John Hall wrote:
In article ,
Adam Lea writes:
Just wondering whether the situation over the last week or so,
with persistent easterlies and Atlantic fronts trying to push in from
the west, getting blocked then stalling and retreating again, is in
any way similar to the situation which brought heavy snowfalls in
the 1946/7 winter. It seems to me that frontal lows coming up
against a cold airmass but without a breakdown of the block is the
recipe for the heaviest snowfall events historically in the UK. Am I
correct here?

Many of them, certainly.
Someone has already posted elsewhere another of my thoughts
that if this stubborn block we have had this month had formed at,
say, the end of December, whether the cold would approach that
of the 1962/3 winter. If we are getting reports of ice days at the end
of March, heaven knows what the temperatures would be like if
the same block had formed two or three months ago.

I imagine we'd have seen maxima quite widely around -3 to -5C, and
perhaps a bit lower still in some places on the coldest days. Looking at
the temperatures recorded in February 1947 might give an idea. I've been
surprised at just how cold the UK has been in recent weeks, given that
temperatures upwind on the near Continent have been little lower if at
all.

Pre-2008, I had wondered just what it takes to get a big snow event
in the UK, now I am getting the idea.


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I was wondering if such a stable block would/could have formed Dec-Feb
in the current times? No real reason not to but our recent cold spells
have had a lot of LP about them and perhaps this type of block would
have been less stable with the warmer seas then? To me this is the most
notable block of it's type for many years and I include the December
2010 notable spell in that. Despite going off cold weather a bit as I
get older I would like to see just one more 1947/63 to see how people
really would react although I suspect Ken (at Copley) can probably tell
me anyway based in this winter!!
Dave