Possible Cold Reload

ME are coming on board with the forecast this evening, with advance mention, (warning is too strong a word for now) of some wintry precipitation Mon/Tue, then becoming colder in the later part of the week.

That's for sure a definite hint of things to come, and remembering the snow in the UK in 82, they had huge problems forecasting what was going to happen, and the end result was a front that got to about Salisbury, and then got pushed back again, dumping significant snow in both directions. Somerset got anything between 6" and 35Ft, (yes 35FT) depending on the wind direction and the drifting that occurred as a result. We could only get in and out of one of our 2 doors, the other one was completely covered by snow, and for a number of days, I knew where my car was, but only because of the depth of snow on the roof that meant I could still see where it was. For sure there was no way it was going to get stolen.

The forecasters were having even more trouble with it than they are now, as it was very volatile movement wise. having snowed, and gone cold, it stuck for about a week, and for the first 5 days, nothing was moving much, there was too much depth to it for even Land Rovers to get around. Anything that could move was used to clear snow, even tracked bulldozers were in use, and that's how we knew about the 35 Ft in one place, a friend followed the phone lines home one night, and a while later, realised that the damage to the tops of the hedge, 35 Ft above the road that was in a cutting, was from him following the phone cables, which had taken a short cut at that point.

What is likely to be more of a problem for a lot of people is if the severe cold that's moving this way takes hold for any length of time, there are a lot of water pipes and even water tanks that are either exposed out doors, or too close to the surface, and if it's more than so cold for any length of time, there will be problems with frozen supply lines and tanks.

From a practical point of view, does anyone have any sort of chart that gives a "tank freeze potential" guide or similar so that people can be at least warned or prepared in terms of when it will be appropriate to start thinking about taking precautions to prevent freezing.

If last winter is anything to go by, there could be problems with water supplies, not because of freezing per se, but because of the number of taps left running, "to prevent them freezing" and wasting massive quantities of water as a result. OK flowing water is less likely to freeze, and standing water will freeze, but is leaving a tap on really going to help? Equally, depending on how cold it gets, roof tanks may be at risk of freezing if the insulation in the attic is too good, so again, any guidelines on what temperature the risk requires a response, like opening the roof hatch for a while, or doing something that will raise the temperature around the tanks.

Not being paranoid, far from it, but having seen problems caused in recent times, if there's some clear guidance here, (which has to be better than the vague notes from local authorities), it might mean the difference between a frozen supply or not.

K_1 wrote: »

Spend all you want preparing when even Gerry Murphy is forced to concede that it's going to snow!

will that be before or after Hell has frozen over :D

Seriously, if that's possible any more at the moment, I appreciate all the comments people are making about the charts, but do we HAVE to quote the chart as well in the reply, it's getting very hard to tell what's new data and what's a copy of a copy of a quote of a reply:D