Strangely all the talk in North America seems to be of how the jet has become weaker and more meandering in recent years, leading to record-breaking incursions of both cold air southwards and mild air northwards. Yet over here the jet generally seems to be stronger and flatter. Perhaps it’s because of that meandering over America leading to more mixing of air masses which fires up the jet over the Atlantic?

Certainly the US and Canada don’t seem to have any trouble getting record cold in a warming world. 

Strangely all the talk in North America seems to be of how the jet has become weaker and more meandering in recent years, leading to record-breaking incursions of both cold air southwards and mild air northwards. Yet over here the jet generally seems to be stronger and flatter. Perhaps it’s because of that meandering over America leading to more mixing of air masses which fires up the jet over the Atlantic?

Certainly the US and Canada don’t seem to have any trouble getting record cold in a warming world. 

My own view is that it is quite possible that the AMO has had something to do with it too. It has been in a mostly positive phase since the mid-late 1990s as I understand it, but I believe from what I have read elsewhere that it is due to return to a negative phase sometime in the 2020s.

 the days of snow stopping play on June 6th at Colchester cricket ground have gone.

It was 2 June 1975, not the 6th. And, as far as I know, it's the only time snow has ever falling in southern lowland England in June. There never were "the days" when snow used to fall in June. Only the one.

And, as an aside, it was the prelude to the most beautiful sunny endless summer you could ever imagine.

Re NS Robins' point that you don't get "snow upon snow" in March, even in 2018: well, we did here. The snow began falling overnight 28 Feb/1 March and the drifts were topped up for at least a couple of further days. And, best of all, when it finally dissipated by mid-month, there was another epic fall of several inches of snow on 19 March and we got out the sledges all over again.

And that's in the West Country, just 30 m above sea level. The key point, though, is that it's rural here. I get the feeling that much of the winter moaning and doom-mongering is a consequence of everyone living in towns and/or experiencing winter by the lines of the 850 temps on the GEFS diagrams, rather than going outside.

To normal people, there's been nothing mild about this winter down here, away from the towns. No days of temps in the teens where you could let the fire go out, like last December. No need to mow the lawn. There was even a thin layer of seasonal ice on all the puddles on Christmas Day. The one defining memory so far is battling through the cold and the horizontal rain to vote on 12 December. A typical cold winter, in other words. Even while typing this I'm looking at a white wonderland of frost which will last all day in the shade.

We've lived through an awesome decade for winter fans - Jan and Dec 2010 through to 1 Feb 2019. Record-breaking stuff. But if you spent it in towns, travelling by car from centrally heated home to centrally heated office, and passed the days there gloomily eyeing up the breakdown on GEFS, then too bad. You've had global warming instead.

Not looking good really for any snow for lowland UK (on the whole). Things improve slightly as we get some cooler interludes with passing fronts, but that is about it! 

Absolutely nothing in Saddleworth snow wise this winter other than a brief sprinkle above about 400m in November! Snow is possible in March though, so we will hopefully pick something up later winter, early spring!

Back on topic, indeed, a snowless January is now virtually nailed on for my end, much like the past six January, really. 

I am actually intrigued to see if I can make this winter through without seeing a single snowflake, which would be a first. I thought it might happen last winter but we did eventually get some at the end of Jan and a few more times after that. 

I am actually intrigued to see if I can make this winter through without seeing a single snowflake, which would be a first. I thought it might happen last winter but we did eventually get some at the end of Jan and a few more times after that. 

Re NS Robins' point that you don't get "snow upon snow" in March, even in 2018: well, we did here. The snow began falling overnight 28 Feb/1 March and the drifts were topped up for at least a couple of further days.

I take it the models were rather uninspiring today, as all the chat has been about snowless winters?

 

To normal people, there's been nothing mild about this winter down here, away from the towns. No days of temps in the teens where you could let the fire go out, like last December. No need to mow the lawn. There was even a thin layer of seasonal ice on all the puddles on Christmas Day. The one defining memory so far is battling through the cold and the horizontal rain to vote on 12 December. A typical cold winter, in other words. Even while typing this I'm looking at a white wonderland of frost which will last all day in the shade.

According to the always accurate lawn mowing scale, it's been chilly here. 

Current GFS rolling out, Next Tuesday starting to look semi interesting with perhaps a little bit more oomph on this run than on past runs. The Jet being ever so much more amplified ie buckled....

dare i say it... mid next week might be wintry.... 

we shall see where this ends up... but could be a decent run.

it goes on to die a death, but the shape is much healthier, and one could argue the best chart of our "winter" so far.

The harvest this year has been very poor

12z GFS actually an improvement. A decent NW'ly from the 28th which would bring a two day cold snap. Ok not great but I'd take it this Winter. Still a long way out and the inevitable GFS watering down of the 850's to 'look forward to'.

12z GFS actually an improvement. A decent NW'ly from the 28th which would bring a two day cold snap. Ok not great but I'd take it this Winter. Still a long way out and the inevitable GFS watering down of the 850's to 'look forward to'.

If your last statement proves to be correct, and based on this season it very well may do, I think serious questions need to be asked about the GFSv3.

 

It was 2 June 1975, not the 6th. And, as far as I know, it's the only time snow has ever falling in southern lowland England in June. There never were "the days" when snow used to fall in June. Only the one.

And, as an aside, it was the prelude to the most beautiful sunny endless summer you could ever imagine.

Re NS Robins' point that you don't get "snow upon snow" in March, even in 2018: well, we did here. The snow began falling overnight 28 Feb/1 March and the drifts were topped up for at least a couple of further days. And, best of all, when it finally dissipated by mid-month, there was another epic fall of several inches of snow on 19 March and we got out the sledges all over again.

And that's in the West Country, just 30 m above sea level. The key point, though, is that it's rural here. I get the feeling that much of the winter moaning and doom-mongering is a consequence of everyone living in towns and/or experiencing winter by the lines of the 850 temps on the GEFS diagrams, rather than going outside.

To normal people, there's been nothing mild about this winter down here, away from the towns. No days of temps in the teens where you could let the fire go out, like last December. No need to mow the lawn. There was even a thin layer of seasonal ice on all the puddles on Christmas Day. The one defining memory so far is battling through the cold and the horizontal rain to vote on 12 December. A typical cold winter, in other words. Even while typing this I'm looking at a white wonderland of frost which will last all day in the shade.

We've lived through an awesome decade for winter fans - Jan and Dec 2010 through to 1 Feb 2019. Record-breaking stuff. But if you spent it in towns, travelling by car from centrally heated home to centrally heated office, and passed the days there gloomily eyeing up the breakdown on GEFS, then too bad. You've had global warming instead.

Sorry, but you must either be very young or living in some romantic cold dream world ! I will attenuate that by saying the West Country has faired marginally better than the traditional cold areas of the past like East Anglia or Scotland. We've had a handful of frosts but also many days above 10C, no max below 5C (hardly any below 7C)  and the CET at +3C doesn't lie! But having either personally experienced and followed closely 7 decades the last three have been easily the mildest and least snowy, and by a lot. I also spend a lot of my time outdoors and certainly know a bone chilling Easterly when I feel one. 2010 was the exception but that didn't come close here to '47, '63,' 79 or' 81. But for East Anglia it's not so much the lack of extremes but the lack of frequent snow showers off the North Sea. They were so frequent they wouldn't really even be worth mentioning then. A couple of cm of snow blowing around near the coast from Kent to Norfolk was ignored. Every now and then they would come 20 miles inland and could give bigger falls. I accept this is IMBY but it is a massive change.

Once again, as ever, I refer you to https://durhamweather.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/bonacina.html

Read the outstanding features on the right and look at the snow depths. We weren't talking 5-10cm then !

12z GFS actually an improvement. A decent NW'ly from the 28th which would bring a two day cold snap. Ok not great but I'd take it this Winter. Still a long way out and the inevitable GFS watering down of the 850's to 'look forward to'.

Might squeeze a -6C 850 out of it for a day or so looking at the mean and spread.

 

Might squeeze a -6C 850 out of it for a day or so looking at the mean and spread.

could conceivably be the highlight of winter. 

Perhaps some cool zonality on offer at best, pretty poor output again it has to be said 

 

If your last statement proves to be correct, and based on this season it very well may do, I think serious questions need to be asked about the GFSv3.

It almost always seems to be the case and it does make me wonder if it's such a predictable flaw why is it not addressed?

I don't know anywhere enough about this but at a guess you would've thought that such a flaw would have a cumulative effect on accuracy? 

There seems to be a problem that the more detailed a model becomes, the more accurate it is in the near term, but the likelier it is to go haywire in the longer term. We're all familiar with those  phantom day 10 ECM easterlies over the last couple of years, and the new GFS, in its attempt to be as detailed, may have gone the same way.

My guess (and it's purely an uninformed guess) is that Numerical Weather Predictions, which is what these models are, will always face a problem with making the grids smaller and the time-steps more numerous. Out to day 5, say, this is a good thing. But beyond that we're talking about an accumulation of tiny errors which become huge errors as they're carried forward from one calculation to the next. Even something as innocuous as a rounding 'error', such as calculating air pressure as 1020.5 mb and carrying that number forward to the next 3-hour interval, might produce northern blocking by day 10 if the real figure is 1020.54 bar, or zonality if the real figure is 1020.45 bar.

And the more of these tiny rounding errors you make as you increase resolution, the greater the scope for critical errors to accumulate later on.

I'd be interested to hear from anyone who does know about these things whether I'm barking up the wrong tree or not here. 

 

It was 2 June 1975, not the 6th. And, as far as I know, it's the only time snow has ever falling in southern lowland England in June. There never were "the days" when snow used to fall in June. Only the one.

And, as an aside, it was the prelude to the most beautiful sunny endless summer you could ever imagine.

Re NS Robins' point that you don't get "snow upon snow" in March, even in 2018: well, we did here. The snow began falling overnight 28 Feb/1 March and the drifts were topped up for at least a couple of further days. And, best of all, when it finally dissipated by mid-month, there was another epic fall of several inches of snow on 19 March and we got out the sledges all over again.

And that's in the West Country, just 30 m above sea level. The key point, though, is that it's rural here. I get the feeling that much of the winter moaning and doom-mongering is a consequence of everyone living in towns and/or experiencing winter by the lines of the 850 temps on the GEFS diagrams, rather than going outside.

To normal people, there's been nothing mild about this winter down here, away from the towns. No days of temps in the teens where you could let the fire go out, like last December. No need to mow the lawn. There was even a thin layer of seasonal ice on all the puddles on Christmas Day. The one defining memory so far is battling through the cold and the horizontal rain to vote on 12 December. A typical cold winter, in other words. Even while typing this I'm looking at a white wonderland of frost which will last all day in the shade.

We've lived through an awesome decade for winter fans - Jan and Dec 2010 through to 1 Feb 2019. Record-breaking stuff. But if you spent it in towns, travelling by car from centrally heated home to centrally heated office, and passed the days there gloomily eyeing up the breakdown on GEFS, then too bad. You've had global warming instead.

Thank you for the history correction, you may well be right, and this was exceptional it is true. The point was that late cold spells sufficient for snow like that in May (or June) are behind us, because there just is not enough cold air retained to be able to reach our latitudes to deliver snow. It was never common but it was regular in my childhood to see snow in April and falling even in early May. Look, stoats turned white in winter back in the 60s when I was  a boy, called ermine, and as Fairweather has said, us rural East Anglians would hardly count a snow flurry as anything of note. It is now. My dad learned to ice skate, never visiting s rink, but on ice on ponds. By the way, I have always lived in the country - hard not to in. east Anglia, although I lived in Ipswich for 4 years, 2001-2005, when incidentally I saw more snow than several years before or since. 

We will get snowy years again, especially if we get a negative NAO/ AO and an easterly QBO combining, but there can be no doubt that it is getting more difficult and less common and the cold lasts for shorter durations than in the days of my youth.  The planet was 0.6 degrees colder then, so it follows.

Jetstream currently running N of the Uk, after a bit of indecision at the end of the week it fires up again across and to the S of the UK, notably strong around Wed 5th which ties in with the pulse of rain across France at that time http://www.wxmaps.org/pix/prec4

GFS shows current HP weakening by the weekend, then as yesterday an Atlantic flow bringing in cold NW (Tue 28th, Wed 5th, almost a proper northerly with the second of these ) or mild SW (Fri 31st ) according to whether LP or H{ is dominant. ECM agrees with minor tweaks on timing. Windy for most of the outlook after this week.

GEFS in the S 1-2C above normal to 27th after which up and down with plenty of variabilty; a wet period of 4-5 days starting then but becoming drier later. Scotland milder wrt norm at first but the variable runs after 27th dwell more on the downside, and the drier period later on doesn't really put in an appearance