Ridiculous mild minima in particular with a ludicrous absence of frost once more. Tedious, depressing and unpleasant in the extreme. How in the hell can we be in such a dire, uninteresting era when we have had two second halves of December inside 10 years in which it hasn't dropped below 1.5C when June has managed to drop below that in the past?

I make this the 9th December since 2011 in which the second half has been milder than the first something that was fairly uncommon prior. In fact there looks to have been about the same number in the 50 years from 1961-2010. It's also the 5th dismally wet December in a row but at least all the others managed one day of lying snow. This has felt like the worst of the lot. Horrendous in every possible way.

I see the Hogmanay Celebrations in Edinburgh have been cancelled due to wind. People will have come from all around the world for this and all there is are force 5 winds which is just standard December wind and the same as when I went down for the cancelled light show a couple of weeks ago. This country is an embarassing joke. The laughing stock of the world.

Instead we now have persistent rain as the rain that starts today is now merged with tomorrow's feature into perhaps 70mm(as per 6z GFS) of warm and then cool rain. 

They use the ERA5 reanalysis data (the same as you can look up online), as well as the archive of old T+0 (i.e. analysis) high-res ECM charts. They then take in the same initialisation data as the regular ECM uses, then run a series of comparisons to produce the output.

So both are right. There's no observation data in the "AI" database, as it's based on old charts. But you're right in that initialisation data is used to start the comparison going - there could be no other way of doing it really!

When the UK has its usual mild long fetch southwesterly weather the whole of the country is more or less the same, whether you’re in the pennines or the SW coast of Cornwall. 

However when a cold snap or spell is forecast it is rare for us down here to get snow that may last more than a day or so if we are lucky to get it at all. For someone who loves snow I could easily move back to my roots in the Derbyshire Peak District every winter just in case snow is forecast. 

I just asked my new dishwasher and it agrees with you.

You got remarried recently, Michael?

🤣 I am not going to comment further (in case my original dishwasher is looking over my shoulder).

😉

All the best for 2025, mate

If nothing else, it'll be much easier to heat the house and keep it warm. 

My moan is for different reasons. Very little in the way of acitive Atlantic weather, with the usual sequence of fronts and air masses etc this winter. We just seem to be going from prolonged, benign mild spells to somewhat less prolonged, benign cooler spells. It's all just different shades of nothingness this winter. 

The bottom line is that we just don't get changeable weather like we used to and that was shown up really well over the Christmas period when during my trip to the Scottish Borders at that time, the weather didn't change one single bit from one day to the next for that entire week in which I was there.

That was a completely snow-free and frost-free period which was mild, completely dry and mostly overcast with the only changes from day to day coming from certain days having the odd hint of brightness at times with other days not even having that.

That to me is as boring and uninteresting as it gets but that is something which is becoming all too common these days.

With this current cold spell, we are at least doing well for frost and although we're not even halfway through the month just yet, we've already had more air frosts in this month than what we had in the whole of December and this means that only at least another two air frosts need to be recorded between now and the end of this month in order for this month to be frostier than average at Edinburgh Gogarbank.

In addition to that, we are also doing much better for sunshine than has been the case for quite a long time and we have already had not far short of 60% of our 1991-2020 January average sunshine at Edinburgh Gogarbank in this month so far.

However, the weather even with that is still changing very little from one day to the next and it wouldn't have been so bad if the influence of the North Sea hadn't completely ruined our chances of getting at least some snow with this spell of weather at a time when many others have had plenty of it.

There is plenty of snow on the Pentland Hills which aren't all that far away to my south and that is something which I can see very well in the distance from my south facing kitchen window but that just isn't the same as actually having some snow at my own back door and that is something which I have still to actually see during this winter so far, even though we're now about halfway through the winter.😡

A completely unremarkable and quite frankly pathetic min of -5.2C last night. It quite simply defies belief that this is all that can be achieved under a 12cm snow cover with clear skies in what should be the heart of winter. Almost everywhere in the country has seen lower readings including places with no snow.

Last week was colder but still only -6.2C which is far from exceptional. Certainly not the coldest January temperature in 15 years as it was colder at the end of January 2019 despite there being only a thin covering of snow and maxima of 2-4C as opposed to only 0-2C throughout this cold spell. It really defies any kind of logical explanation as to why the minima have been so poor. Even January 2013 which saw almost perpetual overcast managed -7C while the end of January 2006 was colder with no snow whatsoever.

To make matters worse the Weekend Curse is in full swing yet again with pointless unproductive cloud filling the sky after sunrise, following three sunny weekdays. There really is nothing to enjoy about the climate here. It's the work of Satan.

Today,  overcast

Sun,  overcast

Mon,  overcast

Tue, a few sunny periods (some mistake surely?)

Wed,  overcast

Thu,  overcast

Fri,  overcast

No frosts, no mild days, just B O R I N G

That why I hate HP with passion they ruin and kill our seasons all year round now.  Surely Alps resorts also hate them.  Perhaps you see more sun once this exit next week?   Got  new garden and lawn will make use during clearance sunny slots only and refuse to associate outside under cloudy wet HP.

Yes perversely the more unsettled it gets the more likely we are to see the sun. Gotta love UK winters. 

Before we used to see nice sunny days when HP move in from any direction now the minute it set foot in at any season it automatically gloom and wet. 

We've also woke to a frost on Thursday and Friday morning.

I don't mind grey days, which have their own charm, but I also like a cold spell. Reading a range of forecasts, I can't see things changing much this month, can you? I think I am pinning snow-hopes on February now, and even that seems marginal. We shall see.

https://x.com/dylanfedericowx/status/1880839650555887631?s=46&t=0CzXil3QOYbo8W1abHQyVQ 

For my area of the world that would be our heaviest snow in decades. All these cold plunnges seem to do in the US is destroy our hopes for anything as the jet powers up. So annoying.

It's one of the annual traditions - media stories popping up of snow in places like the Sahara, or record-breaking dumps in the States. Perhaps the most frustrating thing of all is that it gives those Americans who insist there's no such thing as global warming a perfect platform, and the media laps it up.

At this rate the next time we get 6 inches here (if we ever do!) it'll end up as headline news abroad. 😂