My view

Very disappointing! It's easy to wallow in nostalgia and discuss cold spells from days gone, but this one really did NOT deliver in my locality. That said, the snow on Saturday, 4th January was nice to see. Also, after a frost free (100%) December, temperatures dipped towards -5°C , which is quite low by recent standards. However, if the two disturbances had taken slightly different tracks my view would probably have been different. 

Score

4/10 

We have been doing fairly well with air frosts though within this cold spell and this means that we have already had more air frosts in this month than what we had in the whole of December even though we're not even halfway through the month yet but although the temperature dropped to -8°C at Edinburgh Airport last night to give us our coldest night for over two years, the overnight temperatures have generally been not all that far below freezing.

During the day, the temperatures have been no different from what we could expect from a typical cold spell in the heart of winter but at no time have we even come close to getting any ice days here within this spell of weather which is also very disappointing.

Taking all of that into consideration, I have to give this cold spell no more than 3 out of 10 and it was only last night's colder temperatures which have saved it from getting even less than that.

That said, the temp is 0C as I type this and a fragment of slush remains on a pot outside the office.

Is it the lack of a midwinter Scandinavian High as others have pointed out? But why this has become normal in recent years hasn't been explained in clear layman language.

It is rare to get deep snow that sticks around for over a week (likely 9 days of snow cover if we manage till Monday morning).  Low temps down to -5c and -6c which is very low for here. 

It has caused chaos , side roads are only really improving today,  children have had one snow day, one late start and been pulled to school on sledges the rest of the week as it's easier than walking on the snow/ice.  They have loved it.  The landscape looks magical. 

22cm cumulative accumulation.  16cm Sunday, it then turned to rain, then back to snow Sunday night another 6cm, then back to light rain before fizzling out.    When it was raining the temp was so low that it didn't really melt much, but caused bumpy snow surface with depths varying, presumably as the rain found ways of getting through the snow.  There was lots of rain, rain gauge is at 50mm now from the event Max snow depth 15-20cm. 

From Monday morning onwards as the system cleared and the dewpoints cleared any slow thaw stopped Since then everything has been deeply frozen, there is still snow in hedges/roofs and loads on the ground making for an alpine feel.  14-18cm snow still on the grass. 

We had a bonus CM on Tuesday which freshened everything up, always nice to get snow on snow. 

To score it a 10, if the snow hadn't turned to rain for any of the period and we had ended up with a massive total such as 50cm.  I think that scenerio was fairly close.  Somewhere like Greenhow Hill in Harrogate seems to have experienced that. 

This winter was looking poor in terms of long term forecasts, but it only needs a low in the right place and then a southern jet to get a classic week!

Hope these images work now?

Sunday

Snow shower on Tuesday:

State of the roads still on Wednesday (LBA in background)

Today lunchtime:

Saturday night into Sunday morning - several hours of light-moderate snow, but it was a bit wet and only a 4-5cm covering

Sunday afternoon & evening - sleety rain; washed snow away from roads & pavements; snow survived on some grass and cars

Sunday night into Monday - the back-edge snow left 2cm on surfaces that still had snow, a cm on bare grass, thin slither of slush on roads/pavements

Monday night - a cm of snow/graupel mix on all surfaces. This had frozen by morning, along with the remnants of the slush

Tuesday - few snow and sleety-snow showers 

Wednesday morning - period of heavy snow )convective shower stream off the Irish Sea) but down a good 2cm of powdery snow

Wednesday night - hard frost (-5c)

Thursday - temp struggled to get above freezing all day. 

Friday - after another hard frost (-6c) with rime on trees, snow still in situ with no melting. Sun came out and has burned off the rime and snow on rooftops - but not on the ground.

Plusses

The Saturday night snow gave the deepest snow here since Boxing Day 2014.

Despite rain on Sunday, we've had snow cover on most surfaces since Saturday night with frequent top-ups

My snowman (and drive-clearance snow pile) have survived 

The Thursday/Friday period has been a winter wonderland with powdery snow everywhere and some hard frosts

The misty/murky conditions have been so atmospheric

Minuses:

If that low would have stayed just a hundred miles to the south on Sunday, we'd have had a serious amount of snow 

Just literally 2 miles south of my house had double the level of snow come Monday morning - which has survived all week. It's not at any higher altitude (maybe 10m higher)

The sun has come out today, melting the rime off the trees (that added a huge amount of magic to the scene) and rooftops, and ruining chances of an ice day.

The max snow depth of 4-5cm is pretty 'meh' - and that was only for a few hours before rain moved in 

Overall:

The best winter spell since 2013 for MBY - but the competition was pretty poor.

Not remotely in the same league as the Dec 09/Jan 10/Dec 10 spells

7/10

It seems postimg.cc also deletes images after a short time, annoyingly. Best use the TWO gallery for weather-related photos, I guess!

(No rating from me on the cold spell yet as it's still ongoing. I'll post mine once it's finished).

Some nice, frosty icy vistas at times, with one 'ice day' recorded,  but minima very unremarkable. Low of just -4.1c, There was lower in the general region (-7.6c in Athenry, just outside of Galway City for example) but such temps seemed very localised. 

Had the temperatures been a degree or so lower that slush would've been a snowy memorable event for all.

Add to that settling snow to the North and to the South just across thd Bristol channel and it leaves a bitter taste here.

We've had 3 of 4 frosts but when that's the highlight of your 10 day cold spell along with a few slushy flakes in the wind then you know things are bad.

1 out of 10 here.

All in all a decent spell here and across much of the northern half of Scotland. I’d give it 8 out of 10.

It’s been cold yes but raw grey with heavy rain. 70mm in fact that’s 15 more than the whole of December. Temperatures by day between 3 and 6c with too much cloud cover and breeze we only just managed one air frost.

I don’t expect too much down here but this was just miserable.

I'll leave this here if you can see facebook 🙂

https://www.theweatheroutlook.com/twoother/sky-eye-gallery.aspx?user=Brian%20Gaze 

LOL

Actually today and yesterday have felt like it used to in the 80s.  Much better than the wet melting snow bollox we had last Sat and Wed. 

Shame its ending, though hope next week high can set up in a way that gives some faux cold inversion.

The daily maximum and minimum, as well as measureable precipitation, for January so far for my weather station, have been:

Not your fault. For some reason it sometimes puts loads of extra break tags in. I put a quick fix in which should help, but may cause other issues.

Wednesday's fall was light but gave a covering, patches of which are still surviving in shady spots thanks to the low temperatures. This morning's walk, after a very cold night down to -8, was interesting. The normally boggy local common was frozen solid with the usual puddles on the grass transformed into sheets of clear ice. The woodland paths were crunchy and springy where the leaf litter and underlying mud has frozen. Every fallen tree (lots of ash sadly) and branch were still decorated with a thin layer of snow amongst the otherwise dark surroundings. Water still flowing out of fields onto the farm track had formed a lethal sheet of ice a good few metres long.

Not the best cold spell I've ever known but decent enough. We've had one spell like this for each of the past three winters. Perhaps next year can bring a memorable freeze

As such I have to give this an above average rating. So I'm forced almost by default to give it a 6/10. No ice days, no extreme low temperatures, only 1 day of snow. Yet somehow its still the best I've seen for years.