It has been the least interesting winter for me in my lifetime - I recall winter 2019/20 was very zonal but there was sleet and hail showers in February and early March! From a meteorological weather enthusiast perspective it has been absolutely dire . No cold spells or SSW or any easterly or northerly or freezing fog or ice days to report of - even with the high pressure most of January we never managed freezing fog or harsh frosts and daytime temperatures still reached double figures most days! What's the cause of this and why can't we see freezing fog these days under high pressure and why back in the days when we had high pressure we had freezing fog - severe frosts lasting all day?
It maybe a different story further north with storm Malik and Corrie but for us southerners it's been a borefest with an exceptional number of overcast days preventing frosts most of the time and nothingness going on! What is the cause of this high pressure being so overcast and not being a frosty and freezing foggy high? Is the High pressure in the wrong place?
It's fair to say our chances of cold was at or around Christmas and this failed!
I still maintain that the main cause of our milder than average winter or lack of blocking is because of the persistent blocking of high pressure in the NE Pacific/SW Alaska which sends the jet south to N America bringing cold weather there and low pressure forming off eastern seaboard of America and shooting north eastwards from Newfoundland and Nova Scotia to Greenland and Iceland and flattening the ridge or any ridge that does attempt to form northwards in those Latitudes.
What are your thoughts on this winter?
According to Gavin P. (who had forecast a cold winter this time like a lot of people) in one of his recent videos, he reckons that we might have failed to get a cold winter this time because the easterly QBO was possibly too strong for that. Normally when you get an easterly QBO, that will tend to favour a cold winter, but it doesn't always actually work out that way and last winter was actually a lot colder than this winter despite the fact that we were in a westerly QBO phase back then which would normally favour a milder winter.
Gavin P. covers the QBO quite a lot during every autumn when is doing his winter update videos and what I have just mentioned about the QBO so far does crop up quite a lot there. I already had a funny feeling though that it was going to be curtains for a cold winter this time when we had that really warm September last year because up until now, there has never been any cold winter on record which has come after such a warm September.
Later on, Gavin P. then looked at the QBO again and noticed that when you get a really strong easterly QBO such as what we have had for this winter, that actually tends to go against us getting a cold winter. It would therefore have been interesting to see whether or not he would still have forecast a cold winter if he had spotted that during his winter update videos and produced a separate set of analogues for that. My thinking is that he might well have taken a different view of this winter as a result, although we will never actually be able to know that for certain.
Finally, it should also be observed that whilst the analogues were pointing towards a cold winter, the vast majority of the model output was actually going for a mild winter this time. Gavin P. in his long term seasonal forecasts are usually largely based on the various analogues from his seasonal update videos and this is often done in a way which tends to result in the model output being overlooked a bit. I have a feeling that this is perhaps yet another occasion where Gavin P. probably should have paid more attention to what the models were saying, rather than relying too much on those analogues because to me, there is obviously a reason why those models were going for a mild winter in the first place.
The end result of this is that whilst all of this might look like a big fail for Gavin P.'s winter forecast and the various analogues, we have to say hats off to the model output at the end of the day for getting that one right.
Edited by user
11 February 2022 14:47:57
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Reason: Not specified
The north of Edinburgh, usually always missing out on snow events which occur not just within the rest of Scotland or the UK, but also within the rest of Edinburgh.