WINTER 2003-4 - PART 1:
A STORMY WINTER SOLSTICE!

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On the 21st of December an unstable northerly to northwesterly airflow brought cold air back across the UK and the still relatively warm sea meant that convection would readily take off, giving rise to hail showers and later to snow on the hills as the temperature dropped. These airflows creat great opportunities for cloudscapes - clear air, blue skies and crisp anvils - the sort of day any weather photographer looks forward to and heads out to his or her favourite vantage points. Here is a selection of the day's results....

This one's from Aberdyfi looking across the estuary at light hail-shafts dropping from the base of an altocumulus bank. It's pixelated a bit because I scanned the slide at too low a resolution - whoops!
Going north I set up at my favourite vantage point between Rhoslefain and Llwyngwiril. Out over the bay shower-clouds were massing although it seemed likely that these would largely remain offshore...
A line of heavy showers stretched from Bardsey southwards. Here are two of the anvils with a bank of lower cumulus in the foreground. To the N an outrider was making its way down the coast...
The outrider was quite a strong squall but shortlived. It stirred up the sea markedly as it arrived in a fusillade of hailstones.....
After it had passed it was obvious that the "best" weather was still way out to sea, although developments over Snowdonia could now be seen. Light was fading, though, and it would only be in the last half-hour of visibility that anything heavy would make it south to Mid-Wales. I headed back, thinking of a foray into the mountains, stopping at Tywyn to capture this cumulonimbus out to sea...
...and again in zoom-in mode....
...and to the N where a small Cb anvil was becoming distorted. The upper part is being pulled one way and the topmost bit the opposite way - indicating upper-level winds of varying direction...
The setting sun at Aberdyfi gave a grand burst of crepuscular rays.....
...and so on into the hills, where the weather seen previously over Snowdonia had duly arrived. Curtains of snow swept across the landscape and to the north the hills gave a faint white glow in the last of the light. Winter had arrived at last.
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