i dont understand most of this weather talk!

[palm lad]

i dont understand hardly any of the scientific weather/climate talk but i'm desperately keen to know the ins and outs of what would happen 'up there' in plain english that would bring us the bad wintry weather, and what would happen to bring us a milder winter

soo, could anybody wise about the weather explain to me what is happening 'up there' at the moment, especially about this snow scaremongering mallarky and basically how it all works that would give us a mild winter or a cold winter so that i know in future when looking at data etc to see what is happening at that time is good and what isnt good

[Darlo Mark]

let me know when some one works out a way!

[Nigel]

Go to this website you can see 10 days ahead.
High pressure rotates clockwise and low pressure anti clockwise. the colours indicate temps, red being hot, blue cold.
http://www.wetterzentrale.de/pics/avnpanel1.html
The centres of high and lows are marked and the circular lines show pressure and wind direction depending on if its a high or a low, high h , low t

edited my freudian slip, typed it too fast lol

[Conifers]

High pressure rotates anti clockwose and low pressure clockwise.

Errr . . . Ooops! Wrong way round

High pressure = clockwise winds
Low pressure = anticlockwise winds

[billdango]

Whats clockwose???.
billdango

[kata]

[GREVILLE]

PL, I started keeping a simple weather diary when I was nine. When I was sixteen I began keeping a more detailed weather log December 1st 2011 will be the 42nd anniversary of keeping it That means well over 15,000 detailed entries In 1962 a family member bought me a gift subscription to the Royal Meteorological Society's monthly journal 'Weather' and nearly fifty years later I have every issue However, I abandoned my ambition to become a BBC weather presenter after deciding against six years of University swotting and sweating to get there

I have therefore been an amateur weather boffin for nearly fifty years and while I can relate to most of this weather talk, be it simple or technical, I still don't understand what makes the weather tick

It is helpful to understand the weather when growing exotics but in truth the weather is far more complex than the science of growing plants on the edge of their comfort zone. May I suggest that you get familiar with the pressure charts for the daily forecasts as well as any longer range predictions. A bit technical, I know, but if you check them daily and monitor them with ongoing forecasts along with noting your own local weather you will soon get adept at 'reading' them.

Watch every BBC forecast if you can, including the Country File forecast on Sunday (45 minutes on) and check daily the 'Met Office: UK forecast days 1-30' on the net. If you click on the 'Weather' tab and link to 'UK' just below it you'll see a box of 'Surface pressure charts'. Click on this and you can see a series of charts for the next three days. The German site Wetterzentrale produce a nine day trend of pressure charts with colour coding for warm and cold zones. Google search 'Wetterkarte' and you'll get a block of nine pressure chart maps for Europe.

All the scaremongering of snow and -20c in October have come from individual weather models that differ completely from others. At least the Met Office take into account all known models before producing their forecasts and they are updated regularly to take into account any sudden changes in the weather patterns and adjust predictions accordingly