So essentially you're plucking from history a 9-year period of predominantly good winters, and comparing subsequent winters to his, in order to try to 'prove' your hypothesis.

This ignores that immediately predating that 9-year spell was a run of mostly poor winters. And looking back over even just a century previous, there have been similar periods of mostly milder winters.

Because that's consistent with the UK climate, which brings spells of predominantly mild winters interspersed with the odd good winter, and spells of predominantly colder winters interspersed with milder ones.

In other words, your 'modern winter' claims and the inference that we're all doomed to suffer crap winters from here on in, are just bobbins. It's just a notion you hit upon that you can use to wind people up with.

There was a very knowledgeable poster on here last year (can't remember who), who suspected the last run of mild winters was partly due to the SSTs off the eastern seaboard of North America. I couldn't tell you much about it but the post was very in-depth and analytical and I'd love to read more about it now we're getting close to silly season again. 

Something about an anomalous cold "blob"? Sorry I can't be more specific. Somebody is bound to remember what I'm referring to! :-) 

Wishful thinking?

Well, I'm not allowed to give much away these days but I will say that I'll be watching out for the 'warm Arctic, cold continents' pattern to emerge again through the autumn. This has become an increasingly frequent setup in recent autumn-winter periods and on many occasions led to us wistfully staring east and/or southeast at some impressive Eurasian cold air pooling due to SST/stratospheric patterns working against westward transportation of said cold airmasses - at least not at our latitude (last winter it went south of us... a hard kick in the teeth!).

This coming winter it appears there will be less working against movement of any such cold pools toward us, but will it be enough less... here I must pass the debate onto you folks. There's been some good discussion on here already, I am pleased to see  

Except that winter 2009/10, unless I'm very much mistaken, turned out to the the coldest CET winter since 1978/79. And then, less than a year later, we had the first sub-zero CET month since 1986 and the first sub-zero CET December since 1890 I believe.

Why's that, James?

Making the Atlantic slightly cooler means slightly cooler air masses from the west, I would have thought?

For a sustained cold spell you need recurring high latitude blocking. We're long overdue a bout of that but whether it's this winter I have no idea.

Well said, Saint.

As I mentioned earlier, Ian did his level best on here a decade ago trying to convince us that the sort of cold/very cold winters we had at times prior to 1988 were a thing of the past and that they simply could not happen again due to the so-called modern era. Ten years ago one might have argued that perhaps he had a point, but the events of winter 2009/10 and then December 2010 both proved Ian's reasoning from a decade ago to be flawed IMO. The 2012/13 winter, while not especially cold overall, led us into the coldest March since the early 60's. Had the synoptics that gave us  the persistent cold we saw in March 2013 occured a month or two earlier, my bet is we would have recorded a second sub-zero CET month this decade.

From someone who lives right next door to the Atlantic, I will say that negative AMO brings far more snow here. Was not uncommon to get significant snow from a direct westerly feed back in the 80s & 90s. Now, we are lucky to get a few dirty sleet or wet snow showers from the north!

What I’m suggesting  is that a -AMO  enhances our chances due to those more often than not marginal situations we see now being less marginal due to lowering SST,s. January 1984 was a perfect example of this, a long fetch North Westerly  ( Canadian region ) crossing much cooler North Atlantic waters.

I recall posting a chart on here last year (using data from N.I) showing that the current run of mild winters is pretty much unprecedented, at least in recorded history. While there may have been prolonged runs of mild winters in the past, there still were not as mild as the current stretch. Something has changed quite drastically in the last 15 years or so, and personally, I blame the huge warm blob to our north and northeast, which as been a persistent feature for years now.

I'm surprised that you make this out to be a surprise - when the pattern isn't relentlessly zonal then cold air will spill out to the mid-latitudes - however Northern blocking is so scarce now that at best we end up with High Pressure to the West or this 'sceuro' that people talk about and the cold pools end up going to Greece/Italy and even further W/SW. We've seen cold temperatures and snow depth records broken quite frequently in SE Europe over the last 10-15 years. When it keeps happening it ain't bad luck...

There has been nothing like the last 30 years since weather records have been properly recorded, the stats bear that out Saint.

FRom the other end of the country, I'd agree. Chestnut, birch and ash especially,

You don't seem to get the fact that 30 years in climatological terms is virtually diddly squat, Ian. That applies regardless of whether it has been a period of predominatly mild/very mild winters or cold/very cold ones. This was pointed out to you when you were originally on this forum and back then, just as now, you continually ignored this.

I think it's because of his work commitments. As James knows my view is the more he can contribute to the forum the better!

I note that aviation colour code was increased to "yellow" around Katla volcano... this and other activity (Bali) may have an impact in future winters...

I've noticed a quick transition on autumn leaves in recent days too, though the first geese were again spotted in last week of September here in Edinburgh, which is consistent with the past few years at least.

Here too. I meant to post it to see whether I was right in thinking that it was earlier than normal. I wonder what's causing it this year? Mind you, we're probably O-T talking about it here since it's not a predictor for winter weather.

With regards to Ian's whole "Modern era" thing, I think that there is little doubt that in a warming climate - such as the one we are currently experiencing - that severe winters will become less common and therefore the periods between them greater. So we will (if the warming trend continues for the UK - and i'm not here to debate that) see longer periods between really cold winters.
However I think the area where most people, including myself disagree with Ian is that although the time periods between the colder months / winters might increase we will still get them.
If we extrapolate out over a long period of time - lets say several centuries, and the warming trend continues throughout that period (god help us) then there will come a point where winters like 2009/10 become extremely unlikely.
For what it's worth, leaving apart the whole silliness around the "modern era" nonsense i'd like to see Ian put some figures on what he expects to see. For example does he think we will see a sub zero CET month again, and if so how likely is it. What does he think, in terms of CET, a "modern winter" looks like and what would he consider a departure from it?
Until there are some hard quantifying statements it becomes difficult not to look at it as at very best being subtle trolling. That being said Ian's Modern Winter stuff is almost part of the furniture on here now in any case.