Far too early in the year for proper winter weather - an Indian summer is more than appreciated for now. 

Give me a break, John - we have to re-roof the house next couple of weeks!

R

An absolutely cracking day: about as good as October weather can get! I've just been out for a long walk and the changing leaves coupled with a deep blue sky and a summery smell in the air is fantastic.

https://twitter.com/M35weather/status/1050001330008416256

It's been another day when the combination of the bluest of blue skies and the autumn colours has been particularly good.  I have a beech tree in my back garden (which faces north) and the sight of the leaves with the sun shining full on them set against the sky has been spectacular.

With the forecast of a cold northerly blast for the end of the week, it looks as though we're going to have the same kind of sudden change in temperatures that we had in April, except the other way round - warm to cold. It does seem that the seasons of Spring and Autumn, with moderate temperatures, hardly exist nowadays - we seem to go from Winter straight into Summer and vice versa.  (Well, IMBY anyway...)

Back from a fortnight in the Canaries. In the 90s if I was abroad I would always check newspapers to see what the weather had been like back home which would have been two days earlier as the papers were always one day behind. Nowadays, despite all the information available on the internet, I don't bother and the weather during the first week I was away is the prime reason why.

Absolutely dire, revolting and worthless typical 21st century monotony. Truly vile in fact with four out of five nights from the 9th to 13th  recording double digit minima. A totally disgusting 13.3C minimum on the 9th with day temperatures barely any higher. Utter filth.

Second week much more reasonable with some colder nights and an impressive diurnal range of 15.4C on the 20th with a min of 3.4C followed by a max of 18.8C. Otherwise maxima in the near average range of 10-14C which seems to always be the case in October these days. Still awaiting the first frost. Lowest so far was +0.9C on the 7th with nothing lower than 2.1C since then 

Sunshine for the past 15 days was below average, as is the norm for October, at 44 hours. I haven't looked at daily totals yet but would imagine next to nothing in the first week and a sunny second week.

Hardly had any rain with just 34.8mm and six days of measurable rainfall for the month to date. Some properly wet days would have been preferable to the muck of the first week. Useful instead of useless.

Pressure peaked at over 1040mb here today, with top value of 1041.74mb recorded at 10.50 this morn. Currently 1040.2mb. Pressure graph from my station over last 24 hours. 

Good to see some visual data from the far west. I have been watching that big Atlantic high develop in the forecasts for the last few days and wondered if 1040+ would make landfall!

Certainly an impressive reading for the time of year BW. 

As far as I know, 1044.0mb was achieved in the SW of Ireland earlier today, which would topple the previous Irish October record, set on October 31st 1956, by between 0.5 and 1.0mb. 

https://www.met.ie/climate/weather-extreme-records

Yes I think Valentia had a reading of 1044mb earlier today. Whether that is a rounded value or not I’m not sure.

Even more impressive is the 1054mb forecast for eastern Greenland later this coming week:

Winter is coming 

Some parts of the UK had snow last Saturday no chance of that this Saturday! 

Temps in the teens pretty much across the board

I can barely control my excitement.

Looking at the pressure anomaly charts for the next 2 weeks its just one deep LP after another forming off new found land.

hopefully this is just the season getting this out of its system... cant be doing with another winter 2014.

I can see a pattern with that as well because the last time we had a really cold March with a lot of snow going into this year was back in 2013. Back then, we had quite a good summer which was then followed by a really mild, wet and stormy winter of 2013/14 (that was the first of those two really wet, mild and stormy winters which occurred within the space of just three years with the other one being the winter of 2015/16).

This year, we has a really cold March with a lot of snow (albeit with that occurring a bit earlier on this time). That was then followed by a really hot and dry summer which means that if the same pattern continues, this winter could yet end up being a very mild, wet and stormy one. The only difference this time is that we didn't get the really warm October and Hallowe'en period this year which we got back in 2013.

If anything though, that could actually go even more against us in terms of our cold weather prospects for this winter and it wouldn't even surprise me if that bit of cold weather which we did get during the second half of October this year, ended up being "it" for our winter given the manner in which our weather can act at time.

My thinking behind that is based on the fact there has been many years where we have had a spell of summer-like weather during April only for that to then be "it" for our summer as the actual summer itself, then ends up being a poor one with a lot of rain. Given that October follows on exactly six months on from April, what we saw during the second half October 2018 was really just the exact opposite scenario of that summer-like weather in April which I have just mentioned and because of that, I would imagine that it is therefore equally as likely as a result, that this could have been "it" for our winter this year.

Having said that though, I'm hoping that this doesn't end up being the case and that we can at least get some cold and snow during the actual winter.

Quite satisfied with the outlook, considering it's November, to be honest. Mild, nothing overly wet, useable and no real sign of any unnecessary cold.

Looks like autumn 2018 is going to be drier than average for a lot of the country

I don't think you can really compare the two and claim similarities. 

For a start, March 2013 was a lot colder overall than March 2018 and the spring was as well. Infact, any lengthy warmth didn't get going until the July of 2013. This year, it kicked off the last third of April

April-June 2013 CET: 10.5C

April-June 2018 CET: 14.0C

Summer 2018 was better than summer 2013. Believe it or not, summer 2016 was warmer than summer 2013 for the CET. 

There are other differences, we were coming towards solar maximum in 2013, this time we are nearing solar minimum.

This month is heading towards having the least amount of cold weather of any month in my records or indeed that I can recall. So far just two days (1st and 2nd) have returned below average means and there is absolutely zero sign of any colder than average temperatures. April 2011 and July 2018 currently have the fewest below average means with three while 2011 has the November record with four.

The mean temperature is currently standing at 8.7C which is 0.2C above 2011 which was the mildest November on record here since at least 1856. Although that month failed to record an air frost it did have two minimum temperatures below 1C. This month, aside from 0.3C on the 2nd it has not dropped below 2.8C which is staggering. The prospect of recording a second frost free November in just seven years is very real and needless to say unwelcome. The 2010s really are the decade full of low points and little weather of worth or value.

I am beyond disgusted that the dross of the next week is being described as a cold spell when all it looks like delivering are average day temperatures and more mild nights. Every day will return a mean temperature comfortably above average.

What real cold spells in late November look like

                               Mean/Low Max/Low Min

24th-30th Nov 2012:  3.2/4.0/-1.9

17th-25th Nov 2013: 3.2/2.4/-2.0 (Trace snow)

20th-23rd Nov 2015: 2.4/1.6/-0.8 (5cm snow) 

17th-25th Nov 2016: 1.6/2.9/-4.8

23rd-30th Nov 2017: 2.3/2.1/-0.7 (6cm snow) 

This week the mins won't get as low as the low maxes that we should be routinely seeing at this time of year

Temps picking up by Friday as the wind shifts away from an easterly with most of the south back in double figures and the north in high single figures

https://weather.us/model-charts/euro/great-britain/temperature/20181127-1800z.html 

So, based on today’s output Friday may be th peak of the “warmth” (although the GFS op run paints a slightly different picture).

The lack of sunshine for eastern parts is not something I am looking forward to. No frost, no sun, on the cool side of average at times but little wintriness.