Yes, hard to say but it does seem to be a thing.

At macro level we have:

• Neutral to moderately positive AMO: nothing new
• Fading La Niña with background of resilient positive PDO (this PDO state does seem to be a real change)
• Neutral to slightly low Eurasian snow cover (nothing new)
• Very low arctic sea ice (nothing new)
• Relatively low soil moisture across central and Northern Europe, but I think this is a symptom not a  cause
• Cold ocean in the Atlantic cold spot off Greenland (a bit scary but nothing new)

Ive been watching the PDO. It does seem to have flipped since the last big El Niño. Despite 2 years of La Niña it is still neutral, which suggests it may now be in a long term warm phase. Perhaps that’s a factor. Or perhaps just randomness.

Didn't it all kick off in Feb with that mega SSW event? I recall Brian (I think) saying something along the lines of whether this could cause a major pattern shift. Since then we have had a completely different set up.

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Today it seems like the GFS and the ECMWF are backing curvy temperature pattern both warm and also chilly weather is supported along with some fine and dry spells, clear skies night and day as well and some Low Pressure coming off the cold NW and N Atlantic Sea at times with rain cross UK then a few blustery showers.

Three fine and very warm days and a thunderstorm or some cool chilly nights and days, a very mixed outlook indeed.

Btw -I took a look at Scandinavia and Oslo was 28.0C today and Stockholm 27.0C so its certainly on the cards here as possible.

With these charts not updating

http://www.wxmaps.org/pix/temp4

http://www.wxmaps.org/pix/prec4

Anyone know where I can find equivalent 8 day temp and precipitation anomaly charts?

Yes- this was mentioned a few times before, during and after the record strat warming. 

If indeed we have broken out of the past 30yr NH pattern we could certainly be in for a very different type of winter in Northern Europe and the UK

 Hi Gav, I sometimes times use this link mostly only for fun

https://www.met.hu/en/idojaras/elorejelzes/europai_elorejelzes/

I'm liking the look of the charts at the moment and what they "might" mean for the summer. An Azores high displaced North, a block in Scandinavia, lots of nice horizontal anticyclones and a tendency to Easterlies. Feels 1995ish. And that 1995 thread that's caught everyone's imagination, and the fact that in an era of global warming we don't have a stand-out summer in this decade despite the fact the near continent has had several.

Wrt 1995 I flagged it up in early April here:

https://www.theweatheroutlook.com/twoother/twocontent.aspx?type=hpnews&id=4280&title=Summer+2018+weather

I continue to think there is a (low but significant) chance of it being repeated this year. On the other hand I wouldn't be surprised to see an increased frequency of cool northwesterly spells during JJA.  

GFS 0z producing just such a spell the instant June starts - FI but ties in with the 'June Monsoon', and at least the whole BH week looks fine

For the immediate future, LP over France looks on the fax chart to be bringing in a few showery troughs over S England next week

Yes. Brian did suggest that as a possibility.

When we then had those extraordinary, old-school, long-fetch easterlies in March, the sort of things which some had said were a thing of the past, I remember comparing the February SSW to the unblocking of a drain.

Years ago I'd stood waist-deep in a roadside ditch for what seemed like ages, fruitlessly trying to clear a blocked tunnel under the road using a long length of hazel. Suddenly there was a violent gurgling, and I was almost swept off my feet as decades of accumulated debris gave way. The point of the comparison was the after-effect. The whole landscape changed. Upstream of the blockage, what had deemed like permanent ponds had disappeared; meanwhile, downstream, new ones formed.

Given that the atmosphere is just another fluid, I wondered whether the vast amounts of heat which had been belched into space in that February event might turn out also to have an unblocking effect, with similarly radical alterations to the atmospheric landscape.

Very nice.

http://old.wetterzentrale.de/pics/Reem2161.html

Note that the new pattern we’ve had since February is different from the kinds of negative AO / NAO periods we got around 2007-2012. There is no Greenland high. In fact the GH is as weak as I can remember. It’s not the kind of pattern you’d expect from an AO reversal or indeed from low solar activity.

The jet stream is not diving South under northern blocking: its bifurcating but mainly riding over the top.

Even when the models throw out cool northwesterlies they are doing so from a mid Atlantic anticyclone, not ridging into Greenland. That is substantially different from the last few years. I can’t help thinking it’s a +PDO thing rather than the SSW (which reverses the AO).

U.K. summers this decade have fallen some way behind the general U.K. or European temperature trend. At some point we will surely overshoot in the other direction.

Thanks Polar Low?

Is that the fabled ECM 30 day ensembles? 

Much the same charts this morning, but more certainty over the showers and thunderstorms for the south, and the cool NW spell sets in a day earlier, on Fri 1st.

GFS 5 day rainfall accumulation. I'm hoping to miss most of the showers. 

An easterly at this time of year wouldn't be very good for this part of the world either or anywhere down the east coast of both Scotland and England for that matter. If the air from the near continent is dry enough, we would probably still get some sunny afternoons once any low cloud and east coast haar had burned off, due to that strong sunshine at this time of year (by the time in question, we will then just be less than a month away from the summer solstice).

However, I would imagine that it could get a bit depressing after a while seeing every morning start off with that easterly muck in the form of low cloud and/or haar, resulting in yet more grey skies  and another permacast hell. Furthermore, that cool wind from straight in off the North Sea would mean that it would never actually get all that warm here, even if the Sun does break through in the afternoon.

We had plenty of that easterly stuff at the very end of the winter and during the first half of this spring, so we could probably do without getting even more of that as we head towards the start of the actual summer. If we do though, I'm sure that we will be hearing plenty more from Richard from Aberdeen on this subject.

Away from the east coast an easterly under high pressure at this time of year would bring plenty of fine and warm weather for central, southern & southwestrn areas, and Wales. 

I agree. This year so far has been reminding me of 2013, and though details haven't been all the same the general patterns have been similar (i hope that makes sense). . . Remember though how good that summer was - July was a fantastic month.

It was certainly a good one compared to the dross that we have had in almost every other summer in the past 11 years. save for 2014 which wasn't a bad one either in this part of the world. I think 2013 is remembered as a good one mostly because of that fantastic fortnight in July. June and August 2013, while not too generally, never really came close to scaling the same heights that July of that year did.

Perhaps in Scotland is was a mucher shorter affair but pretty much the whole month of July south of the border it was a scorcher.

June if I remember correct had some hot days mixed with more unsettled stuff, but nothing unusual for June. 

August was very 'plain' lacking in any heatwaves, but still low to mid 20's. Was it that August that had an unusual cold spell early on??

2014 was as you say another beautiful summer.

Last year was a good summer I thought.

Last year was a good summer down in England up until some point during July when everything then went downhill even down there.

Here in Scotland, it was a different story because after a dry spring which included our driest April on record here in Edinburgh, the summer then began on a really miserable note with what ended up being our wettest June on record here in Edinburgh.

To date, that is actually the last month in which I can remember us having 100 mm or more of rain during any given month at any of my three local stations here in Edinburgh, and this shows that last July and August weren't quite as bad here.

Nevertheless, even those months were still wetter than average (they just weren't as wet as last June) and so, that was rather a miserable summer overall.

Another point about last year was that the highest temperature of last summer here in Edinburgh was only about 25°C which was achieved on both days of one single weekend and yet, the temperature during last May reached 28°C here at one point in time, which then ended up being our highest temperature of the entire year.

So far, this has been a really good month with the temperature going above 20°C on a number of occasions. Yet, the temperature during this month so far has never come close at any time, to that highest temperature of the same month during last year despite all of the good weather which we have had. Furthermore, there are also no signs of us getting close to that sort of temperature here either, even though the overall outlook is still looking good.

So yes, there was some decent summer weather last year. It's just that very little of that came during the actual summer itself.