GFS Para is looking quite interesting in its latter stages as well.

Try the ECM & FV3....

It has a brief coolish easterly, around -7 to -8C at 850, but as Shropshire says it's always a sinker and zonality is just around the corner. The SSW seems to be just having the effect of pushing the polar vortex over towards the UK and destroying any blocking in the north Atlantic.

Not sure whether you're looking at it on TWO or another site but are you sure you're not viewing cached charts? GFSP suggests a lengthy cold period.

LOL no you didn't Doc 

’Im not sure the Met Office forecasts have ever mentioned a long fetch easterly,

Zonal reset, eh?

http://www.wetterzentrale.de/en/topkarten.php?map=1&model=ecm&var=1&run=12&time=240&lid=OP&h=0&mv=0&tr=24#mapref

Don't see it on this run, Ian.

LP established in the Med at the end of the run? I'd take that kind of "zonality" any day. 

Not on this run, but it remains poor for cold going forward  from there.

Yes I agree. However, for the sake of balance my interest has perked up this evening. You may well be right in the mid term but the pendulum has swung towards a colder outlook. That of course doesn't necessarily mean it is odds on or the favoured solution.

In your opinion.

What is pretty clear now in my view is that ECM seems reluctant to follow GFS in bringing back the atlantic from late next week, although GFS is now indicating the HP to stick around for a little longer than it was a day or two ago. If anything, ECM now seems to be going for a reinforcement of the HP from a new cell from the mid-atlantic.

It looks like a sinker to me with a "Sceuro high" and southeasterly winds into southern Europe by the end?

But yes before that quite a long coldish spell, although  the -10C isotherm (which I consider the benchmark for a proper cold spell) never quite arrives.

Yes but there is a lot of interest before we reach that point.

I hope your right Brian , but just how cold eh?

I have a nasty feeling that the SSW with give us very little this Winter...………..just a gut feeling 

Yes - see my edit 

Also the ECM 12Z looks a little more encouraging with the high building northeastwards a tad.

The main positive thing is that the very wet runs seem to have diminished in the last day or so.

ECM doesn't show the polar vortex being pushed over towards the UK; it shows a persistent mid-latitude block which is reinforced at day 10 by another surge of WAA ahead of another deep LP system heading north to the west of Greenland.  

With the current set up the jet is being forced north; of course some energy in the southern arm would be good but it's fairly clear that we don't have a 'sinker' set-up however much Ian keeps repeating it.

I'm afraid that the fact is that his insistence on the Atlantic winning out has been quite consistently overplayed this winter so far and there's little in the current output to say that record will be changing anytime soon.

I agree.  I was expecting the jet to rampage mercilessly through as the block sunk southeastwards. The output tonight has somewhat upset that scenario with mid latitude blocking on the menu.  Slow moving slow changing. There is still the outside chance that the block will gain traction slightly further NW too, giving a glancing NEly to the SE quadrant on 3/4th Jan.  

This whole run looks very unnatural to me. Forming high pressure cell spews out of the US with alarming speed then decides to plank its fat, bloated backside itself right over where it is least wanted. 

Yes significantly different to anything I've seen recently hopefully a sign of things to come a lovely run.

But if you look at the pressure pattern in the North Atlantic there's a massive upper high covering the area from Iceland to Norway and south into mainland Europe.   Then there's the surge of WAA ahead of the deep LP tracking north up the eastern side of North America. What is going to happen to any surface high that runs up against the existing block?   It either bumps into the upper high and/or stalls (because the jet isn't pushing it eastwards).     

It could all get flattened out at Day 11 but the block may hold.  

Of course it will. Limboesque conditions since the Autumn will continue without relent. And you are right, no real power in the jet stream to be had, which says a lot about the current state of the atmosphere. I've recorded higher windspeeds in June than this December, and this in itself is unnatural to the point of obscenity. 

wrong thread??