30 years on: the January 1987 cold spell
 

In message ,
"Alan [Guildford]" writes

On Thursday, 5 January 2017 17:28:07 UTC, Tudor Hughes wrote:
On Wednesday, 4 January 2017 23:24:20 UTC, Adam Lea wrote:
On 04/01/2017 11:43, Scott W wrote:
I've written a few lines on my memory of the opening weekend of
cold spell that happened 30 years ago next week. There's loads on
net about it but in this age of mild winters it doesn't hurt to
reminisce. http://wp.me/p2VSmb-1WA


Can anyone provide a link which explains the meteorological synoptic
conditions which accompanied the onset of the severe cold, in particular
where the cold air was advected from. From the synoptic chart in your
link the cold air seems to be quite localised over the UK, northern
France, Germany and a little further east, but further east of that the
air is less cold. If it was a strong easterly wind advecting cold air
from eastern Europe I would expect the blue colours to extend all the
way east into Russia. It looks like it may have started off with
easterly advection of cold air, then a cold blob got pinched off due to
milder southerly winds, possibly due to a low pressure system over the
European mainland, then the cold blob continued to be advected west and
over the UK.

Try this: a
href="http://old.wetterzentrale.de/topkarten/fsreaeur.html"/a.

Click on Kartenarchiv in the top left box and proceed from
there. It gives 500-mb heights rather than thicknesses but the source
of the cold air is clear.
http://www.wetterzentrale.de/pics/ar...0119870113.gif


Thanks for the link, Alan.

If you track back a few days, say to the 10th:

http://www.wetterzentrale.de/pics/ar...0119870110.gif


you can see that the cold air originated in northern Siberia. Normally
the expression "a Siberian blast" is hyperbole, as it's rare to get air
from any further east than European Russia, but not on this occasion.
--
John Hall
"One can certainly imagine the myriad of uses
for a hand-held iguana maker"
Hobbes (the tiger, not the philosopher!)