What I find interesting is the how the models are handling the 'battle of the cold blobs' We have one heading this way out of eastern Europe, and another coming out of Canada. The models are trying to pinpoint which blob will dominant over this part of the world. In either case, I think it is safe to say that there is nothing especially mild on the table for the next couple of weeks.
Originally Posted by: Chunky Pea
It may not be really, really mild, but down here at least the models show a good emulation of March over the next few days - highs in double figures, lows more like April or May, a daily average a good 3C above normal. Of course this happened back in the old days too, as one of the ingredients of a Scandinavian High is warm air advection. Many a cold spell started with some especially mild conditions, only for the warmth to drain away as the winds backed first SE'ly, then E'ly and eventually ENE'ly or NE'ly.
It's comforting in a way that despite all the masses of computational power we have, where we now have turn-of-the-millennium supercomputer levels of power in our phones*, we still can't predict with any certainty whether we'll get cold easterlies or not in 10 days' time. The "AI" pattern-matchers seem more convinced, but TBH it looks like they're just saying "ooh, this is 2005 again, so here's a similar set of charts".
* - the TOP500 leader, i.e. the fastest computer in the world, in 1999 was ASCI Red, which could manage 3.154 Teraflops. The Samsung phone I now have manages 3.686 Teraflops. Ridiculous, when you think about it!