The CFS Charts show anomolies.  Is there therefore a chart which shows the "norm" for each of the months?

For instance, if it is showing higher than normal pressure in a place, the norm might be really low pressure and the higher anomoly might still be low pressure albeit not as deep??  Or have i gone off on the wrong tangent?

 LLTNP 105m asl 

that is correct-

So iceland for instance needs a considerable +VE anomaly to warranyt thinking that will be high pressure-

One for Gav & his snow vid-

http://www.meteociel.fr/modeles/ecmwf/runs/2013100600/ECH0-240.GIF?06-12

ECM has significantly cold upper air & the fledgling vortex locating itself in exactly the place at day 10 to generate a lot of snow cover in the westernm portion of his snow map....

S

Is there somewhere then that shows what the average is or the norm that the CFS is predicting its anomoly against?

 LLTNP 105m asl 

Thanks Steve.

There appears to be much hype surrounding the coming winter from many quarters this year... more so than there is normally .

I have no idea on what we can expect but I do have some comments:-

- CFS is very poor imo.

- Using early season snow cover across Russia/Scandi is a risky game for using as a forecast tool; easy come, easy go.

- Twitter/YT can generate unfounded excitement.

- Pattern matching is a lottery; if it was that easy, LRFs would be easy.

Will there be some decent snow this winter?

Yes, some places will get 'lucky' depending on your p.o.v while others will miss out.

I have found that the media in general really do overhype weather events nowadays. Wet and windy will now nearly always result in a yellow warning while any snow event will be a blizzard with 'worse to come'. The reality is nearly always much less severe. This will be seen this week in fact with reports of it turning much colder across the country; many southern locations will still max at between 13-15c on Thursday and by Friday, temperatures will slowly begin to climb. Some rural spots may get a slight ground frost but is this uncommon? No. I remember many times when frost was pretty normal in the well known hollows through October.

All valid Mike , hope all is well

BUT don't kill my dream

Just to say, I posted a possible pressure pattern anomaly for the current winter over on Netweather the other week - based on the likely QBO, PDO and Enso.  The resulting analogue years were 1969/70 and 2008/2009 (not a huge dataset granted?!) - anyway the anomaly on the face of it looked decent - northern blocking - but the actual surface pattern was more mobile - so it emphasises Steve's point that ideally we'd want to see a very high anomaly over Iceland. 

By the way, my projection did show severe cold in January for Germany, Poland and S Scandinavia - with the UK on the edge - East colder than average, West average. For what it's worth, it forecast a slightly below average winter overall.

What i'll say is that unless your analogue years are only 1962/63, 2009/2010 (extreme neg NAO years) - then I don't think we'll ever see an intense surface pressure anomaly showing to the North on the analogue charts that we sometimes use to make forecasts. IMO for example, we couldn't ever hope to forecast a 62/63 repeat at this range - based off using analogue years. Definitely though the bigger the predicted anomalies the better.

I'd assume that the CFS forecasts are similar (someone correct me if they disagree) and the best we're going to get are decent looking anomalies (nothing exceptional), but the underlying surface pattern forecast won't be showing wall to wall northern blocking. 

Snow spreading out now towards Northern China. http://www.natice.noaa.gov/pub/ims/ims_gif/DATA/cursnow_asiaeurope.gif

Climate wise I find Mohe county in Northern China an interesting place, VERY cold and snowy in Winter as seen on the link. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohe_County

Quite a covering for early October

http://modeles.meteociel.fr/modeles/cfs/run1/cfsnh-2-1884.png?00

JFF JFF JFF

You would take that for Xmas day

That's certainly an impressive run! 

A few more like that would be welcome, others thus far have been nowhere near as strong. Perhaps CFS has stopped backing off now.

Is that just anomaly or overall temp?

That is projected 850HPa temp at 12Z Xmas Day.
Typically those values would imply a surface temp of around freezing.

I'm not one to get engaged in this crystal ball stuff at this range, but that disrupting trough from the southwest would likely see many areas snowbound by Boxing Day.
There, that's as much of a ramp as you'll get from me until late November.

I'm not one for

Finishing sentences?

Sat through a less-than-clear explanation of thickness values today. I felt like directing everyone to TWO

The summary that I've extracted from a somewhat chaotic presentation goes as follows:

The thickness is the height difference in decameters between the levels of 1000mb and 500mb pressure. Warm air has higher thickness values because it is less dense - pressure decreases less rapidly with height as there isn't as much air being lost for every unit of altitude gained. Hence it takes a greater altitude to reach the 500mb level.

Bringing this towards an on-topic post, 528 is the magic thickness line that often represents air cold enough at the surface for snow to fall, so to any newcomers that's the one to keep an eye on - look for the dotted lines on the FAX charts as they are the thickness isotherms

I hope I've got that right, otherwise I've wasted 2 hours of lecture time

p.s. what happened to post formatting? Default text for all at the moment

A nice description of thickness values there. 👍

Re. The 500-1000hPa value for snow, unless we're under a continental air mass I would put the value at 522dam for a realistic probability of snow (although I realise there is much more to it than that). For example thicknesses here reached around 528dm for a while today but conditions were not conducive for snow for other reasons. This is not to correct you, as what you say is valid, just an comment based on observations over the last 20 years or so.

I think you should give an synopsis of the key learning points after every lecture the way you have done above. 😛 [sn_bsmil] ( that way we can all learn things and you can revise. Win-win 😝 )

Stumbled across this "met office" prediction today.  Not sure where it has been lifed from, but may be a direct quote from Transport Scotland's Meto Rep.

http://www.edinburghnews.scotsman.com/news/how-super-gritters-aim-to-beat-snow-and-icy-roads-1-3131051

Meto forecasting blocked december and being colder than average.

 LLTNP 105m asl 

Judging by the way the Met Office now seems determined to restrict the contents of its seasonal forecasts to a select few, I reckon Dale Miller should avoid long walks and check under his car regularly.

It's certainly been obvious from the past few update's of the Met Office seasonal model that their model is very mcuh "seeing" a lot of northern blocking this winter.

Yeah it outrageous. They've only gone and restricted it those people with access to the internet. The swine.

http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/publicsector/contingency-planners 

In summary, and in probability speak, it says what many of us say at this range.
In other words, no one has a scooby LOL.

I've done a blog post on Winter 13/14 Expctations;

Is This The Most Anticipated Winter Ever?

http://www.gavsweathervids.com/flash.html

Cheers Gav

Thanks, Steam Fog. It's a big site the MetOffice have. Can't say I'm a regular on the Products and services -> Public Sector area of it.

I wonder whether that's the place they hid their forecast in 2010/11?

In October the forecaster privately warned the Government - with whom it has a contract - that Britain was likely to face an extremely cold winter.

It kept the prediction secret, however, after facing severe criticism over the accuracy of its long-term forecasts.

The Met Office eventually issued a public warning about the early onset of winter a month later, just days before snow and ice covered much of Britain and temperatures plummeted to the lowest on record.

Motoring organisations and passenger groups said yesterday that the delay hampered preparations for winter.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/topics/weather/8237397/Met-Office-kept-winter-forecast-secret-from-public.html