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but its not a zonal output. zonal is associated with wet and windy weather, unsettled atlantic, with fronts crossing the country. i'm seeing mainly high pressure close to or over us, bringing settled benign weather with fog and some frost. nothing particularly exciting for now but not 'wild and mild'. personally, i'm not worried if we miss out on a couple of flakes of sleet or snow in november, if we get the good stuff later. as has been said, any unsettled weather in the models is not mild atlantic air but cold polar maritime. let it keep coming and cool europe down. we get our cold and snow from the north and east. if the 'beast' arrives, it might have some teeth this time...

Right on time, snow arrived mid -afternoon and now settling in. Present temp-1c and -3c at 2000m. Will be interesting to see how accurate the fine mesh model prediction 4 days out will be. Usually spot on with-in a 3 sq Km range. Blows me away. c

A pretty fair agreement between last night's NOAA, GEFS and EPS anomalies in the ten day range. The key features upstream being the Aleutian ridge, an active vortex lobe northern Canada with associated positively tilted trough across N. America and low pressure Greenland/Iceland area. Thus a strong upper westerly flow across the US and into the Atlantic which will abate somewhat in the east and to some extent diverge with a slack area of low pressure to the south and east of the UK. So the weather remaining changeable with a N/S bias initially but less so at the end with the trough to the NW taking closer order. Temps varying around the average but perhaps trending below by the end of the period. Meanwhile back to the present. Currently there is a weak front lying across the southern half of the UK which should clear to the south but cloudy with patchy drizzle in Wales, south Midlands and the south west until it does so but then fine. Elsewhere cooler and brighter down the east coast with some showers with the wind abating (good news in the North Sea where it is violent storm 11 in some areas). For the north west, N. Ireland and Scotland the best of the weather as the high pressure moves in. The result of that is that by tonight the whole of the UK is under it's influence leading to a widespread frost tomorrow morning. Thus a fine day tomorrow bur fronts and patchy rain will encroach from the north west during the day progressively affecting the north and west. By midday Wednesday we have the not unfamiliar patter of high pressure surging north in a mid Atlantic, with a cut off low to the south west and energy/troughs winging west-east in the north.on the strong thermal gradient before dipping south east into eastern Europe. Over the next couple of days the UK manages to remain in a slack gradient/col regime as it comes under pressure from both the north west and south west. This pressure has a minor victory on Saturday with some patchy rain over much of Britain followed by some transient ridging on Sunday before the Atlantic gets into gear with fronts traversing the country on Tuesday, pretty much as indicated by the anomalies. Throughout all of this temps vary around the average and much of the UK remains pretty dry with the usual hotspot in western Scotland.And not very windy apart from Scotland at times.

but its supposed to. now- 2 weeks - the vortex strengthening is normal and expected. its whether it can maintain that strength thats the issue. we've seen and will hopefully continue to see, warm air thrown up into the polar regions. a bit of 'zonal' now will help this process.

Feeling more 'classic' this season with a near-average strength vortex that should resist warming events sufficiently for troposphere-stratosphere transfer to potentially (with enough supply) continue until the warming is large enough to have a more significant impact on the vortex, which is preferable to a dishevelled mess of a vortex that just gets displaced by even minor warming (the situation last Oct-Nov), messing up the troposphere-stratosphere transfer mechanisms, and can happily wait for support from the upper stratosphere to kick off big time (last Dec). Overall this should translate to less of immediate/short-term interest but more during the winter itself. Whether sufficient warming will actually manifest, remains to be seen.

only briefly, then back to quiet again. hardly a raging atlantic... anyway, its colder air when we do get more unsettled and we want that to get into europe to build a cold pool. to be fair, zonal is pretty normal in november.

I wouldn't say Zonal, More a cooler N/Wly Pm flow.

I think the main reason for less UK snow during the winters of 1988-2004 was the synoptic setups, with a greater emphasis on a positive North Atlantic Oscillation, more westerlies, and less northerlies and easterlies. Rising global temperatures also contributed, but the region of the Arctic from Svalbard into the Russian Arctic, which is where our northerlies often originate from, only warmed slightly. North Sea areas (e.g. Aberdeen, Newcastle, Norwich) tended to pick up one or two snow events even in mild winters due to snow showers off northerlies, probably the starkest example being the last of those winters, in 2003/04. Since then, we've still been getting the northerlies but they just haven't been as cold, because our source region of the Arctic has warmed massively, with some winter months seeing widespread anomalies of 10-15C. There was a straight northerly on New Year's Eve/Day 2016/17 which brought only rain and sleet showers to eastern areas, and another one back on 14/15 February 2016 which gave most areas only wet snow and the odd dusting. Historically shortwaves in northerly airstrreams sometimes produced frontal snow, and indeed inland areas often relied a lot on them because of the tendency for showers to often be concentrated around coasts, but in recent years it often hasn't been cold enough. 2010 was a very interesting case because although the Arctic was anomalously warm on average, the warmth was strongly concentrated in the Canadian Arctic and our source regions saw much closer to average temperatures (and as one of Reef's graphs showed early in this thread, this area of close to average temperatures extended to the general region north of 80N). The northerly of 18 December 2010 picked up a scoop of cold air from continental Greenland as well as pulling in air from Svalbard and the Russian Arctic, where temperatures were close to the long-term average, and this led to a northerly of rare potency for recent years. That combination of relatively low temperatures in our cold air source regions, plus favourable synotics to bring it to the British Isles, and anomalous warmth in the Canadian Arctic, was also a feature of the winters of 1947, 1963 and 1979. This year, our cold air source regions haven't been as anomalously warm so far as they were last year, although that's not saying much.

Well for those like myself who were wanting a cold foggy/frosty November its all going a bit meh. All looks very zonal with our friend the Atlantic going up a gear or two.

very quiet in here.... surely i'm not the only one to have noticed the tendency, over the past few runs, for the jet to want to take a more and more southerly track, with heights repeatedly attempting to build in the scandi region?...

hot?! mild, sure. very mild, I suppose. Hot? no.

The day the clocks go back marks the start of my favourite period of the year. From now until the end of January I can enjoy the very dark evenings, before they start to become noticeably later again.

Looking through the 12Zs, it's very, very average - a flattish northerly jet meaning we stay away from any particularly stormy weather, but no real hot/cold extremes. Checking out the ensembles, every chance this could be the story of the first half of November. However, I doubt temperatures will be average. Even in a northerly based flow today, it still felt pretty hot in the sun today down here. Plenty of days potentially well into the teens for the southern half as we go into November and, though that's hard to believe given recent autumns, that is still coming in on the very mild side.

I really like the look of that for the end of October.

Not especially mild though plenty of cooler air waiting out west

Nothings changed since early June - no sign of the Atlantic quietening down, a little bit more ridging/amplification going on but only temporary 'blips' - trying to remember the last time we had a spell of easterlies or an area of high pressure over the country.

Snowiest period for my area from mid January 1997 to end of the 1999 was believe it or not mid April 1998! Any other snowfalls in that period were tranistory at best. One snowfall and it was gone. Snowiest periods for my area during the 1990s First half of February 1991, last third of December 1993, mid February 1994, March 1995, December 1995, late January-February 1996, late December 1996-early January 1997 and mid April 1998. Second half of February 1991 to late November 1993 was virutally snowless apart for the very end of February and start of March 1993

We have had an extension built with a new bedroom facing west so no more sun blazing through the room during spring and summer mornings. Should have done it years ago but the missus was against it. I will stay in there and enjoy it, the missus can stay in the other room and suffer

I would rather have the clocks go back 2 hours and it start getting gloomy at 2pm, but then again I wish we were far enough north to be under the polar night thus averting the threat of any sunlight at all.

Another belter, from the Absolute Radio presenter this time..."Clocks go back tonight, so we get darker mornings and earlier nights"

As much as there are some disrupting troughs and blocking to the NE to wonder about, the past few GFS runs would each place UK temps as a whole very close to average as of mid-month, and this doesn't even hide all that much variability within those two weeks; just chilly, then quite mild, then chilly, etc. So nothing obviously exciting on the offering and the lack of any strong storms tracking across our lands is noteworthy. Vortex looking compact but rather weak to our NW (i.e. not very extensive) hence the exploration of trough disruption by some runs, interchanging with the most probable alternative that his an extension of subtropical ridging right across the UK, producing the aforementioned benign run of weather. Oh well - at least we'll have plenty of energy left for the real chases in the actual winter months!

Just loving the negative tilt to the Atlantic troughs. Reminds me very much of November 2009. I remember back then thinking to myself how similar that was to early November 1962

Europe warming up nicely

Right on cue, the annual whinging before people realise it's not really that bad.

That's a proper man fire wood stack, It's almost an art.. Just lit the open fire here as temps are dropping like a stone.

In terms of maximum temperatures, no records have been set. But the month as a whole has seen average temperatures well above average. The CET is almost certain to finish comfortably above 12C, which will put it amongst the warmest Octobers in over 350 years.

A fine cool start to the day at 5c. Noticed on the radar that there were a few light snow showers over the Cairngorms at that time. Now very sunny with a moderate NW wind and 7c so feeling very seasonal

Can you blame some of us who enjoy wintry weather if we're seeing a largely zonal output consensus and aren't getting excited by it as it may lead to something better over the next few months? It's a very similar message to the one we were given last winter, but it never actually materialised.

13.0 to the 28th 2.2 above the 61 to 90 average 2.1 above the 81 to 10 average

It's not bad is it. Let's hope it at least stays like that rather than retreat back East.

Nice and bright and sunny this morning, looks to be a rash of showers making their way down the North Sea coast though, now if only it were colder, they might be snow showers.

Major Coastal Storm To Bring High Winds And Heavy Rain To The Northeast Sunday Into Monday https://blog.weather.us/major-coastal-storm-to-bring-high-winds-and-heavy-rain-to-the-northeast-sunday-into-monday/

The detail varies but the ecm is essentially in the same ball park as the gfs

getting dark at 5pm sucks

another winter down the drain i'm a tesco shelf stucker, what i got from that was that winter is going to be cack.

I think lower valley's are definitely colder (the coldest temps in the UK have been recorded in these areas, like Altnaharra 81m asl and Newport Shropshire 75m asl) that's why the Met Office set up weather stations in those areas as they knew they would give interesting readings. At 400m a breeze would be an issue when it comes down to frost formation. As higher areas are generally windier than areas lower down. Calm conditions or at most a very light breeze are a very important factor for frost. With my experience anything more than about 10 mph and this can start to lift temps pretty quickly at night and early morning. Unless there is a very cold air mass over us with strong winds then we start to see the words "penetrating frosts" in forecasts. This is when higher ground can tend to be colder than lower areas at both day & night. But these conditions have been almost non existent after the breezy cold conditions of March 2013! ..........I set up a weather station at a relatives in Denshaw, Saddleworth (280m asl) and my night time temps under clear skies are always about 3 or 4C colder. They are situated in a valley too. The breezier conditions higher up in Denshaw seem to be the main factor why they struggle to see temps lower than here (93m asl). It snows more on higher ground because of lower dew point and when precipitation is heavy enough (as it usually is on higher ground) it can cause evaporative cooling and therefore turn rain & sleet more readily to snow than lower areas, basically tied into orographic lifting.

Good. Work that but being a mere marine architect I haven't a clue what you're on about

The 12z ec op stretches the upper vortex sufficiently to establish two centres at 10 and 30 hpa with a split almost evident at 50hpa. will be interesting to see the magnitude of the wave 2 on the Berlin charts derived from this run tomorrow morning.

Yes November looking good. Shots of cold from the north, the continent getting a lot colder, and then that increasingly more southerly jet. Lots to be happy about!

Right here in dover, sky with the verga was much reder, thing the phone auto corrected unfortunately.

Shades of black and white

I see it being a below average month average at best. 6.1C ta

I see it being a below average month average at best. 6.1C ta

Just returning this thread to a closer time frame but intersting to read the comments about the longer term. Looking as usual at the 3 500 mb anomaly charts I use and they have gone from a reasonable agreement last Sunday of a ridge west of the UK and troughing over/east of the country to variations with them during the week, suggesting less emphasis on the ridging in the Atlantic and a general westerly idea, back in the lasy 24 hours to the ridge-trough pattern, see below. Both ECMWF and GFS show this but NOAA less so. Perhaps the inference is that our weather will, over the next 6-10 days, largely come from, at 500 mb, north of west not south of west. Faily settled at times but with some more changeable days mixed in as well. Temperatures probably being around or a touch below for most in the same period. http://mp1.met.psu.edu/~fxg1/ECMWF_0z/hgtcomp.html http://www.cpc.noaa.gov/products/predictions/610day/500mb.php sorry there is a repeat below mods can one of you delete it for me please? thanks

I haven't seen it but a White rumped Sandpiper has been around down the road at Godrevy for the last couple of days. I think it should be in South America

Just saw some weatherbell content on a university of Arizona study into correlation between low solar/ weak nina/e QBO and MJO amplitude. seems there is one. should lead to more wave breaking with ssw potential. going to be an interesting season upcoming for sure - I wonder what variable will crush the hopes of the coldies this winter? most likely our location! Incidentally, the upmcoming aleutian ridging is going to drive some wave 2 activity through the strat. Nothing of any notable amplitude but returning numbers higher than we saw last autumn when nearly all activity was wave 1 and that resulting displacement was easily overcome by the strengthening vortex once it eventually got going. I'm beginning to get interested .............

Fabulous autumn day breezy sunny and 12c maximum followed by a fantastic sunset . A nearby field of straw thats been lying for a month after being combined was baled up today so a lot of other straw in the north must have been rescued too.A long drawn out harvest!! Currently breezy and 8c

4.1c cold month

In other news, water confirmed wet and ice is indeed cold ..............