I’m guessing he doesn’t know Scotland’s geography very well.

Indeed! Everywhere's above 300m in Scotland - even sea level! 

Dec 1st - Winter doesn't even start until 21 December.

Dec 15th - Remember Boxing Day 1962

Dec 26th - Remember 22 January 1947

Jan 15th - February is always the snowiest month

Feb 15th - Remember March 2013

Mar 15th - Look at those charts, if only it were July

Thanks SB, yes the statistics are incredible  and talking about events 7 years ago, very much a blip in the relentless overall trend is rather avoiding the issue. It's like getting beat every week at football but saying 'eh do you remember that cup match when we pulled off a shock win' ? That argument is fine if you accept that something has changed. People can't have it both ways.

More a thing than any specific terminology. People that pop up in winter time to be patronising and condescending to anyone who might like cold weather.

P.S. JB I’m not talking about you and you do seem to have an excellent grasp of Scottish geography - I did wonder about those thousand of steps on the beach at the Scottish Border.

P.P.S. What’s this modern winter thing, I haven’t heard of it before...for at least five minutes?

What do you call 4 'blips' in as many years?

I Do NOT like Winter Terminology....   It is just WEATHER. !!!!!!

Lol

Something has changed yes, compared to prior to the late 1980's, when talking about the types of weather that have dominated many winters since that time. That much is self-evident, and I don't think any rational person here who knows anything about recent UK weather history will deny that.

Where I, and numerous other people here, take issue with you is your view that "modern era" factors somehow preclude any possibility of sustained cold/very cold spells of winter weather in this country. You went on about this ad nauseum on this forum a decade or so ago, and what did we get during two successive winters at the turn of the last decade? That's right, two major month-long freexes, the like of which there probably hadn't been since the early-mid 80s. I know you have said recently that you believe these two events were largely a result of low solar-activity around the time. That may or may not have been the cause of those two freezes or one of them, but however they came about, they as good as disproved your claims from 10 years ago.

If you are still attempting to peddle this line that sustained winter cold in the UK is a thing of the past now, you are running the risk of being found out again, just as you were in 2009 and 2010.

Data: Straight from Meto in terms of NAO.

Data: Straight from NOAA in terms of AO

Is there a 'new modern winter'.

Yes clearly there is- The incidence of positive NAO winters are becoming more frequent, overlapped by the peak at how strong that positivity is-

So more positive more often is the strapline.

However in isolation when there is an AO month / period whilst slightly declining the depth of Negativity is also increasing ( who remembers in 2009 NOAA had to revise their AO scale to include -6 )

This data goes some way to underpinning the fact that winters are getting more extreme - but normally more mildly extreme although on occasion still cold extreme ( Mar 13 / Dec 10 )

So if we wanted to define a modern winter it wouldnt be so much to rule out all cold synoptics but to say that cold episodes have been greatly reduced but when they do arrive ( true cold episodes ) they may well be more longer lasting & extreme - this all against the ever increasing underlying warmth.

Of course in the next 5-10 years you may have a poat modern winter where the decoupling of the troposphere V the strat in November due to a non existent thermal Gradient may see Novembers & Decembers become much colder due to blocking before the Strat zonal wind sinks down...

This year maybe year 1 !!!

totally agree!

Reminded me of another hated term: Strat warming, and the religious hope some people put on it when forecasters (Matt Hugo types) says it might occur in 'late winter'. 

This is another tight coil in the ever decreasing circle of jargonism: a post-modern winter, without the modern winter ever being proven? Seriously? And when we have 3 mild years, a post-post-modern winter? Rowan Atkinson did a funny stand up slot once:

We must not exhibit purposelessness. We must be purposelessnessless

How can we write an epilogue to a concept that is still a prologue?

THIS. 

There’s a perfect example on this very page. Obvious. 🙂 Virtually every single post he/she makes is of the same nature. Very annoying. 

The sample size from the meto is enough to agree on what I wrote above regarding the NAO

So if its good enough for them its good enough for me...

As regards to the term "modern winter", how many know that a cold/severe winter has been described as "an old fashioned winter" for decades?

"We have one of the old fashioned winters, snow and frost, not fulfilling the word of those who were quite sure the season were altered"

Edward Fitzgerald 

December 27th 1853 

Very good point there, Kevin.

It would be interesting to hear Ian's views on this!

Scroll back through the last 5 (years of repetitive modern winter garbage I mean) pages and no doubt you will find something. 

It's all relative to the previous past experiences - if the winters prior to 1853 were anything like many of the winters between 1988 and 2017 then the comment is justified compared to now - if they were nothing like as anomalously warm - and given the records that we see tumble on an almost yearly basis, then I think we know that they were not.

We have clear data from the METO and NOAA on the stark trend of the NAO/AO and an early winter outlook that acknowledges drivers that could, maybe should, lead to colder synoptics but has been overridden to call for a likelihood of above average temperatures based on recent trends. For me, this is recognition of the modern era in all but actual name.

I think that summarises things very well.

In a warming world, its probably the best possible theoretical chance-of-a-cold-winter-for-the-UK-scenario that SM has outlined there.

I am heartened by  how every October/November there is lots of optimism for the forth-coming winter, whether its teleconnections theory, OPI, snow cover in Siberia, waxwings, berry crops, mole activity, solar activity, SSTs, the cold blob, or whatever.

The only one of these portents I attach any credence to, is mole activity.  If they dig deep in early November, they want to avoid the coming frosts. Any mole experts out there?

The data is good; the jargon (terminology, sorry, to be true to the thread) isn't.