>Further west than expected progression of snow, busted single digit chances here

>I was surprised to waken at 2am yesterday morning to find it was falling outside. The forecast called for a low of 10 degrees in Glasgow and I called for a colder 6 degrees here in Lennoxtown.

That busted simply because snowbands that rather than progressing down along the Aberdeenshire coast and into Fife and the Lothians like expected, they pushed westward across the central belt and down into the borders and Dumfries and Galloway. This brought a fresh covering across pretty much all of central and southern Scotland from the southern Highlands to the English border. Heavier snow was reported across areas of England and Wales.

The unexpected snow and clouds brought a rise, rather than expected fall in temperature. We hit 19 degrees by mid afternoon and then started to fall off, dropping to 17. Then we slowly crept above the 19 degree high after midnight and by then snow started to fall. We recieved a rare type of snow here. Dry snow which I was able to blow off the car. Reason for that rather than the typical heavy, saturated snow we usually get, lower temperatures. It doesn’t normally snow here with air temperatures at 21 and 22 degrees but that was the case and therefore despite receieving a fresh blanket on top of what we already have, it didn’t accummulate too much as it was fine and powdery. We did recieve probably close to an inch.

Today we remain warmer than the past 5 days with the first above freezing day since Monday of last week. We appear to be warming up a bit, but it’s more because of the wind which is holding up temperatures quite a bit through mixing of the air. With wind and despite “feeling” cold, the ability for the atmosphere to release heat back to space is compremised as the air is mixing or turning over which adds heat as it moves, therefore windy nights are remaining only a few degrees below freezing but it may actually feel colder than nights even down below 20 as the wind is removing heat from your body when your outside which makes you “feel colder”. We’re currently at 34 degrees and slowly rising still. How warm are we going to get? Can we beat the 36 degrees for the warmest since mid-December? Perhaps, could we remain above freezing tonight for the first times in weeks? Probably not, I think winds may lighten or at least as the sun drops, we drop off into the upper 20s as snow will help chill, even the mixing air…

Drop off the wind tonight and we’ll easily drop into the low 20s.

I believe we still have a chance to take a run at the single digits and another day or two that may struggle to hit 20 ebfore the end of winter. There’s still far too much cold air available across Europe and over the pole. With the pattern that’s been locked in here for over two weeks, the bias towards continued cold seems likely even if we start to warm up slightly. A brief thaw is possible during the second half of January but I believe more cold air looms, perhaps even colder than what we’ve seen. Like I’ve mentioned before, we’re only really at the half way point of this winter and there’s a lot of winter left. In fact there’s nearly 3 quarters of the month of January left and even with a milder mid point, we could easily and more likely plunge back to the freezer by the 3rd week of the month.

The thing is, cold patterns can’t last forever and times of thaw means the cold sometimes departs back to it’s source regions and will recharge before returning to it’s places it likes to go or where the pattern tends to want to swing towards. We, like much of Europe, the Far East and eastern North America are bias regions for cold this winter and even if it moderates, it’s more than likely the pattern is established and it’s more likely the colder air will return rather than a end to winter…

Thanks for reading.
-Mark

Email me at superior37@hotmail.com