GFS has tended to be more progressive and so was ECM up to the 00z so this run may well be a flight of fancy but I'm hoping not as such warmth so late in the year would be a special event to treasure for years to come 🙂 - cold down here at least can wait until mid-late Nov when it can be potent enough to be of interest 😉

GFS gets many parts of England & Wales into the high teens/low 20's by the end of the week

Anyone else noticed a complete lack of mist or fog so far this Autumn? perfect comditions for fog last night, yet I woke up to gin clear skies. I blame Donald Trump myself.

Yes, the GFS 0z op. gives a week of warmth after that, too- with warm nights throughout, that could bring one of the mildest Octobers in the series.

This morning's ECM offers 564dam over SW England coupled with a near 15C 850mb temp.next Sunday. That's a rare thing for mid-October.

Phew 564 thickness in mid October - what sort of temperatures could we see with the likes of that 25C to 27C would be my guess.

Here's the ECM00z blowtorch chart:

I have to say I've never seen the likes of that before - I'd hazard a guess we could see mid to high 20s out of the likes of that.

This chart shows the op run 850s for all the models at today's 0z run with figures of between 10C and 15C next weekend.

http://www.wetterzentrale.de/de/show_diagrams.php?model=multi&var=2&geoid=1140&lid=OP&bw=

However, the de Bilt data for the ECM model below shows that 2m temperatures do not exceed 18C next weekend based on the op run (red line). Some of the other ENS members do get up to around 21-22C. So I think mid 20's is probably unlikely. The UK date records for next weekend are around 23C.

https://meteoijsselmuiden.nl/knmipluim

So my guess is that if the ECM chart verified then temperatures of 22-23C are possible next weekend. Outside chance of 25C but very low probability of that I think.

This morning's ECM had 22C as the high for next Sunday:

https://weather.us/model-charts/euro/c5defaf8681fe37cf1796186a2884a08/temperature/20171015-1200z.html

(County set  to Suffolk on the above link, you can choose your own).

Looking through the individual ensemble members - also available on the link above - it looks like that's at the top end of the ensembles. There are a few others with 21s and 22s, quite a few more with 20s, then the rest have mid to high teens.

It's tricky with a long-fetch flow from the subtropics to anticipate just how far local variations might go in the lee of high ground, say. It looks like it could be a fine setup for producing localised exceptionally high temperatures in the vicinity of Hawarden in N. Wales for example, but it will depend on the exact direction of the flow, on which there remain considerable differences between GFS and ECM, as the latter has a stronger Euro High plus makes more of TC Ophelia as it moves to a point a little west of Iberia by Sunday.

Given that TD 17 - the likely precursor to Ophelia - has this morning been aligning its low-level circulation with deep convection, and that the NHC calls for intensification to a 60 mph storm with some scope in the model spreads for a hurricane, I'm inclined to side with the greater development depicted by ECM (along with UKMO and GEM for that matter). With that seems to come better support for the Euro High and the subtropical air transport on the NW flank of that. 

This also brings me nicely onto the risk of being swiped by ex-Ophelia as it lifts north Sun/Mon to pass over or just west of the UK. Because of the unusual path taken and that this is from the fairly warm waters west of Iberia, the system may not long have lost tropical characteristics when it arrives, so the potential exists for some very strong winds and a lot of rain to affect either part or most of the UK.

Looks to me that ECM is slow enough with this to allow another unusually warm day on Monday, with Monday night then proving exceptionally mild but increasingly wet and windy.

GEM is some 24 hours faster having kept the jet stream a bit more vigorous (with the plume not reaching as far NW) during the weekend, but just look at those 850s... could quite widely be in the high-teens all night under that setup.

This is all very speculative though given it's still a week away - GFS' lack of tropical development, with Monday simply dry and cooler than of late, remains a plausible outcome.

The ECM op run is very much at the windiest end of its ensemble regarding that feature next Monday. Even then, it doesn't look excessively windy at all:

On the other hand, that is for the eastern side of the country, and I take the point that its source and track could lead to more exciting conditions on the ground in places, if it did come off.

That would be something!

But, the last 18 months have seen far more rainfall fails than wins here (we're running at about 80% of normal 12 month rainfall atm) , so I wont hold my breath.

And - which is...........

The trend from ECM and GEM with Ophelia is slower and further west, but still lifting out N. by Tuesday.

So lowering risk of strong winds and even the heavy rain risk looks restricted to the west, if even there.

It also serves to prolong the unusually warm conditions by an extra day (note that GFS has almost caught up with respect to Sunday... just making a little too much of that shortwave low still... or is it the only one making enough of it? Hmm!).

Not bad for mid October

Great for mid-October. Would be nice to see the same values with a "-" in  front when it comes to mid-January.

If we can manage such a brisk and direct flow form the anomalously warm seas west of Iberia and the Bay of Biscay, the temps shown here seem pretty realistic. Then again, GEM has a habit of moving airmasses around with too little modification, which implies that 21-22*C widely with a localised 23, perhaps 24*C in the warmest spot or two, is the best bet.

...or is it? On the one hand, ECM has not backed down on a more focused and as a result intense plume arriving during Sunday, although it does look to peak overnight into Monday so it's not an ideal outcome for breaking the date records - but we might not need that given the extreme nature of the airmass being imported. On the other hand, GFS continues to keep Ophelia further SW with the flow alignment angled more toward SW than SSW by a ridge nosing in from the SW having passes north of the tropical cyclone.

Funny thing is, GFS is now trying for the better alignment taking shape early next week;

...but by this time the airmass has undergone some moderation and so we'd be looking at low-20s tops and that's if the sun finds its way through the clouds. This setup in contrast to the 00z ECM which brings ex-Ophelia right across the UK on Monday. GEM takes it across far-western parts on the same day.

So the options on the table are currently a three-day spell of increasingly warm conditions that peaks at an exceptional level before a wet and windy breakdown on Monday, or a three-day spell that doesn't reach such exceptional levels but is followed by a brief freshening up on Monday (though still quite warm by the afternoon on the 00z) and then a reload on Tuesday before the proper breakdown on Wednesday.

Either way, it looks to be an impressive run of high temperatures for mid-Oct, particularly when considering both day and night values combined 

We're overdue some warm temps after such an underwhelming Aug/Sept period.

A potentially very interesting development.

http://old.wetterzentrale.de/pics/Recm1441.gif

Something I've noticed during plume events this year is that GFS is persistently lower with the 850s reaching the UK than ECM. Most times the actual has been closer to ECM once the event gets within 5 days range and the overall patterns match up closely - so I'm expecting to see the 15*C isotherm crossing the S. Coast by Sunday afternoon.

As Gusty has already alluded to, Monday is looking very interesting indeed on these latest runs, as Ophelia's movement has come together one something akin to recent ECM runs for timing but west of the ECM 00z for track, which serves to keep the UK in the unusually warm airmass through Monday. 

It's a bit of a close call with probably-ex-but-only-just-Ophelia though;

Gusts to just shy of hurricane force brush past the SW tip of Ireland on the 12z GFS run, and just beyond the left limit of the chart area there are actually some sustained winds of over 60 mph with gusts to over 80 mph.

Currently the jet stream looks to be positioned too far west for a direct hit on the UK to bring an extreme wind threat - just a heavy dose of rain as the storm loses intensity due to being too far from the jet stream (00z ECM depicted this outcome) but even with the chances of an eastward adjustment reducing steadily with each new run now, we're still seeing the most credible threat from a tropical cyclone since at least 2012 (perhaps longer) - yet still not on a par with the setup that produced the '87 storm with its nasty sting jet. Well, most likely not... best not rule anything out at this stage (but we should be able to by the evening beforehand... ha).

Signs are the absorption of Ophelia will result in a deep quasi-stationary trough somewhere near or over the UK during the rest of the week. GFS wants it moving right overhead but ECM keeps it to the NW so a wide spread of possible temperatures to figure out. 

Hmmm. 16th October ..that date rings a bell...30 years to the day too !