Snow 2010

[Teho]

Odd that you rarely get snow there Tiago, when you say you do get temperatures around zero. That's in fact where snowfalls are most likely to happen. It can still snow even if it's a couple of degrees above zero too, you know. I don't know exactly the nature of it but fact is that a snowfall is very unlikely when it's very cold. Speaking of which, we've only had 6-7 cm here. It's not unusual to have little snow a good while into December though. January and February are the real snowy winter months, but usually we have plenty of snow by Christmas. It's unusually cold however, with temperatures creeping down towards -20C allready. Again, it normally doesn't get that cold this early in winter.

[Tiago]

Odd that you rarely get snow there Tiago, when you say you do get temperatures around zero. That's in fact where snowfalls are most likely to happen. It can still snow even if it's a couple of degrees above zero too, you know. I don't know exactly the nature of it but fact is that a snowfall is very unlikely when it's very cold. Speaking of which, we've only had 6-7 cm here. It's not unusual to have little snow a good while into December though. January and February are the real snowy winter months, but usually we have plenty of snow by Christmas. It's unusually cold however, with temperatures creeping down towards -20C allready. Again, it normally doesn't get that cold this early in winter.

Well Teho,
Lisbon has a minimum temperature in winter around 0 (zero) degrees, it's just in a few days, and it goes to zero during the night, at 4 or 5 AM, during day, in the morning sometimes 1 or 2 degrees, but it's not normal, so far this winter the less i egt was +6 degrees at 6:45 AM.
Last year in Lisbon some days it went -1 during night, but it does not snow, you can see small ice litle balls, the floor will go white for a cuple of minutes, but you cannot call that snow.
1 day last winter in 2009, it fall some small parts of snow, there was a lot of discution if you could call it snow... the average answer was no.

some people say Lisbon is to south to snow. there is a region in Portugal that goes 2000m above see, and there yes it snows, i went there 2 years ago, and it was my 2 time i saw "real" snow, i get +/- 5 to 10 cm of snow, but it was at 1800m high, at 300m just a few km away, it did not snow.

[Harrison]

@Teho. Like the UK, it sounds like your weather is different this year too.

As you might know the UK didn't get any snow for over 10 years. Then last year we saw a small amount for a few days in February, and again at the start of this year. But we haven't had any snow in Nov/Dec for a very long time, but now this year we are suddenly seeing it snowing across the country for over a week now and much heaver than recent times. A lot of places are reporting over 12 cm.

[Stephen Coates]

We probably won't get any more snow here now, but it is very cold. The forecast says -5.

School is open again so back to work after too days off. Many are still closed though.

[Phantom]

Snow? Why not changing this to Sun 2010?

Here we've got approx. 20-25 degrees... nice Summer Christmas.

[Harrison]

Our snow was finally mostly gone by Saturday night because it started raining heavily in the afternoon. Still very cold here though. Was -2 all day yesterday, and I think it got colder over night as the ground frost was very thick and white, and the cars were frozen solid this morning.

I see on the weather that Yorkshire is still one of the coldest places in England and are expected to get more snow this week, so you might see some more Steve. They are also saying we might get some more here on Thursday. Scotland has definitely had the most though, which is to be expected. Good for their sky resorts!

[Jay]

We seem to have missed most of the white stuff. TBH I don't see much being so close to the sea. Hasn't stopped the roads from grinding to a halt as per usual!

It amazes me how ill-prepared the UK is for this weather. The rest of the world makes it look simples.

Jay

[Harrison]

It's because we have so many different types of weather in the UK. Many other countries have long seasons of similar conditions so can afford to invest in the infrastructure to cope with it well. Norway for example expects to have a lot of snow over the whole winter period, so had the means to keep the roads clear, or Canada their airports. But to invest in the same level of equipment that might only be useful for 2-4 weeks of the whole year in the UK would not be realistic.

[J T]

Quite. I can only imagine the outrage if a large fleet of costly snowploughs sat unused for 50 weeks a year, especially in these straitened times. Grit is apparently horrendously expensive too (which I wouldn't have guessed).

I think the only thing to do is suck it up, and accept that there may be a few days when people just have to stay in. This might be hard for the wailing reactionary press in the UK though.

We had the air-conditioner on last night at around 8pm, just FYI. But it has been wet here. Really really wet. So much so it has damaged the roads - but they were a bit shit anyway.

[Jay]

Remember I said I hadn't seen much?

I am now snowed in and it's still falling. There's even snow on the beach: