In article
,
Scott W writes:
On 9 Feb, 20:18, "Will Hand" wrote:
Becoming increasingly confident now that after Monday the snowiest spell of
the winter is about to hit the UK with widespread lowland snow.

The benign cold spell will start to withdraw on Sunday as the high
retrogresses allowing a much colder airmass originating from sub 492 DAM air
near the pole to flood south with sub 522DAM thickness and falling pressure.
Three things will aid snow development:
1. South moving air increasing absolute vorticity forcing ascent and falling
pressure.
2. Decreasing stability forcing convection
3. Northerly jet streak propagating south from Iceland forcing mass ascent
of air on its cold side (over UK).

I have kept quiet till now wanting to see how this was likely to pan out but
now it is becoming clearer when the serious snow will arrive - from Monday
onwards for about a week. Get those snow shovels ready, nobody will be
immune, even lowland coastal SW areas.

Ciao, :-)

Will
--

You are a brave man, Will. I don't normally get excited about
northerlies being in the south-east - with such unstable air, however,
is there a good chance of appreciable snowfall even in the south-east.
Paul Bartlett has hinted at an "arctic low" later in the period on his
forecast tonight. When was the last time we got a decent one?

This looks rather larger in scale than a Polar Low. Today's model
forecast charts show the feature moving down from the north, and then
probably more or less stagnating over the country for quite a few days,
not really going anywhere. The wind over much of the country looks like
falling light, and could be from pretty much any direction, especially
as what's originally a single centre of low pressure seems to fragment
into several.
--
John Hall
"Acting is merely the art of keeping a large group of people
from coughing."
Sir Ralph Richardson (1902-83)