Thursday: Shetland

Friday: Maybe Orkney, possibly far North of Scotland

Saturday: Maybe Scotland, possibly far north of England, possibly NI

Sunday: The rest of Northern England, NI, possibly parts of Wales and the midlands 

Monday: The rest of Midlands/Wales, most of Southern England but possibly not the far SE or the far SW

Tuesday: Far SE and far SW

It's tantalisingly close but never really makes inroads, at least for the south, before the block sinks.

Still, it does look as if there should be no shortage of cold air to the east if the Atlantic train weakens at all. Sadly in recent days the trend has been to chuck more coal in the boiler, just when we want it to go quiet!

Yes I keep getting this image in my mind regarding the forthcoming easterly

Hope 12z and onward runs to lower the mean now, no time to play games stupid models ok? 

Think possibly 3 days to be truely safe....but the fact we have had an easterly already is in our favour I feel

I see plenty of positives from the latest output. Set against some of the 'stella' op runs I can understand why there is a degree of disappointment, but the general set up is as exciting as it has been in a long time. ( and I'm speaking from a part of the country that will most likely just be wet...although ironically with a small shift in the pattern could see the most snowfall)

As it looks at the moment I don't think this cold spell is going to be worth the hype as I think on balance we are looking at a few days of 3c max temps and drizzle. Of course time for upgrades still but if this setup in late Jan can't deliver old school cold - ice days and non-marginal snow to lower areas then I'm not sure anything will now.

looking forward to a great afternoon and evening model watching.

This may be a good shout considering latest Met Office updates (with good reasoning) I think it may be a bit better than that for the majority of cold fans. Waiting in anticipation for 12z and beyond. 

Because it looked, for a tantalising few days, that the fabled 'true deep winter easterly' was a distinct possibility.

And now it looks less likely.

What many in the SE/S want isn't that good for MBY, so I'm not that fussed.

The 0z GFS was actually a peach for the majority of the UK, with a lot of snow (albeit more marginal the further south). Here's the GFS snowdepth chart for the 0z at t+252

And it got even better by t+384

The 6z for me was a big downgrade. Here's the t+252:

And by t+384 the only areas in E&W with snow are the mountains of Snowdonia, the Lakes and NYM.

As others have noted, there's been some great analysis.

But also some poor interpretations, a fair bit of bed-wetting, and a hell of a lot of IMBYism (and, given the geographic split of active TWO'ists has become more and more skewed towards the SE, that can lead to a very false picture being painted for the rest of the country)

I think that sometimes posts can set the subliminal undertone of expectation in here. If you go all the way back to page 6 of this thread on the 13th Jan, Q is stating that the easterly looks a certainty now and that was the easy part, and he was talking about this setting in from the weekend just gone. Then this gets pushed back and pushed back as so often happens, and then the frustration sets in (for some). 

West Vs East... Let battle commence! 

Despite this being so far away I can already see that snow shower potential is probably a bit more widespread thanks to Easterly winds rather than North westerly winds. 

The GEM solution is still unfortunately possible, we've seen this kind of thing brick a cold spell at 96h before. I don't think its the likely outcome though. If anything I expect the lows will be further south when the time comes.