Awful output in 5 days time or you coul look at fantasy land of GFS

http://www.wetterzentrale.de/maps/ECMOPEU00_120_1.png

http://www.wetterzentrale.de/maps/UKMOPEU00_120_1.png

http://www.wetterzentrale.de/maps/GEMOPEU00_120_1.png

Eastern Europe going into the freezer later next week with the UK on the edge

Looks really exciting for a moment- until you zoom and see these are the 850s. Alarmingly, the 850s over Lapland in the third frame don't even dip to -5. I'd get excited if these figures were all about 8C lower.

That’s a rather big change between the 06z (and 00z) op charts.

12z

06z

If the GFS 12z is correct you'll literally be able to stand on the White Cliffs of Dover and watch the cold air feeding into mainland Europe. I guess that leads to a number of permutations depending on your view of Europe and cold weather. This time not everyone is a winner. 

I guess this would leave us with the Atlantic weather systems as we go into January.

or another small adjustment would mean some UK cold

It could well be just this that the MetO are basing their thoughts for the second half of January on, Neil. I certainly wasn't expecting any dramatic change in the weather pattern in the early days of January going by many model runs we have had both in the lead-up to Christmas and since we entered the festive season.

What GFS does seem to gave been suggesting in FI in some of its op runs have been a form of cool/sold zonality for a time towards mis-January; my area had a few days of snow from this sort of set-up in the middle of January this year.

If the technical SSW starts on the 1st then the 16th would be a standard start time for a trop response. It does look like we have two weeks of more boring nothingy weather to get through.  Hopefully by the 16th things should look far more exciting. 

The strat is cooling at upper and mid levels on the 1st Jan. There are indications of a warming episode from 05/01 or 06/01 but it looks less marked than the first one.

As far As I'm aware technically a SSW starts when winds at 10hpa 60N. go into reverse which happens on the 1st.

Yes, a slower evolution by the GFS on the 12z but the ultimate outcome is still the same, a Euro High with the jet going over the top, a similar pattern to many of the late eighties/late nineties Januarys.

I still don't understand why a SSW event is only classed as such when it reaches the pole, and why this is considered more significant than the SSW that already has occurred over Siberia. 

Ok, I thought that was when a major SSW was classified as having occurred. However, your point is valid either way. 

More or less in line with the ECM mean this morning, which delays the decline of the high's influence by a couple of days compared to yesterday's run, which has me worrying  that the Atlantic may not break properly at all and that we'll be stuck with this present nothingness for an eternity. 

Well technically the vortex is split but it might as well not be for all the good it does the UK!

Yup, it's something which often catches people out! (In that an SSW is defined by wind reversal rather than just temperature!)

Martin

yes at this rate much ado about nothing. It seems so difficult at times to get real cold to these shores, and I feel this winter could well fall into the frustrating category 

Impressively the mean 850 for London for the 2nd has fallen 5 degrees since the 6z run!

A reminder, if any were needed, that ensembles are capable of flipping in their entirety even at relatively short range.

Here's the 6z and 12z GEFS 850s for London.

IIRC, that is exactly what happened back in mid-February 2009, to name one instance from the not too distant past although on that occasion it was from cold to mild rather that the other way around.

& There was me talking all that rubbish ( according to some )

All of sudden the mild zonal output has gone & the GFS is playing catch up.

If only the lovers of the GFS would do the same. 

*The reason GFS so bad - very poor resolution of the strat split &

The subsequent downwelling into the trop...*

No, there is no output that sends the High north, and there is no point in wasting time with a continuation of the High on top of us, we are going to see a well advertised zonal reset by day 9/10.

Just a reminder to people to play nicely. My finger is still itching to press the delete button.