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 that cold spell that happened 30 years ago next week. There's loads on the 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.

Tudor Hughes