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IMqrtVO38J4 

Outside My House in Okehampton




My Driveway:


My Back Garden:




Depth around 1.5" (3.5cm) - But melted and refroze so difficult to get accurate depth!



More of the street/Lane:





Also this weather was like a scaled down version of the weather system which occurred end of January 30th/31st in 2019 which followed the SSW earlier that month when (if I remember) the came in from Atlantic into the SW England when it started as rain and spread across the west country into central and southern parts and a lot of evaporative cooling with the fronts stalling - heavy precipitation gave a good dumping of heavy wet snow and in a short period of time seeing rain to snow  and took everyone by surprise although Met Office did better back then in their forecast/warnings etc. This time there as no warning at all! What do you think? 

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Cant believe no yellow warning for Devon/ Dartmoor. Serious crashes on main A38 road due to heavy snow...and that's at relatively low altitude south of the moor . About 3 inches here  now and still coming down very heavily

Like last year - snow in March/Spring and year before in April 2022 snow typical! I think this is the response to the SSW 3 weeks ago? You? Reminds me of the heavy rain to snow event in 30th/31st January 2019 which also followed the SSW early January 2019 and I remember this low pressure started as rain and turned to heavy wet snow very quickly and took everyone by surprise when colder airmass undercut it and precipitation was heavy and a lot of evaporative cooling when front stalled - shame this will be gone tomorrow and occurred now and not a few months ago!

I am very frustrated about such a great winterstorm/ winter hazard event occurred now which could have been a lot more colder and snowier, last longer if only it happened in the right season. I.E Winter. NOT over Easter during Spring!!

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Can I say this wasn't really a surprise at all. Every single model except the UKV showed this, the Met really needs to look at other models other than their own.
 

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We need to potentially talk about a snow event on wednesday night into thursday morning affecting a narrow slice of the country from devon up through wales. Localized potentially very heavy snow. Could drop alot in a very short time while the rest of the UK is wondering what the fuss is about.

Picked up on this quite early yesterday and I wasn't really being all that attentive. I'm sure the models were thinking about this perhaps even a day or more earlier. We really need to talk about this serious issue with the Met biased towards its own model. The AROME in particular I find very useful in determining precip type; it has an excellent track record.

I know the metoffice makes use of other major medium term models such as the ECMWF but do they use other high res models like ICOND2, WRF, AROME and so on?
 

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First snow of the "winter" in Swansea last night!

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Picked up on this quite early yesterday and I wasn't really being all that attentive. I'm sure the models were thinking about this perhaps even a day or more earlier. We really need to talk about this serious issue with the Met biased towards its own model. The AROME in particular I find very useful in determining precip type; it has an excellent track record.

I know the metoffice makes use of other major medium term models such as the ECMWF but do they use other high res models like ICOND2, WRF, AROME and so on?
 

You are right UKV and UKMO HD and MOGREPS are very conservative when it comes to snow , hardly ever see anything predicted on either when we get snowfall here. Having said that Met Office must look at other models as most of the time they  release warnings when their models aren't showing any snow depth. But the deficiencies in their models can't help and will increase the chance they miss events particularly localized ones when they may not be on alert for cold weather  like last night.

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You are right UKV and UKMO HD and MOGREPS are very conservative when it comes to snow , hardly ever see anything predicted on either when we get snowfall here. Having said that Met Office must look at other models as most of the time they  release warnings when their models aren't showing any snow depth. But the deficiencies in their models can't help and will increase the chance they miss events particularly localized ones when they may not be on alert for cold weather  like last night.

I think they do look at other medium range models, in their insight videos on youtube (which are excellent) they frequently mention the GFS and ECMWF (though I've never seen other models mentioned); but its the short term where they seem to almost exclusively rely on the UKV even if their own radar contradicts it which I think is especially ridiculous.
 

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Very poor met Office forecast, Took everyone by surprise, Driving back from Exeter to Okehampton it was slushy on cars in Exeter but only 1-2 miles outside and to the west there was lying snow and it got whiter towards Okehampton had about 1-2" of wet snow so it seems and now its -0.2c. The Met office failed us, because now we have had snow falling and settling the Met Office never issued a warning or forecast! Maybe it makes up for their very poor "disruptive snow" forecast earlier in winter which never came about and if this is these so called "wintry hazards!" and disruptive snow in the SW then they are 2 months too late - take look at video for Plymouth in below link: - Looks like a good 1-2" of wet snow and Plymouth is coastal. Roads were not gritted or anything! - Well - finally, a tropospheric response to the SSW earlier this month?!

See below link of the snow in Plymouth from Plymouth Live: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IMqrtVO38J4 

Outside My House in Okehampton

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My Driveway:

IMAGE. Members enable at bottom of page

My Back Garden:

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Depth around 1.5" (3.5cm) - But melted and refroze so difficult to get accurate depth!

IMAGE. Members enable at bottom of page

More of the street/Lane:

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IMAGE. Members enable at bottom of page

Also this weather was like a scaled down version of the weather system which occurred end of January 30th/31st in 2019 which followed the SSW earlier that month when (if I remember) the came in from Atlantic into the SW England when it started as rain and spread across the west country into central and southern parts and a lot of evaporative cooling with the fronts stalling - heavy precipitation gave a good dumping of heavy wet snow and in a short period of time seeing rain to snow  and took everyone by surprise although Met Office did better back then in their forecast/warnings etc. This time there as no warning at all! What do you think? 

That's crazy! A decent fall there and completely missed by TV forcasts? I wasn't paying much attention but I certainly didn't see any snow forecast for Devon. 
 

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That's crazy! A decent fall there and completely missed by TV forcasts? I wasn't paying much attention but I certainly didn't see any snow forecast for Devon. 
 

WRF, AROME, ICON and HARMONIE all strongly agreed on the event (which is not a given by any means!) while the UKV was only locally over higher ground.

I always check when the airmass is reasonably cold (really anything subzero T850) of 'features' moving into that airmass because sometimes all it takes is low wind speed for evap cooling to do the rest.

The met dropped the ball on this one. The Scotland event a few days ago was much more forgivable because the models withdrew from that (and sent the precip into the sea) at the last minute and made us all look like fools.

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I don't actually think the Met runs its own version of WRF.

They should. UKV is their baby and I get that, is an amazing model. But they could instantly improve their forecasts by having a 2nd high res model to check against.
 

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That's crazy! A decent fall there and completely missed by TV forcasts? I wasn't paying much attention but I certainly didn't see any snow forecast for Devon. 
 

Exactly - most of it has melted now but since when did any BBC or Met say up to 2-3" of snow lower levels and falling/settling to sea level like Plymouth and Iveybridge, saltash etc?

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/EGfFPrBdk54 


Here is another:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SGeYmr_xavI 

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Have to agree with others, very poor show by the Met on this one. Bet if it had been in the SE a warning would have been issued.

Had a couple of inches here and there were certainly issues on the A38/30 & 386

Even now our local BBC forecaster said rain turned to snow for an hour or so!! Errrr, no, it snowed for at least 3 hours lol

Ironic that our heaviest falls of snow this winter have been in November and March lol.

 

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I don't actually think the Met runs its own version of WRF.

They should. UKV is their baby and I get that, is an amazing model. But they could instantly improve their forecasts by having a 2nd high res model to check against.
 

They're planning to retire the deterministic in 2026 and switch completely to ensemble based systems. Agencies making use of the deterministic will be able to switch to the high res control run in the ensemble.

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They're planning to retire the deterministic in 2026 and switch completely to ensemble based systems. Agencies making use of the deterministic will be able to switch to the high res control run in the ensemble.

But just of their own MetUM model? Because ensembles still carry the same limitations from their driver. Inter model diversity is very improtant as this morning proved.
 

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But just of their own MetUM model? 
 

As far as I am aware.

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Have to agree with others, very poor show by the Met on this one. Bet if it had been in the SE a warning would have been issued.

Had a couple of inches here and there were certainly issues on the A38/30 & 386

Even now our local BBC forecaster said rain turned to snow for an hour or so!! Errrr, no, it snowed for at least 3 hours lol

Ironic that our heaviest falls of snow this winter have been in November and March lol.

 

Yeah but to mention November is an Autumn month and March is a spring month and like last spring 2023 and 22 we had more snow then then the entire winter put together. Maybe we should start looking out for snow in Spring months and Autumn haha! Becoming a regular pattern but this is the result partly due to that SSW we had earlier in March and reversal of zonal winds and if only this had occurred a few mkonths back we could have been in for prolonged cold snowy spell. 

The rain turning to heavy wet snow was caused by evaporative cooling which took everyone by surprise is the intensity of the precipitation in a short period of time and I heard someone said in Plymouth that the temperature dropped 5.0c in less than 2 hours!

Watch this one: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q5zSD2-TTGE 

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