Since the winter moaning thread has just been started, I will therefore assume that it's not too early to start the general chat thread which goes with that. Because of that, I have taken the decision to start this particular thread for that particular purpose. I know that we're not yet officially into the meteorological winter since the start of the winter is now only five days away as I write, I don't believe that this should make much of a difference now. As a result, this is probably as good a time any to begin that thread now, which this is.

I assumed the winter discussion thread that's been up and running for several weeks included the general chat???

The moaning threads were created to keep the moaning and whining (and I'm as guilty as anyone) out of the general discussion. I think overall it's the right thing to do, but fragmenting discussion too far is a danger, especially as some posts can straddle model review, general chit-chat, and a bit of a moan.

I'm therefore not sure we need to split the general chatter and more model-based discussion into two separate threads.

I can see some merit in that, but it was only earlier on this year that a general chat thread was started by Bolty in order to compliment the moaning thread for that particular season. That seemed to be quite a good idea to me and that has how it has been since then for each season since then. Yes, there is the Winter Discussion thread but I always viewed that as a means of discussing issues such as the latest model output for the coming winter in order to prevent the Model Output threads from becoming too cluttered up with all of the prognosis of what is likely to happen during the current winter.

Furthermore, the Winter Discussion threads have then tended to be forgotten all about in previous years once the actual winter has got underway, and I just thought that because of that, it would be a good idea to have a separate general chat thread in the same way that there is for all of the other seasons as that also keeps everything a lot more consistent.

However, I am only one person on this forum with one particular opinion and to me, it is the opinion of the majority of the members of this forum which matters the most rather than my own opinion. Because of that, please feel to discount this thread (if you are a mod, you may delete this thread if you feel that it is not appropriate to have that in this case) if you don't believe that it should play any relevant part going forward.

Winter 2018/19 GENERAL CHAT should not be another moaning thread. When and if the White stuff falls then perhaps it will get more use,,, My snow shovel has to get used when it arrives from a well known online shopping store...