summer blizzard

Alarmingly he'd have only had to go for 11C before 2007 but we now have 2 April's which are miles ahead of anything else.

Lovely horizontal snow.

Moving at some pace, should be good.

Another GFS run going for an epic event.

GFS6z keeps 30mm of precipitation as heavy snow.

GFS18z is epic, over 30mm of precipitation falling as snow.

June and July 2006. January and December 2010. Thrown in for good measure i will go for.. June 2005.

April 16th.

-1C. The ice age has begun.

Ensembles suggest that we may go average/above average in daily means from around the 29th, will be interesting to keep an eye.

light snow.

Personally i don't much faith in seasonal models, currently there just not advanced enough. I agree with you though that things are looking a little better though i'm not expecting a classic given the persistent -PDO will offset the neutral ENSO a bit. I actually take the opposite view to you though in that i suspect seasonal wavelengths will likely lead to a stronger thermal gradient as summer progresses and so i'm looking for a break in the current pattern during April to a much warmer and more settled pattern which will largely dominate early summer before a probably unsettled August and potentially stormy Autumn. Summer 2010 is similar to what i'm thinking.

Impressive horse shoe in the Pacific for the -PDO, neutral looking ENSO, impressive Atlantic tripole for the -NAO and warm tropical Atlantic waters which could bode well for the hurricane season.

Normally it's the other way around so we could see a mild flip.

Not bad, ranks up there with Feb 09 and Feb 05 for me (a little better than both). Generally cool to cold with 16 days consecutive snow cover and a maximum depth that may have exceeded Dec 10 (it was 17cm before the final Friday snowfall but i've left it provisionally third with an assumption of 5cm for 22cm). It was nowhere close to winter 2010 and failed to compete with Dec 10 in terms of cold, it was also pretty dull.

I'm certainly not sensitive but walking in April 05 got me a suntan in exposed areas (back of neck, lower arms).

I remember 2006 had a weird statistic in that it was the latest date to reach 20C since (1996 i think) but then the earliest to reach (either 80F or 30C) since 1995. That's not a bad thing. If we can back the trough far enough west to raise heights to our east then the further we go into spring the warmer that setup becomes and as it sinks we can get a warm shot. Basically we want the setup we had in the second half of February to repeat.

The suggestion for the moment is certainly the cyclonic variety (humid and cloudy away from the south east). I think the more sustained pattern change is more likely to come from a collapsing northerly with the high toppling over the UK.

A repeat of 1995 will do me, not too much to ask for.

It will be interesting to see how this dry spell will impact water values and how quickly are poor infrastructure leads us to trouble again if it keeps up. Here i'm almost certain that we've gone the 13th Feb-12th Mar with less than 10mm.

The sun no doubt has an influence but i blame the protracted La Nina domination. ENSO is currently near neutral however. In terms of sun, solar flux data actually shows Nov 11 as the peak thus far.

A ridge to the west in my opinion would probably favour a drier setup (less frontal risk, precipitation dependent on showers) but it does'nt mean a warm or cool one really because if pressure is high then even with cool uppers the sun will have enough strength to nudge maxima. Having looked at the analogues the trend remains with 1997 in the fray as well... QBO (Neutral) 2008 2004 1997 1990 1980 MEI (Neutral) 2002 2001 1997 1985 1984 1975 1968 1967 1963 1961 1954 PDO (Neutral-Negative) 1999 1990 1973 GLAMM (Neutral) 2004 1997 1991 1990 1987 1981 1970 1969 January-February 1997 1990 2004 All had hot spells which is good but i imagine hell is a mixture of August 2004 and August 2007 in terms of shear humidity.

Not really doing anything in Leeds, perhaps light drizzle.

I'm going to be wildly optimistic and point out that the last cold March we had was followed by the hottest month on record - 2006.

I'm not against snow but i'd rather we got a flip to a warm high. Of interest to me is that we could go a full monthly period with less than 10mm of precipitation. Phillip Eden suggests that the second half of Feb actually only saw 2.2mm.