aye, thanks alot.   Ill take full blame for last year.  Got waaay too ahead of myself and bought a shovel.  Its still in its box with an unbroken taped seal.

what was i thinking.

Meanwhile the 18z serves up the recurring theme from around day 10. It takes a while to set in but lasts through to the end of the run.

The op serves up snow in many places on at least one occasion; it will be interesting to see the ensembles tonight.

T+240:

Quite a chilly and increasingly unsettled outlook this morning.

I'm thinking that if your shovel came in a box, it must be a fine and fancy shovel!

cardboard box, and a plastic piece shovel. very similar to ones you see in petrol stations for £4.  

I really over-estimated the kind of snow we would get.  last lying snowfall worth mentioning was this i filmed:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S1Q8LO57uJo

Worth keeping a very close eye on the GEFS and MetO 30 dayer in the next few weeks. I'm increasingly inclined to think things are different to last year and the background signals are more supportive of cold snaps during the first half of the winter. If that's the case we should start seeing the odd very cold run appear in the GEFS and perhaps the mention of colder conditions in the MetO MOGREPS/European based discussion. 

Nice post Brian

Thanking you

End of the GFS 12z OP looks rather similar to a week later in 2010, does it not?

A purely academic exercise, but there was a much colder pool of air over northern Europe by 25th Nov 2010 than what is shown at the end of the 12z Op.

Oh gosh. Here we go again .

Do I start to ride the winter wave of emotion in this thread or do I get off now while the going is good ? 

The one thing we can  learn from history is that people don't learn from history.

Last November was cold, with a CET of around 5.5, colder than that of 2010 in fact.  There was much optimism for a cold season, with many wrongly expecting (as it turned out) a cold December, as the signals seemed favourable right up to around December 2nd.

This year, things are different.....

I’d get off now, this may be as good as it gets based on recent years. 

Yep - 850s rather disappointing in this set up.

Fair point, Ben; but it would give a pleasantly early-season feel if it delivered- cool, crisp, that sort of thing.

What the models are showing come early December will be key as far as I'm concerned. It was around that time last year when the chances of a cold start to the winter first began to lessen as the models seemed to start going for a theme of HP often to the south/south-east of the UK for much of the month. If, come that time this year, then models are looking more promising for cold, them who knows. We've still got 2 days or November to get through before we get to that point.

How true.

It’s in our nature I’m afraid. We waste so much time looking for what we don’t know without learning from what we already do.

That's not what I said is it?

This to me is more likely than anything, with the cold shots appearing in FI being standard fair for this time of year. Easy to get over excited by.

Guarantee. Why? It could be very similar broadly speaking. We can't say yet.

Same old outside chance of a grass frost for the south in the coming weeks 

http://modeles7.meteociel.fr/modeles/gens/runs/2017110312/graphe6_1000_291_99___.gif 

As Doc just posted nice to have a seasonal feeling bonfire night for once 

http://modeles7.meteociel.fr/modeles/arpege/runs/2017110312/arpegeuk-41-34-0.png?03-17 

http://old.wetterzentrale.de/pics/Rtavn2401.gif 

Conditions and set up at the moment seem more typical from many many years ago, before something changed during the seventies.