Upcoming winter speculation and chat - October edition

[BLAST FROM THE PAST]

On 27/10/2019 at 12:44, Sceptical said:

"Major winter to match one of the greats in 20th century during next 3 years"....High Confidence

Can I ask when you made the above statement?

2018 

for me, sorry so busy but will get winter thoughts out hopefully tonight, this Nov has so much for the winter (early winter ahead).  A cold and wild start to Nov, there is strong indication of quite notable snow for some, and December likely to be an exaggeration of first half of Nov and could be very notable.....  I Just wanted to put it out there in case I don’t complete it tonight, it’s where my LRF is pointing so see where we go....Front loaded for me as I think blocking in Jan/Feb will be flabbyish mid latitude.....but then a really cold early Spring.

 

BFTP

 

 

Edited October 29, 2019 by BLAST FROM THE PAST

[Catacol]

2 hours ago, lorenzo said:

Ye olde eQBO looking meaningful... No signs of stalling, or blips... Always a welcome driver to chuck in the mix. 

Strat Trop interaction clearly the key variable now Vs will it or won't it SSW .. good to read the conversation evolving again.

Last year downwelling hit a brick wall, would be nice if that brick wall was still in place and that rampant vortex decided to remain locked at altitude.. 

November taking on early significance in terms of direction of travel further into winter. 

Spot on I reckon. EC late November forecast of Aleutian low and Scandy High might be the start of things. To see the eQBO descending beneath 30mb also good news. Extent of any strat/trop vortex coupling the key area to watch....and long range models clearly think the coupling will occur. But then again they weren’t particularly good at getting things right last season as disconnect remained the default setup. Trop patterns to remain in the ascendant in 2019/20 also?

[Kirkcaldy Weather]

 

[Yarmy]

2 hours ago, Kirkcaldy Weather said:

 

As nice as that looks, it's meaningless unless the bloke (whoever he is) tells us why he's picked those years for the composite.

Here's my effort using the foolproof methodology of randomly picking a few cold days off the top of my head.

[ArHu3]

Almost November, so time to speculate about the coming winter again. Unfortunately it doesn't look very good, at least for the first half, all the long range models point to west circulation and when it comes to forecasting west circulation the models have been pretty good 4-6 weeks out in the past. And with record low ice cover and the tail end of the wQBO any northerly will fail to deliver anything but wintery showers. 

 

Hopefully the switch to eQBO and solar minimum can deliver something in the 2nd half of meteorological winter but I'm not holding my breath this winter 

[Kirkcaldy Weather]

 

[Kirkcaldy Weather]

 

[ItNeverSnowsInWindsor]

13 minutes ago, Kirkcaldy Weather said:

 

More analogs yet! Analogs don’t mean much with too many variables in the past! 

Edited November 3, 2019 by prolongedSnowLover

[Stonethecrows]

On 31/10/2019 at 11:16, ArHu3 said:

Almost November, so time to speculate about the coming winter again. Unfortunately it doesn't look very good, at least for the first half, all the long range models point to west circulation and when it comes to forecasting west circulation the models have been pretty good 4-6 weeks out in the past. And with record low ice cover and the tail end of the wQBO any northerly will fail to deliver anything but wintery showers. 

 

Hopefully the switch to eQBO and solar minimum can deliver something in the 2nd half of meteorological winter but I'm not holding my breath this winter 

Don't know about record low ice cover but there is decent snow cover, well ahead of many a recent year. Even Scandinavia doing well for early season.

[ArHu3]

1 hour ago, Stonethecrows said:

Don't know about record low ice cover but there is decent snow cover, well ahead of many a recent year. Even Scandinavia doing well for early season.

Charctic Interactive Sea Ice Graph | Arctic Sea Ice News and Analysis

NSIDC.ORG

We had been at a record low for the time of the year for a while when I wrote that earlier this week but we just caught up with 2016 and are about to overtake 2007, 2012 and 2018. Who knows, maybe just maybe this winter might just turn out to be a decent one after all 

[The Beast From The East]

Good morning to you all. It's good to be back on here looking for the hunt for cold and snowy weather... we don't seem to be in a to bad position at the moment.. I've known worse lol...

I though I'd have a look back through the model discussion thread to see how things were looking this time last year to the very day were on now. It's interesting to see how it was all looking for cold but of course we all know how it turned out.

Still a new winter season (nearly) and hopefully things will turn out brutally cold and snowy as we head deeper into winter.

Here is the link if you fancy a read back to this time last year's discussion..

 

Edited November 3, 2019 by The BEAST From The East
Typo

[MATTWOLVES 3]

Just a little bit of info for those of you who don't know!! The weather online seasonal was updated the other day, and points to a Wstly dominated December with rain at times. The January update states wintry at times, with a snow risk moving south at times!! Nae bad, all be it a long way off. 

[DAVID SNOW]

On ‎03‎/‎11‎/‎2019 at 00:03, prolongedSnowLover said:

More analogs yet! Analogs don’t mean much with too many variables in the past! 

Agreed they are JFF same as seasonal forecasts covering the next 3 months.(IMO)

[Don]

1 hour ago, Mattwolves said:

Just a little bit of info for those of you who don't know!! The weather online seasonal was updated the other day, and points to a Wstly dominated December with rain at times. The January update states wintry at times, with a snow risk moving south at times!! Nae bad, all be it a long way off. 

Yes, saw that.  Let’s hope that colder January leads to a brutal cold and snowy February!

[Premiere Neige]

1 hour ago, Mattwolves said:

Just a little bit of info for those of you who don't know!! The weather online seasonal was updated the other day, and points to a Wstly dominated December with rain at times. The January update states wintry at times, with a snow risk moving south at times!! Nae bad, all be it a long way off. 

Their monthly outlook which runs up to 13th December is at odds with the seasonal forecast though,  suggesting frosty weather....

[Seasonal Trim]

Not getting sucked in yet by all the pretty charts showing Winter nirvana. Once we start seeing these colder runs <=144 I'll start to get excited.

[ArHu3]

1 hour ago, Wynter said:

Not getting sucked in yet by all the pretty charts showing Winter nirvana. Once we start seeing these colder runs <=144 I'll start to get excited.

For much of western Europe, except maybe the higher parts it is still much too early for anything resembling proper wintery weather, especially in the current climate. Over here even back in the good Olds days winter never began before the 15th....

[Yarmy]

Probably going to curse it from now on, but the NAO came in at -1.41 for October: the 6th month in a row of negative values. Only 2 of the preceding 19 months were negative.

North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) | Teleconnections | National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI)

WWW.NCDC.NOAA.GOV

---

Information on the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) index, which is based on the surface sea-level pressure difference between the Subtropical (Azores) High and the Subpolar Low.

This was the mean pressure field forecast from the GloSea5 issued in July for Aug/Sep/Oct...

Just something to consider when looking at the LRFs. The caveat here is that the LRFs demonstrate better skill at predicting the wintertime NAO, and currently they are going +++NAO.

It's also worth keeping in mind that the next monthly update of the major LRFs - which will start to appear in the next few days - will be based on ensembles that ran in October, and therefore might not show the -AO trend as (currently) advertised in the model output. 

[ArHu3]

13 minutes ago, Yarmy said:

Probably going to curse it from now on, but the NAO came in at -1.41 for October: the 6th month in a row of negative values. Only 2 of the preceding 19 months were negative.

North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) | Teleconnections | National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI)

WWW.NCDC.NOAA.GOV

---

Information on the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) index, which is based on the surface sea-level pressure difference between the Subtropical (Azores) High and the Subpolar Low.

This was the mean pressure field forecast from the GloSea5 issued in July for Aug/Sep/Oct...

Just something to consider when looking at the LRFs. The caveat here is that the LRFs demonstrate better skill at predicting the wintertime NAO, and currently they are going +++NAO.

It's also worth keeping in mind that the next monthly update of the major LRFs - which will start to appear in the next few days - will be based on ensembles that ran in October, and therefore might not show the -AO trend as (currently) advertised in the model output. 

I can't find the graph but IIRC model verification during hemisphere summer is better than during with winter and verification of the northern hemisphere weather is better than of the southern hemisphere (nhs>shs>nhw>shw)

Edited November 4, 2019 by ArHu3

[Kirkcaldy Weather]

 

[mountain shadow]

2 minutes ago, Kirkcaldy Weather said:

 

When you have a disparity like that between two of the most respective LRF models, it kind of makes you wonder, what's the point and begs the questions, how are their programmes so different?

[Don]

2 minutes ago, mountain shadow said:

When you have a disparity like that between two of the most respective LRF models, it kind of makes you wonder, what's the point and begs the questions, how are their programmes so different?

The CFS must have flipped then as that has also been showing months with a positive AO?!

[ArHu3]

2 hours ago, mountain shadow said:

When you have a disparity like that between two of the most respective LRF models, it kind of makes you wonder, what's the point and begs the questions, how are their programmes so different?

Cfs initialization november 5th VS ec October 1st

[Seasonal Trim]

21 minutes ago, CanadianCoops said:

Nothing like a sweeping statement to start the day. I'm not sure we can make a blanket statement like this with so many signals for cold in place this year, Yes it's early and all just starting to unfold and needs to fall into place, but I'd take this over the last few years any day.

I'll reply in here as to not go off topic in the MOD thread. 

As @bluearmy said, other than the FI charts showing potential cold later in November, the current signals are for December to be unsettled with the PV strengthening and there isn't "so many signals for cold in place". Although not set in stone, I haven't seen anything yet to get excited about this Winter. There's still plenty of time to go yet though, so there's every possibility we might get something worth waiting for. 

[Summer Sun]