Mild maybe but it's a far cry from exceptional - even for January!

GFS Op - until about Tue 17th, a westerly influence for Britain with passing LPs increasing the windiness and to some extent pulling cold air down from the N before the next LP arrives (LPs Fri 6th 975mb, Sun 8th 950mb, Thu 12th 980mb all Outer Hebrides, Mon 16th 980mb Iceland) . Then a sustained ridge of HP from the SW reaching to the N Sea while LP settles over the Baltic

ECM - like GFS with minor differences in timing and position of pressure systems.

GEFS - mean temps soon down to norm and staying there with quite good agreement between ens members through to 21st. (brief mild burst around Thu 12th). Rain in most places from time to time throughout, heavy in the NW.

Yep, I'm afraid I think we can safely write off January now - even though it's only 5th.

I refuse to write off the whole winter this early, but the synoptics are very stuck now, and I wouldn't rule out a colder March and April again and the remainder of the winter being largely mild (again).

A split polar Viortex  possible first sign of the SSW influencing the troposphere,

and a warm USA meaning no obvious accelerator fora strong jet off the Atlantic.

What seems alarming to me, since the pre-Christmas anomaly, is the reach of the cold air into continents has been as abnormally lacking - as the heat was so abundant in the same regions last summer. Is this a portrait of the new modern winter? 

N hemisphere anomaly charts would be of interest to compare this January with the average.

I've not looked at the GFS op run this morning but the zonal wind plot I posted above suggests it is not showing an SSW.  I will happily stand corrected.

why do you do it to yourself? Writing off Jan when it had 26 days left

Similar to Arwen gave us snow in November which topped at 8cm.  Shame about 2022 being virtually snowless year.

yep I think January is a write off now for sure. I'm thinking early Feb may provide a more settled slightly colder spell with some frosts but nothing exceptional. And I expect this will be yet another snowless Winter here.

Maybe for a long hyped and well predicted cold spell.  But we have already had that, and it was snowless here. 

Much more memorable would be a good snow event followed by a ridge of high pressure resulting in 24 hours of freeze/snow enjoyment.  That would be great.  That cannot be ruled out. 

E.g this GFS chart shows the potential:

https://www.wetterzentrale.de/maps/GFSOPEU06_204_1.png 

This was a classic here in 2021:

https://www.wetterzentrale.de/maps/archive/2021/cfsr/CFSR_1_2021010818_1.png 

Be foolish to rule out somewhere getting a decent snowfall. 

All in FI but something to watch and also the MJO which will be in a more favourable phase?

Beyond then any claims of wintry blasts, snowmageddon, blow torches, weeks of zonality etc. are guesswork and should be called such. As this is the model output thread and the only models that go that goes out to the end of Jan are the CFS (no comment) and the ensembles (check out the uncertainties at that time scale) I think it’s safe to ignore such guesses if you are interested in what the models actually show.

What they actually show is a train of unsettled conditions (notably mild initially especially in the south) with weather from a westerly quarter, the potential for lots of rain (notably) in western parts and potentially damaging winds but massive uncertainty in the specific details. What they do not show is that it is safe to write of January whatever that means. And no Sean there is no SSW likely in the immediate future as far as I can see and any PV displacement lies in the realms of FI and guesswork too.

Happy New Year 😉

All quite correct though.

It's all for show, its all for attention. Mooms as much as we love him has a personality trait that means he simply cannot help himself. This is the same Mooms that time and time again will post a CET prediction at the top or bottom of the pile. In other words 'look at me'. Mooms may be writing off the entire month of January but remember this is the same Mooms that predicted  CET of just 2.2c at a time in late December when it looked mild for the first half of the January..... Just saying. 

https://www.theweatheroutlook.com/atmosphere/stratosphere 

The charts use data from the GFS and GEFS models. 

We'd just had the coldest December in over 100 years then the rest of the winter was average to mild and very unexciting. And weather watchers everywhere whinged and whinged.

But this is quite ordinary.

In the nearly 4 decades I've been here most winters IMBY (SE England) have been for the most part mild and grey with very little in the way of snow . To the extent that I remember any exceptions like 1995-96 and 2009-10 vividly. 

Cold isn't the norm. Mild is. Being a weather nut I can also remember painfully mild abberations like late Jan to early Feb 2002 and Dec 2015. But most people will recall only the former and forget the latter and thus have unrealistic expectations of snowmageddon each time.

Last month we had cold and snow , I watched my gas meter soar during an energy bills crisis and my neighbours pipes burst leading to calamitous scenes..

Maybe it's just age but tbh I can see the pluses of a boring mild winter nowadays. Certainly one of the more innocuous impacts of AGW if you ask me ! 

Looks like a lovely southerly waft to me.

indeed but does get there in the end, looked for a moment the high was going to go differently! 

If 'mild' didn't almost always equal 'and wet', I'd see your point.

May return tomorrow.

https://twitter.com/thesnowdreamer/status/1611093677278912533?s=46&t=8VlLquQhYwl8TEmoQRnvEg