DeKust BergenaanZee

My experience from living more than 20 years on the US East Coast is that with a pattern that they have now, it usually lasts until mid March, then the cold retreats. By then our weather here might also become less volatile.

This situation with a strong, stable polar vortex concentrated around Hudson Bay Canada, pumping fridged air into the Central and East of the US reminds me of a very similar situation some years ago, when I lived on the US East coast. I can't recall the exact year, it must have been early 2000's, (2001, 2002 or 2003), when this ice machine switched on around end December and lasted well into March. It was bitterly cold then and I felt there was no end in sight to the cold. I remember I longed for temperatures to rise above freezing. The last remnants of snow were still visible in early May. Also then, Western Europe experienced the opposite, extremely mild winter. It might be fun to look at the archives in those years and identlfy the relevant patters and see how it evolved. It could be very similar this year, which means, sorry, no winter, at least not in the lower lying areas..

Well, as I had hoped and expected, the models seem pretty much in agreement that the winter will make a come back in the second half of the coming week. Unfortunately, it looks like a short visit, with moderating influences again gaining the upperhand next weekend. Then we are in early February, which statistically has probability of somewhat higher average temperatures (February thaw). So IMHO nothing substantial in terms of a stable winter pattern to expect before middle of February.

My sense is that after a slight retreat following the encounter with the low over the weekend, the high will come back with a vengeance second half next week, driven by increasing cold conditions in Russia, Poland and Finland.

It is fascinating to see the endless variety of weather, always something slightly different, so much so that even the prediction of behavior of a HP block when confronted with a low seems not possible. There must be countless occurrences of lows running into a scandinavian high and one would think it must be by now possible that the supercomputers have figured out the correct algorithms to model the flow more or less reliably, but nature seems always to have another trick up its sleeve.

I am new here, so I apologize beforehand if I don't use standard acronyms. One remark about the models and their variability lately. I noticed that more than a week ago, a number of models predicted an easterly flow and according to many, it did not happen. Maybe that is true for the UK, but here on the westcoast of Holland, the wind has turned to the east last Friday and has stayed that way. For me, over here at the coast, when a "zonal" tendency sets in, it is quite apparent. It means the windhowling at the front of my home ( which is facing south - south-west) and that has certainly be the case from the 3rd week of October until early Jan, with perhaps a lull in early December. Since early January things have settled down and become more subdued. Today was raw and one could feel that the winter is around the corner.