Stu_London

light sleet in Tunbridge Wells EDIT: bit heavier now - more snow than sleet.

Very much what I would have expected - the short ensembles have really tightened over the last day or so. Still some very cold members but a little disappointing not to see some members showing a decent scandi pressure rise. Such patterns are reasonable rare in January which is traditionally quite mobile and with whats left of the PV in our locality, to be expected really. Perhaps week 1 or 2 of February will see this pattern change and better opportunities from the east.

Good luck Pete - if anywhere will get anything, East Anglia looks best. Think the last week of Jan will be interesting.

I think tomorrow will be a bust for most and very transient at best for anywhere where it does deliver Looking at the macro-view models have firmed up considerably for the period up to 180 (during which time there wont be a significant cold spell). The last week of January looks interesting with 2 or 3 potential battleground events possible. We might need things to shift south a bit in respect of these. I would rather rely on them having to move south than north.

hence why should pretty much ignore these apps. Temp in Tunbridge Wells dropped from 10C at 6am to 5C a short while ago. Still pouring with rain Looking at the radar, is a secondary LP forming off the south coast I wonder.

Localised flooding in Tunbridge Wells when I ventured out to Tesco at 6am. Car was showing a temp of 10C - some weather stations to the north and east of Kent indicate temps of 4-5C - so quite close to the boundary. Cricket going stonkingly - SL 81-5

Looks like the medium term model output it now trending towards the battleground being a bit far north for our region to benefit, however these thing can and do trend south nearer the time, so one to keep an eye on. Nearer term, looks like the north of the region could do well today and tonight if the occlusion can just dig west a little. Not sure air temps will support settling snow away from elevated areas however. Not sure what the fuss is about Saturday, can't really see the region getting anything. Perhaps the media forecasts are hedging against upgrades. Cold uppers and surfac

Even I got banned from Net Weather once and I am literally the nicest bloke in the world who would never say a bad word about anyone or in any way wind them up, particularly those who were very susceptible to being wound up. Paul Sherman will verify this. Anyway, the 12Z GFS shows yet again nothing is certain for next week - I suspect it will be the weekend before things start to firm an FI might start at +48hrs for a little while. In the nearer term I reckon tomorrow is a bust for nearly all. Saturday, the further north and east you are in the region, the better your chances - Noth

Lots of uppers angst again today. There are reasons why -8C would be more likely deliver this time, whereas it didn't last time (although uppers in the south east were generally a degree or so below -8C in the last spell in any event) However until the overall pattern is decided, it isn't really worth sweating over. I think it could be as late as Friday or Saturday until some sort of model consistency is achieved for next week.

yes just for fun at this point in time - far to distant in the future and too much run to run and ensemble volatility to take seriously at this stage. I said FI was +96 a couple of days ago - its more like +72 now

Oh my - 00z is a very cold run - CET of about -3C for the final third of the month!! 10 days away yet, so not likely to pan out quite like that, but would be a real kick in the teeth for the UK economy and vaccination programs.

yep - i remember that - complete cross-model, ensemble agreement and then with two GFS runs, it was gone. Got a watered down version a couple of weeks later as I recall but by that time the days were longer and temps a bit higher so much less impact

to far east on GFS - not sure on other models

Upper aren't as good on the ECM as it deepens the low and drives it further south than the other models. Still a snowy run - probably rain to snow event in the far south.

the convergence is amazing this morning - still time for a wobble though. Ensembles need to tighten now to really improve confidence.

To be fair, the modelling was very consistent around the Christmas and New Year period - yes it did over-egg the cold period from 27Dec to now a bit, but the reality was that a lot of forum members expectations were beyond what was being modelled. Therefore the warm up was just a continuation of consistent modelling. However the SSW has chucked a bunch of foxes into the hen house and the resultant carnage is consistent with several previous events of this nature.

Should start rolling out about now. Your location will do well if some of this mornings predictions come anywhere near verifying

Remarkable! There is one at +5 and another at -12 at around day 6! Critically that is the key time for whether we get something like the GFS or alternatively, more akin to the last few ECM runs. Need tighter clustering before we we call for Michael Gove.

Not a bad GFS with a very notable 7 day cold spell in FI. What I did take from this mornings runs is there is a move towards some model consensus is the semi-reliable timeframe which is, of course, the building block stage of the cold spell. Would like some tighter ensembles, and of course the elephant in the room is the ECM, but baby steps this morning. I'll stick to my original musing that things will look much clearer by Thursday or Friday, with more model consistency (good or bad) by then.

Although there is another low spawned of SE Greenland on this run - gone from no lows to 2 lows. Doesn't look all that viable to me

Cut off low present on the GFS - huge downstream changes again from 18z at 144hrs

With the exceptional of high elevations in Scotland, GFS not interested in making much of the front on Wednesday / Thursday - pushes the cold air away to the east

I like the ICON solution - lets see how the other models handle this evolution - until the cut off low situation is resolved everything afterwards should be binned.

My take on it is that the flip flopping will continue and models will firm up a bit by around 14th January. Probabilities as I see them for the final third of the month 15% - SSW continues to disrupt patterns but the whole thing has a bit too much mobility and we miss out. Further disruption of the vortex might lead to better luck in February as mobility tends to drop away then. 25% - A cold spell of sorts will occur but rather like the new year one, it will not deliver for everyone and will frustrate many. Likely to break to milder set for first part of Feb. 20% - Frequen

Loving those short ensembles - perhaps we don't have to count down from 384 and something will crop up a lot earlier. Would fit with the MO of SSWs