Just to lighten the mood here was an event that many Southern Englanders may recall.

Eight years ago today, much of Southern England got a heavy and somewhat spectacular snowfall as a feature developed overnight although it did give forecasters nightmares as I know from previous conversations. It was a Sunday morning, I was at work in Basingstoke until 7am by which time graupel had started falling. I drove to the main A339 to get back to Alton. As I approached the A3 overpass there was a blinding flash and the car shook shortly after from the thunder. I learnt afterwards that this single strike had earthed in the village of Oakley and caused considerable damage, the thunder was heard 20 miles away and leads me to suspect that this may have been a positive giant although I've not seen confirmation. The feature followed me home and although I briefly drove out of it, it set in shortly after, dropping 4 inches of snow in an hour. The pictures were taken by me, the first on my way home and the other three in Alton. Links to the local paper and overnight forecasts are below :-

http://www.basingstokegazette.co.uk/news/2177506.Homes_hit_by_a_bolt_out_of_the_blue/

https://www.netweather.tv/forum/topic/77997-bbc-forecasts-for-night-of-5th6th-april-2008/

Originally Posted by: POD

I can't recall that event, I was living in Caterham at the time, 190m asl, so I would imagine we got a good covering.  When I recently moved to Felbridge I put 30 years worth of day to day diaries, into recycle, before the move,  de-cluttering, so I can't look it up.

http://i79.photobucket.com/albums/j122/0403Sevendust/060408Snow4Herriard.jpg

http://i79.photobucket.com/albums/j122/0403Sevendust/060408Snow9.jpg

http://i79.photobucket.com/albums/j122/0403Sevendust/060408Snow14.jpg

Yep, I remember that event.

Here is the synoptic on Sunday.



I was greeted by this on the way to my former Farthing Common (at 450 ft ASL) workplace the next morning (Mon 6th Apr) . . .

Two hours after these photos were taken, all the snow succumbed to the rising April sun.

SHOW EXTERNAL IMAGES

Yes, it was a decent fall. 

And then we also had snow on October 28 the same year. 205 days has to be the shortest interval between settling snow from one "winter" to the next in southern England in a very long time!

SHOW EXTERNAL IMAGES

I remember this event.  After a few soft hail showers earlier that day, heavy snow set in later in the afternoon/into the evening.  What struck me most about this snowfall was the enormous size of some of the flakes.  Don't think I've ever seen such large flakes before or since.  Some were at least 3 inches in diameter.  However we only ended up with about 1cm of snow on the ground, so nowhere near as good an event here as places further south.

Originally Posted by: AIMSIR

You will normally only see flakes that big, or bigger at times, if the temp. is hovering on zero.

I might be wrong on this, but I think on average snowflakes are larger during Spring than they are during Winter.

Originally Posted by: Andy J

 

I would agree.   From past experience, snow showers in Arctic Maritime airstreams during the Spring can produce very large flakes.   One example I'll never forget is towards the end of March 1979 in an Arctic blast.  We had a succession of brief snow showers that produced huge flakes.  It was a strange event, because as each shower passed, the clouds producing them had almost completely dissipated.

I did some reading, so apparently low winds really helps along with the warm temps at the surface. Well in the spring as the jet weakens, depressions begin to loose their integrity so you get weaker winds. I suspect solar based convection may be important; in winter solar convection never seems to happen but at this time of year its a massive feature. 

A truly memorable morning. We had 11cm of snow from this, which at the time was the deepest snow here for any month since February 1991.

The amount of snow here has been surpassed three times since then; December 2009's fall which paralysed the area, the epic snow of January 2010, and also January 2013 beat this by a whisker.

It had all gone by early afternoon, apparently (we had to drive to Fareham for a Christening where there was some snow but that went even quicker than at home).

SHOW EXTERNAL IMAGES

Edited by user 08 April 2016 13:38:13(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified