Oh dear.  Check out the Met Office Snow Cover and Anomaly maps: http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/climate/uk/summaries/anomacts

You will see that in March 2013 pretty much the entire country has more snow laying than the mean for 1980-2010 and that many western and northern parts had a  whole winter's share of the stuff in a spring month...

And FWIW, the 12Z CFS has normal signals for Dec and positive temp anomolies for Jan and Feb.
Just thought I'd add that for the sake of even reporting

Incidentally, what are the Strat Temps doing at the moment?

LOL, yeah right. Last winter was utterly forgettable in terms of cold and snow down here - we had 3 inches of snow for a few hours, a couple more days dawned with overnight slush and that was it. No ice days, no nights below -5C. 2011/2 was even worse, but 2010/11 was saved by the December. Even then it wasn't exactly snowy down here, it didn't hold a candle to the amount we saw in the 80s, 90s and in the 2005 cold spell.

Granted, spring got off to a cold start, but that's not winter is it?

Last winter was an unusually snowy one here in north Leeds. As LeedsLad says the snowfall was often quite localised so being around one of the highest points in Leeds obviously helped and the drifts driving over the top to Otley were fantastic. What the winter lacked was a prolonged real depth of cold with a real deficit of sparkling blue skies and hard frosts. When I think of last winter I think grey and snowy, which of course is a whole lot better than grey and mild!

http://www.meteociel.fr/modeles/cfsme_cartes.php?ech=3&mode=8&carte=0&run=10 

(And shows conditions not far from average across the winter months)

Thats the thing with the UK climate, here we had multiple settling snow events last Winter with a couple of significant falls but 7 miles away some people hardly had a flake stick.

Hi all,

Here's the first (of several) Winter 13/14 Round-Ups, looking at SST's, snow cover, solar and other stuff too.

http://www.gavsweathervids.com

Enjoy.

Reading through the literature,  strat warming may not be a player this winter - *cycles/oscillations are in unfavourable phases. These obsevations are based on a pretty small time span and certainly do not go back to 1906, the last time there was a solar max of similar weakness. Whatever stance you take on the relevance, it is a period where there is much to be studied and chance is high that current assumptions will be challenged.

* QBO, ENSO and SSN.

As is always the way with this fascinating subject we respect and admire.

Many thanks Gavin

That warm anomaly in the NE Pacific and it's potential impact is fascinating - I figured it could emerge in response to perstent high pressure in that region during parts of the summer... in fact analogue years suggest to me that having the higher heights there contributed to our fine spell in July due to longer wavelengths in the jetstream leading to a ridge rather that trough. The natural progression through autumn would see the wavelengths shortening, resulting in an increasing tendency towards troughing across the UK and mid-Atlantic ridging up towards Greenland.

What's taken me by surprise is how quickly September has displayed strong signs of that shift. Due to the current mid-range model output, I'm not convinced that the pattern has shifted long-term just yet, but I reckon any swings back the other way will be short-lived. October could turn very interesting as it progresses...

The Arctic sea ice situation is interesting (shame most of the extent is thin sea ice) - potential for greater cold pooling earlier in the winter perhaps. Being on a par with 2010 suggests that major blocking is certainly not un-favoured, so to speak.

All very interesting stuff

I notice more snow cover in Russia with quite a big new area almost the size of the UK http://www.natice.noaa.gov/pub/ims/ims_gif/DATA/cursnow_asiaeurope.gif

Gavin thanks for clarifying the SST signal.You mention that early June SSt,S had the tripole pattern in the Atlantic  which favours colder than average  wintes.Will be interested to see if the pattern re emerges by early winter.

http://weather.rap.ucar.edu/surface/snowNESDISnh.gif    (below)

Although I'm no expert on initial snowcover, I've watched the last few years and as far as I remember, serioius snow cover has always accumulated on lands adjacent to the Arctic ocean - is this year behaving differently?

Edit: Today, monday, now disappeared!

Snow one day, gone the next?
Sounds like a typical event here near the South Coast LOL.

Incidentally, the 06Z CFS has us all in positive temp anomolies in Jan and Feb - again (except the charts that have us in negative anomalies - again) >
I greatly admire the efforts of people who attempt to pre-guess mother nature with respect the UK winter, but until the winter is upon us it's really like discerning patterns in a crystal ball.

If the retrogressing High scenario that keeps cropping up in the GFS carries on doing so during the winter, we could have a very interesting season to discuss....

It's fascinating (albeit FI) to see run after run retrogressing a UK high to the mid-Atlantic and then up towards Greenland....

If that happens, and does so in winter, we could well be shivering sooner rather than later!

Good to hear from you matey , yes leys hope for the High to sit over Greenland

http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/research/climate/seasonal-to-decadal/gpc-outlooks/glob-seas-prob

Meto probability maps ahve been updated covering December -February.

Easiest charts to understand are the two category ones.These show

Sea level pressure:60-80% probaility of this being above average covering UK and Atlantic and Arctic areas to north of UK.

Temperature:UK largely covered by 60-80% above averarge temperture  probability,with furhter north towards Arctic 80% +

Precipitation; Near average.

Be intersted whart others make of there maps.

Let's face it, CFS spends most of the time either showing full-on zonal charts with a raging Atlantic, or full-on high-latitude blocking with a raging Atlantic.

In the end all you can do is look at the average across a vast number of runs and see which is happening more often, so giving a rough guide as to what the signals are pointing towards (usually very rough beyond the range of a month or two, though not always as was seen with March 2013).

From watching it over the past year or so (since upgrading to CFS v2), it does seem that when CFS shows a very strong signal at 3-6 month's range, what we end up with does tend to at least bear some resemblence to what it called for.

With that in mind, January has caught my eye for the coming winter, as for some time now it's had the strongest signal from CFS out of the three winter months.

Not much, to be honest, The Dec/Jan/Feb 2m temp maps show, for the bulk of England, a 40-60% chance of above-normal temps, a 0-20% chance of near-normal temps and a 20-40% chance of below-normal temps.

I can't work that one out at all.

Here is the latest ensemble mean from the Glosea4 model that those probability charts are derived from. It was updated today. As you can see, N blocking rules (this is for November/December/January)

Those probability maps always seem rather pointless to me as they rarely ever show a strong signal for any particular tercile. Seeing as all they can do is demonstrate the likliness of certain setups based on their data... what use can they really be?

The ensemble mean maps are far more helpful and, from what I've seen, have also proved a reasonable guide to the broad-scale patterns over the past season or two. The September update is very similar to the August update - which raises confidence in the idea of high-latitude blocking being prominent to the north (potential areas span the regions to the NW, N and NE) of the UK for the greater part of the winter. Of course that still allows for considerable variation from that blocking setup for the lesser part of the winter.

The fact that the above and the multi-run CFS mean are quite similar has me anticipating at least one month of widespread high-lat. blocking this coming winter, with a good chance of the blocks aligning nicely for the UK - particularly in light of Gavin's musings regarding that NE Pacfic +ve SST anomaly.

http://i.imgur.com/1VIWb9o.gif 

http://i.imgur.com/2pSmIt3.gif 

http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/people/wd51hd/ 

The puzzling thing about the METO maps is that given pressure maps show northern blocking you would expect negative temp anomalies over the UK,not the postive ones currently generaqted by the Setember maps.

In that case, the signal for the highest probability being above average temperatures doesn't make sense...

It could have more to do with a inbuilt warming bias on the MetO model.