But surely we can't be sure still, what will happen in the 6-10 day range- everyone's been talking about the wild swings in the models, especially the GFS op. ECM was still pretty this morning.

And even if the 6z was remarkably on the button, plenty of the outputs in the 6z suite give a good blast of sub -5 uppers and N or NEly fetch for a few days and the mean pressure set up from about 162 to 222 is for LP to the E and HP N or NW. All we have to do is compare to other years - at least we haven't been zonally groundhog-day'd for the whole of November & December and there's still the chance of wintry precipitation during Christmas week. If you take away the excitement/hype from the last few days, what we're left with is not a bad outlook at all- and personally I'm less bothered about wintry weather once we're past 26th.

So, 

That's the thing 24hrs earlier so could all be different now!?

Not unexpected to see the models jumping around with regards to the weather Christmas day and beyond with it being 6 days away still. The gfs looks out on its own this morning when looking at the differences between it and the Euro's at just t120. Apart from the gem the ukmo looks the best going forward but am wary whether the energy to the east will phase with the energy to the west ( we don't want this ). 

Does anyone have the ukmo t168 charts they could post.

In fact 6z has pushed it back another 12+ hours and reduced the severity of the cold drop off.  The warm up beyond Christmas is starting to look like an unwelcome trend.  Hopefully the pack swings back towards the control on later runs.

 LLTNP 105m asl 

And let's be honest white Xmas's are as rare as hens teeth 

We may know or we may not, but come what may we’ll know if we do or we don’t.

Model watching - thus it is and always has been (as far as I know).

😎

I doubt the 12z will resolve unless the ensembles spread is significantly reduced  and all main 12z agree .  Any 12z Op could be anywhere on this spread for the 23rd (Manchester) . 

Here

https://www.theweatheroutlook.com/twodata/ukmet.aspx

Notable shift away from cold on the London GEFS 06z data table

https://www.theweatheroutlook.com/premium/gefs-tables.aspx

has to be taken as most accurate as it’s the latest data but historically the 6z is perceived as a fallible run!

Agree. I think today's 12z cycle is the most eagerly awaited of the century so far. 

Good Met update , anyone who is writing off the possibility of wintry weather is foolish IMO

Poor 12z ICON G this afternoon for cold weather fans.

I will go down the fool route! Few days of cold then back to usual mild. There is now a much higher chance of this scenario. 

The writing is on the wall for another failed cold snap, but I will reserve my own judgement until tomorrow morning. In my location there was no real chance of snow from the set up, but I find the chase is the fun, even if its chasing the cold with those north and west of my locale.

Good chart I say 

Yes its usually the decider for me. But its not perfect either.  FI is still at t72 here, so this will have some way to run but thats a cold 144 Christmas Day chart.

Yes, messy but could be worse overall. Still lots of twists and turns to come, especially given the UKMO 12z.

Upgrade sofar after this mornings debacle

Yes, exactly.  I was just looking at T+72 across UKMO, ICON and GFS and GFS has the LP just a few hundred miles further east and a touch further north even at that stage, and without the slight flattening of the LP circulation that the UKMO shows (which leads to a trough and a slider).  In the normal course of events a couple of hundred miles would be irrelevant but it leads to a different pattern over the British Isles 3 days later.