The GEFS have  largely settled down and appear to be arriving at a cool / colder spell of some longevity. 

Showers at times, wintry over higher ground for the east and south east appear likely. The uppers are a tad too warm to deliver anything of significance to lowland UK. For week 3 though in November this is no bad set up.

Attention should still be drawn to the end of the month. That is one huge mass of cold developing to the far NE. If that block can retrogress towards Iceland and Greenland then things will become very wintry.

At the moment and due to the timescales support for such an option is relatively small. IMO it is only a matter of time before it all floods our way. Blocking to the north appears King at the moment. 

Winter 2018/19 starts loaded with potential. 

http://www.wetterzentrale.de/maps/ECMOPEU00_144_1.png

It will feel bitter in the wind.
The north west escaping the worst/ best of it.

edit: but retrogression looks unlikely in ECM

Agreed. It’s lively to have the building blocks in place already. 

Can't remember seeing anything like week 2 appearing in November

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

IIRC 2010 came in on th back of a northerly, not an easterly., and that in early Dec

Stunning ecm day 10 again , looks like a slider followed probably by a significant easterly day 11, 12. Insane northern blocking again from all the models. Which makes the BBC forecast all the more strange just hope its wrong

I agree, but one thing I have noticed this year is that changes have popped into the GEFS output at very short time frames. That's probably because of the high pressure blocking that we've seen a lot of since Feb.

By the way, does anyone think the current patterns are more a "legacy" of what happened in late winter than anything taking place now? In other words are the "after shocks" of that overriding QBO, SST's, ENSO etc? 

Yes. It is also a pattern not too dissimilar to what occurred during the first half of Summer which brought record heat/near record drought to some places, which I believe was also an aftershock from the late February/March pattern. 

I would say yes...

High pressure has had a large influence in our weather since the SSW in February. Once high pressure becomes dominant it can be very hard to move. The area of higher pressure to the North has almost stifled the jet and even though it's tried on a couple of occasions this Autumn it has never really got going. Also the size of the high is considerable.  

From my own perspective here in N.Ireland - I'm looking forward to a couple of weeks of unbelievably benign weather - which is a real bonus given the time of year.

Things building very nicely Steve. Seems that from a couple of days ago the cold has been delayed a little. But, I would say that delay will cause more of a cold bubble to burst and being a bit later as we head towards December can only be better for timings.

The weather might be ‘banal’ for a while but the synoptics being modelled are far from benign. Near record breaking height anomalies to our North - and great potential for significantly colder weather into late Nov (although maybe not for NI) 😉

I'm also someone who believes this. A ripple in the pond changing it's course because a larger one was dropped elsewhere. The aftershocks continue until another one is dropped.

As a kid I felt the same about the storm of 87. 

I don't disagree re the heights Neil....but they don't always deliver what most folk hope for - IE significant snow/low temperatures. 

My gut instinct says 'cold synoptics' may persist for a while - possibly without delivering too much of anything exceptional and then possibly fizzle out as winter progresses. If we had a SSW I might be more enthusiastic, (though even that doesn't always deliver) but this time its a split polar vortex which isn't the result of a SSW. In addition while NAO is tending negative at the moment, the tendency from the Nino ENSO signal is to drive a more positive phase of the NAO in the medium to longer term.  Couple that with a switch to a westerly QBO and there is a lot of reason to make me hesitate before getting too excited. Of course all this is pure conjecture - I could be wrong. Like everyone else I enjoy the anticipation of what might or might not happen. 

Well, it is arguable that the SSW itself was a consequence of the solar signal. These things are all interconnected.

Perhaps the Model algorithms will need to be revisited, since our NWP models were all developed at a time of strong solar activity.

At the time of that off-the-scale SSW I compared it to my experience of unblocking a roadside ditch whose exit pipe had been gummed up by literally decades of gunge. I was almost swept off my feet by the violence of the flow when the dam burst, but it was the aftermath that was most notable: ponds disappearing upstream and new ones appearing downstream. The atmosphere's a fluid too, and perhaps there's a new layout up there as well: a consequence of all that bunged-up heat being released from the troposphere at the end of the winter.

One other point: the Little Ice Age was characterized as much by the severity of its heatwaves and droughts (e.g. 1651-4) as the cold. Just an illustration of the effects of persistent high pressure.

It appears we have a propensity for blocking and a less mobile setup. When that happens, the weather gets stuck in a rut for weeks on end.

This has to be a consequence in part of the extended and deep solar minimum, combined with the very weak solar cycle just ended.

So when it is cold it will stay cold.

When it is dry it will stay dry.

When it is hot it will stay hot.

When it is wet, it will stay wet,

When it is mild it will stay mild.

It all depends on where the blocks locate and on which side of the boundary we fall.

GFS 06Z rolling out and it tears the PV asunder in short time frame.

Textbook stuff - if it verifies, Europe and the UK are going into the freezer - massive Greenland block.

06Z GFS is off on one again, thinking is 2009 all over again! 😬😝😁 pic.twitter.com/LHIdIdQBbD

— Matt Hugo (@MattHugo81) November 15, 2018

Another astonishing OP run there with -11 850s in widely from the 27th. Long way to go, but it would be foolish to dismiss the potential for a high end severe early winter spell.

I don't think GFS 06Z is model output - the crayon was given to the biggest cold ramper going and that is the result of his scribbling.

You could not imagine the 6Z verifying, because it would usher in severe cold and heavy snow and in the last few days of November too.