Shunter

Right outside my window this very moment !

Awaiting the squall line here, has been quite bad with some roof tiles and branches down. House shakes during the big gusts too.

7.5C equals the warmest Jan CET ever recorded in 1916. https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/hadobs/hadcet/mly_cet_mean_sort.txt

I find it astonishing that October and November promised developing cold to our shores with reflective negative AO and NAO figures and the PV in disarray. It seems as though a virtual switch was pressed on December 1st which almost immediately resulted in PV reformation, AO and NAO turning positive and the daily ensembles to trend increasingly milder. i looked at the same ensembles last year and its almost identical. Coincidence ?

4.4c. 70mm

Blimey we know its coming up to Winter in the Mod thread. The doomsayers ( Ghosts of Xmas past ) are in abundance and bemoaning every chart of every run that doesn't give them their Winter "fix".

so can anybody explain or justify why the british public pay millions of pounds for the Met "probabilities" ? They cant even get the details right within 3 hours let alone 3 months !

Turning back to Sleet here now after rain since dawn. Temp 2.9C DP 0.7

Moderate Rain. Temp 2.5c DP 0.2 Pleased for those out west who have received “the goods”. Enjoy

Moderate Snow . Shorne West. Temp 1.4c. dP -1.8c . A light covering on everything.

temp 4.3c DP 0.7C light Rain

T 2.6c DP -4.7c 62asl

Yes I think your statement sums up Winter 18/19 very well. The absence of “knowledgable” posters as of late would seem to endorse these comments also. Ive been on here since 2004 and can count the number of succesfully “counted downl snowy synoptics on one hand. Dozens of signals all over the place but ive not seen one yet that can be relied on to deliver the goods in the reliable timeframe. Yes they may increase “potential” and “probability” but thats it. Global weather science is fluid and has infinite outcomes. How hard we try i still think we are just scratching the surface of our understanding at this time. Anyway back to the here and now and with Tropospheric propagation about to develop in a favourable MJO, Tropical Forcing, +MT, EAMT, Solar minimum environment, if the HLB fails to build and hold back the rampant Jetstream in the next 7 days, I for one will be switching off signalling and leaving any late winter / early spring snowy fruitfulness down to chance.

Remember it well . It was about 26th January 2004....i was stuck around the back of Biggin Hill after a tree collapsed across the road. We had about 3 inches of snow in 20 minutes. The temperature dropped from 5c to 0c within minutes.

Interesting comment from Mike Rantanen……. "The decelaration of stratospheric winds is slowly propagating downwards. ECMWF is now forecasting an easterly zonal mean zonal wind at 50 hPa (~20 km altitude). Note that in the #SuddenStratosphericWarming of 2018 the wind at 50 hPa never reversed".

Yes it does seem that the GFS super computers cannot resolve the post SSW impact for the North Atlantic. Despite the positive signals all over the Strat & Trop, the reviving PV definitely seems to want to head home to its North American lair.

Met office probability for colder spell now end of January. That’s just over a month later than they originally stated. Big fail for them anyway you paint it

Chris Fawkes just presented the longer weather outlook on the “propaganda” channel. Mentioned Mild 12 times i counted. For the following week turning ‘cooler’. ....lol

The MJO has been on the sherry, rapid increase in amplitude on the 06z ...…… Click on the GIF for todays update

I think today is going to see the start of some mouthwatering charts. The zonal mean zonal wind at 10 hPa 60N at midnight is (GFS analysis): 27.3 m/s . Its going to drop like a stone for the next few days , we await the Trop response.

A couple of questions .. Does anybody have historical knowledge of how quickly a raging jet stream deaccelerates when a SSW occurs? And does the warming itself create inertia that slows it down, or does the Jet just “freewheel” until it loses its energy?

Zonal wind speed at 60’N increased to 28.6 at midnight. This was forecast and could indicate why NWP is showing such strength in the Jet stream. The good news is that this will fall like a stone from today to a possible reversal around the 28th. This should severely deflate energy in the jet stream around the New Year. The question is whether the models have factored this in?

The 06z Op shows a small improvement at T72 with better ridging to the NW and a defined contour bringing the aforesaid Easterly draw across southern areas on Xmas Eve. That should dry the ground out a bit following days of rain. With the projected wind reversal still showing around 25th , i would ‘take a punt’ on future runs showing an increased number of colder scenarios around 3rd Jan as the downwelling progresses.

He was last seen giving CPR to a snowflake in New Ash Green !

The NSIDC site shows Arctic Sea Ice for 26th November being at a 10year high...… http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/charctic-interactive-sea-ice-graph/