What do you think makes an interesting weather day? Is it only snow or heat for example, or is it a day like today?

Today would count as interesting, I guess, as even here it started off clear, calm and frosty, but it's now blowing a hoolie and there's some torrential rain not far away. (GFS has 55mph gusts on the way, MetO has 47, both unusually from the SSE). 

The most interesting days of all though to me are those things which are rare. So today wouldn't count - we get quite a few frosts per year, even in these warmed times, and strong winds (and indeed rain) are commonplace from October to say March. 

So what counts as rare? Snow is the obvious one, especially snow that settles and doubly so powder snow, with its attendant icicles and drifts. Ice days are also rare here, even moreso than days with snow on the ground.  Thunder is uncommon, and thunder with hail is rare. Snow with thunder is pretty much the holy grail!

There are other days which are interesting too: especially thick fog, for example (like the time there was that massive pileup on the Sheppey Crossing, I've never seen such thick fog before or since), and of course extremes - be it the -14.8 recorded here in 2018, or the 39 recorded four and a bit years later. Even days with silly amounts of rain are interesting, and I guess severe gales are too - albeit that's my least favourite type of weather, and all these years on I still have PTSD from the Great Storm of 1987! 

The snow that was supposed to turn to rain but never did

A storm that seemed to come out of nowhere.

But today was definitely interesting. 

I think extremes generally are interesting.

Particularly ones that knock people out of their normal routines. Or are really rare.

Two examples of the latter that spring to mind are:

1) Seeing freezing fog particles suspended in the air during a really cold night within that December 2010 spell. We'd been out somewhere and only got back 10'ish. There waswhat I'd describe as a thick mist and the car had been showing -10c. When I got out, the drive was lit by Xmas lights (always 'warm white' 🙂). It was really still, and there was 'glitter' everywhere, hanging in the air. I'd heard of diamond dust* and wondered if it was this, but when I looked that up, I realised it was just frozen dog/mist particles.

* I always want to say 'angel dust' but that's a very different thing!

2) During one cold spell, I left home for work one morning. Has had to de-ice the car but it wasn't a thick frost. Halfway to Manchester, the M62 goes across countryside; Chat Moss. Here, there was suddenly a really thick rime on everything. The trees and bushes looked like they'd had a covering of snow. Kevin Bradshaw - he of the old weather cuttings from papers and videos of old TV weather forecasts - lives near there and took some amazing pictures. Then, as I got to the very outer of Manchester, it disappeared.