Ignoring haughtily arrogant posts from the usual suspects, all in all a great set of posts this morning.

Keep up the comment and model watching and be brave enough to express an opinion

WI

Here's my opinion.  Stay on topic. 

I'm certainly pleasantly surprised how good the models look this morning , personally I was expecting  a massive climb down . Not as good as yesterday morning but still pretty Good and better than anything served up in December

Certainly looking more favourable for cold in the medium term, certainly don't see any raging zonality as posted by some!!

The repeating N.Atlantic - Greenland ridging, is something that for a time, was a feature of the late sixties and seventies.The present repeating nature as seen in the models has IMO, been on a long holiday - I welcome its return

No it doesn't look like a stable lengthy cold spell but the changes that are likely to occur as cold northerly outbreaks wax and wane will in themselves bring opportunities for snow. This is eluded to on the MetO monthly outlook.

I am fed up of wretched zonality after just a week so thank God something else is on offer!

Andy

that theory is nonsense according to our Met Office correspondent!

I'm with you on this , I'm really surprised at some of the doom, a good set of charts I feel

Darren (Retron) researched this and concluded otherwise. My understanding is that data from the crucial Greenland area is sparse at the best of times, therefore a small reduction during the Xmas period could have a disproportionate impact on the medium range output for NW Europe. Remember that tiny adjustments in the global pattern can have a massive impact on the weather we end up with.

Missing data or not you would expect a range of options to present at this range as the main factor is poor verification, especially op runs in isolation.

There is a tendency for some to remember one of the more memorable runs where it stays cold from 144 hours to 360 hours and then anything else that appears is a downgrade .

Anyway I see the models as very positive this morning with chance of snow showers into the New Year . Looking for NE winds to be modelled to bring the showers inland. Then frosty weather and chance of further northerly and/or chance of sleet and snow from a system sliding down from nw.

While we're on the subjecty of "missing" data over the Christmas period, I do recall that around Xmas & Boxing Day last year, the output did seem to be somewhat at odds with what it had been showing right up to Christmas Eve last year. I don't seems to remember noticing the same at New Year, though.

Ian Fergusson

W COUNTRY OUTLOOK By end of the weekend, much colder air sinks south, ushering-in the start of a protracted period of below average temps

http://www.theweatheroutlook.com/twodata/chart.aspx?chart=/charts/gfs/06_120_mslp850.png 

My thoughts on the charts this morning. Looks like from new year's eve, we're still going to have a cold front moving south with a pressure build out to the west which stretches up top Greenland. From then, it looks like the high will settle over/near the UK with fog and frost before another potential reload from the north around the 5th/6th. 

Whilst at this stage, it doesn't look like a lengthy or particularly severe cold spell, it will become colder and some places will see some of the white stuff with fog and frost for nearly all of us. 

But as always, the details won't be nailed until nearer the time. But certainly a colder and more wintry pattern is emerging as we enter 2017 

The gfs parallel 0z this morning is insane in FI . 1947 ESQUE!

http://www.meteociel.fr/modeles/gfse_cartes.php?&ech=360&mode=0&runpara=1

From IF

Shame really , this is after his post this morning was taken and put onto Facebook

The licensing agreement with UKMO, negotiated a few years ago, is for sharing selected items that help offer technical context to forecasts, but social media growth means a risk of items disseminated without permission or proper context and thus possibly not in spirit of original forecast thinking. For now, I'm afraid that means no further sharing of that material aside from more limited ones through twitter, given sensitivities. Back to model discussion.

It's not a theory, it's only a hypothesis. It can only be tested by running the models from the same starting conditions, first with, then without, the missing data. If the runs with missing data consistently show increased blocking then we could believe it. At the moment it's a hypothesis based on anecdotal evidence.

GFS Ens 00z P1 is a beautiful novel to read after 240, chapter by changing chapter. It goes from long-fetch northerly to NNE then cold surface high, a short easterly chapter then back to cold high. Something for everyone?

http://modeles.meteociel.fr/modeles/gfs/runs/2016122706/gfs-0-192.png?6

Disappointing, another failure to build HLB, but at least we get an initial short burst of winter, which is better than anything we've had for years down here

http://modeles.meteociel.fr/modeles/gem/runs/2016122700/gem-0-240.png?00

Horrendous GEM, but a plausible outcome. Seems that the north American models are less keen on building heights