I remember in years gone past some models were championed at being better in blocking scenarios. Definitely not the case!

It's a fantastic run, around 240 it has an Atlantic front turning to snow, stalling and fizzling in situ, with anywhere from 8 inches on the ground north of Birmingham to 2 inches across Kent.

https://wxcharts.com/?panel=default&model=ecmwf,ecmwf,ecmwf,ecmwf®ion=nweurope&chart=overview,850temp,mslp,850temp_anom&run=00&step=240&plottype=10&lat=51.398&lon=0.922&skewtstep=0 

GFS is having none of it, of course, but I wouldn't be at all surprised if the road back to the Atlantic isn't as straightforward as the GFS etc show.

No indication of yesterday's tail-end easterly, nor at short range,  of Q's hoped-for ice days.

ECM : like GFS but throws in an extra close approach from LP on the Atlantic Wed 19th.

GEM: like GFS

GEFS: In the S, a steady rise to mild 850s around Fri 21st (5C above norm) and then a steady decrease back to norm; ens members fairly closely clustered and fewer cold outliers than yesterday. Rain from Wed 19th onwards. In the N, hint of something colder around Mon 17th and rain starting a few days earlier.

I can't believe this, would be scraping victory from the jaws of defeat.

(Saturday early morning)

After this point deeper cold returns. Temps near freezing for most eastern parts, 850s are about +2C at this point, so a significant warm nose.

With the deep cold restablishing itself on saturday, the rain snow boundary starts to move back SW:

(Saturday mid morning)

The T850s at the snow/rain boundary here are about +1C, this is the most extreme warm nose effect I think I've seen in the UK since about the end of the 2010 cold spell where we have snow falling in positive uppers. Over the pennines where the blue is, I'd expect a big freezing rain or ice risk. 

EDIT: This gets really complicated a few hours later, the uppers cool down alot but the surface warms, seemingly what's going on here is the warm uppers that are now retreating have had time to mix down a little just in time for the deep cold to return. So precip type is going to be all over the place in this scenario.

What's the opposite of the John Kettley high! A Susan Powell special?  But still seems a long shot. ECM op still an outlier and GFS, UKMO not interested.  I think whoever owns ECM is trolling us weather geeks and meddling with the data!

Tbh its only an outlier if the only three models are GFS, UKMO and ECM.

There have been two camps for a while, and the cold camp has more people in it than the warm camp. JMA and ARPEGE are notably long time members, and the GEM looks to be flipping sides. KMA also in the cold camp along with the IRIE (serbian model), NAVGEM flipped from warm camp to cold camp. The spanish short term HARMONIE is also in the cold camp.

GFS, ICON and UKMO only real members of the warm camp and ICON has now flipped.

https://modeles16.meteociel.fr/modeles/gfs/run/gfs-0-84.png?6 

There is alot of upper level divergence on saturday as we have a deep ridge and a big of a southerly moving jet to its east.

I wonder if one development we could start to see is some cyclogenesis, we see it a bit with very weak secondary lows appearing off the main thing, but I think there is more potential for this kind of thing.

Any cyclogenesis around the UK or to its east has got to be very beneficial to getting the cold further west.

Its going to be potentially wierd though, little pockets of stable air could give rise to wierd islands of cold and mild.

Little pockets of cold and mild air as mixing determines the temperature more than the airmass. Its going to be an absolute forecatsers nightmare this weekend as we have a continuous strong cold surface flow interact with milder air aloft.

If we get enough frontal activity expect every possible preciptation type. I imagine sounding profiles could be extra extra wierd, perhaps we might see some double warm noses!!!

https://www.meteociel.fr/modeles/coupe2wrf.php?mode=0&x1=322&y1=664&x2=530&y2=312&ech=59®ion=uk&wrf=0 

Look at how beautiful this is!

My god PhDs could be written about this airmass interaction its so compliucated!

Sure but the mild push is now pushed back to T+120 and beyond which means its by no means guaranteed anymore.

It was never guaranteed. 😉

The only guarantee is that there will be more twists and turns to come. This morning's ECM (and indeed last night's) show the envelope still contains the potential for noteworthy cold. As I said a few days ago, it's foolish to rule out any particular outcome as long as there's such a wide spread!

What we need is more important for removal of deadly overcast wet less cold temps weather that we suffering now to either get in deep cold or Spring warmth. 

I don't remember it as a quote from HHGTG, but I'm sure it comes from John Cleese's character in the film 'Clockwise'.

And on the models, the 06z GEFS for London has a big cluster going mild around the 19th/20th with not much rain. As a mildie I'd be happy with that.

‘Surface’ cold not much use in Feb these days anyway. 

Sheesh, if it’d been 30 years ago we’d all be buried in 18” drifts by now… grumble grumble.. 

But this isn't the kind of surface cold you'd expect from a poorly mixed boundary layer under a UK based anticyclone. This is a direct feed of cold continental air; its a bit different, it allows for snow even with high uppers. The ECMWF6Z is very cold right up to T+144h with spells of snow and freezing rain about.

Asking for a friend.

As they say in Dumb and Dumber - so you’re saying there’s a chance?