Winter 2008 / 2009 forecast

[Alexander]

Here statistically we get every 10 to 12 years a cold winter like this. And it seems the cold will stay here at least another week! The second night in the south east with minus 20 at some places.

Sheer hell!

Alexander

[Dave in Warrington]

The outlook to the end of January is for North Westerlies or Westerlies at best.
So wet and cold now rather than dry cold !
Hope February improves?

[pete G]

Yeah but hopefully not AS cold

[Dave in Warrington]

The final UK winter forecast update yesterday from the metoffice......

Both temperature and rainfall forecast is;-

'....the rest of winter is most likely to be average, or below average.
Forecasts are expressed as variations from 1971-2000 averages'

So they are on the cold and dry side of the fence now, so lets see if February meets this

[Dave Brown]

Now that winter is over officially, as we are in March, how did the winter stack up here compared to the forecast. The initial 'warmer than average' was no more than a wild guess based on recent winters, and a bit like saying tomorrow will be like yesterday Once we had a month of below average temps, it was revised to average or colder than average.

I can only give details for here based on my weather readings, but having heard discussions on the forum it seems that the East was wetter, and the West drier than average.

The pic attached are the actual readings, but the basics are:

Ave Max 6.2C, 2C colder than 1971-2000 LTA
Ave Min 1.2C, 1.4C colder than 1971-2000 LTA
Rainfall 162.4mm, 130.2% of 1971 -2000 LTA
Rain Days 26, 89.3% of 1971-2000 LTA
Air frost days below 0C = 33, 152% of 1971-200 LTA

[Dave in Warrington]

Your statistics confirm what I thought the temperatures would be, especially Air frost days below 0C = 33. I would be interested if StephenP has any records for his location. I don't have records but this winter was certailnly dry and cold, but not severe cold. I question if we had lower than minus 6 here in Warrington but we had a lot of cloud keeping it miserable. It dragged on being dull however we did not see more than 5mm of snow in any one day, what we had always melted, unfortunately resulting in black ice on many nights !

Edit: I pass warrington council depot each morning, en-route to the office and the snow plough blades are still new, lovely shiny orange and never fixed to the gritters, ready for later this spring perhaps ?

[stephenprudence]

Hi Dave, I'll quote a post I made on a weather forum (which is easier)

The winter has been much colder here in terms of prolongedness than other winters, as many of us have seen.

The amount of air frosts wasn't as numerous as other places, but made a point of recording the amount of air frosts I had this winter, and the number of ground frosts..

air frost: 10 days per rolling year (average is usually about 3-4)
ground frost: 32 days per rolling year (average is usually about 9-10 days)

Absolute minimum temperature: -5.7C in December
Absolute maximum temperature: +15.1C in January

So frost was much more prevalent.. There were times when it was the right conditions for snow however we received 1 day of lying snow, and 2 days of falling snow - about average for the winter in this location.

The lack of snow was caused in main by a lack of precipitation and my area finished around 700mm of rain for the year with 70% of that coming in summer, so meteorological winter was particularly dry here.

The lack of snow was also based on local marginality. Of the 6 recorded precipitation events that took place, 2 of them were snow (one settling, one not settling), 1 was sleety rain and 3 of those were rain.

All in all a below average winter without doubt with frosts above average in quantity but snow was average - below average in terms of frequency.

[Dave Brown]

Interesting Stephen,

I presume your snow information is by observation. Snow does not show up on my weather station correctly, as no reading takes place at the time. When it thaws and runs into the rainguage is when the readings occur. On one occasion heavy snow produced 0.00mm but the intensly sunny, dry day follwing had 4.6mm

I cannot tell you how many days of snow we had, but missed out on the October stuff. but must have been in excess of 10 days of snow falling and the snow at the beginning of Feb lasted 9 days here.

[stephenprudence]

Yes by observation Dave, and inquiries/phone calls. Still it would be nice if we had a weather station that told us how many days of snow we had falling/lying for when we were on holiday or something. Luckily this year I wasn't on holiday but did have to rely on secondary information for snow cover, as I wasn't around to see it before it melted.

we did accumulate about 2cm.

[Dave in Warrington]

Thanks for the feedback Stephen. You confirmed exactly what I had presumed with your statistics !

[Alexander]

Will it be a mercifull one or merciless doom and gloom...

Alexander

[stephenprudence]

Naturally, it's winter!