I've noticed a lot more northern blocking this summer compared to last.

I therefore think we have a stronger chance of more wintry setups - although I'd like to see further episodes of NB continuing into Autumn.

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Does anyone know if the Met Office still issua an NAO forecast for the winter ahead based on May SSTs? I've not seen or heard about this for a while.

As far as I know, they still do it privately and it makes up part of the forecast they issue to contingency planners, but it's not made public.

METO certainly do have by November an NAO forecast.Have tried ringing to find out forecast before and they seem reluctant to give figures although on one occasion I got the +/- sign.

I've noticed a lot more northern blocking this summer compared to last.

I therefore think we have a stronger chance of more wintry setups - although I'd like to see further episodes of NB continuing into Autumn.

 

This has been common in alot of recent summers.  The really wet summer a few years back - a classic example.... however as usual - it seems to disapear as we go into Autumn, and completley vanishes into winter.

 

Many times ive looked at the charts and almost cried at what woud have been the perfect scenario in December/Jan.  In its place we get wet and cool summers :(

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I've noticed a lot more northern blocking this summer compared to last.

I therefore think we have a stronger chance of more wintry setups - although I'd like to see further episodes of NB continuing into Autumn.

 

This has been common in alot of recent summers.  The really wet summer a few years back - a classic example.... however as usual - it seems to disapear as we go into Autumn, and completley vanishes into winter.

 

Many times ive looked at the charts and almost cried at what woud have been the perfect scenario in December/Jan.  In its place we get wet and cool summers :(

I don't think I agree with that to be honest..

The past few summers that have been characterised by northern blocking have led into winters with similar synoptic setups, with plentiful ice and snow.

I remember thinking this time last year, after observing a season of blocking over the Azores/Europe, that it wouldn't surprise me if we had a mild winter as a result, and we did.

This summer has been good weatherwise, but there has also been a decent amount of northern blocking. For this reason only, it wouldn't surprise me if we have a more interesting, colder winter this year.

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ill be very suprised if winter went the same route as last year, tho we might get a mild but dry winter   i hope not, surely we must be in for a cold / snowy one this year,

ill be very suprised if winter went the same route as last year, tho we might get a mild but dry winter   i hope not, surely we must be in for a cold / snowy one this year,

Surely not. Well not necessarily. I wouldn't be remotely surprised if we had another winter like last one. They seem to come in batches, as do cold ones.

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I had two objections to the Met Office's use of the May North Atlantic tripole as a predictor for the following winter's tripole. Firstly the claim that the sign of the winter NAO was correctly predicted 67% of the time was way too close to 50% (a toss of a coin) for my liking, particularly since there are so few years of data available from which to calculate these seasonal probabilities. 

And secondly I never saw any explanation of why May in particular should have a special relationaship with Dec/Jan/Feb. Why not April or August or any other month for that matter? This looked horribly as though the researchers had committed the cardinal sin of first looking at the numbers for a system that worked rather than first devising a physical theory and only then looking for evidence in the observational data. 

If I'm wrong on the latter point (of no physical mechanism having been proposed), I'll gladly be corrected.

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I had two objections to the Met Office's use of the May North Atlantic tripole as a predictor for the following winter's tripole. Firstly the claim that the sign of the winter NAO was correctly predicted 67% of the time was way too close to 50% (a toss of a coin) for my liking, particularly since there are so few years of data available from which to calculate these seasonal probabilities. 

And secondly I never saw any explanation of why May in particular should have a special relationaship with Dec/Jan/Feb. Why not April or August or any other month for that matter? This looked horribly as though the researchers had committed the cardinal sin of first looking at the numbers for a system that worked rather than first devising a physical theory and only then looking for evidence in the observational data. 

If I'm wrong on the latter point (of no physical mechanism having been proposed), I'll gladly be corrected.

It can be useful in some circumstances. It makes up around 5-10% of my final winter forecast, but I would rate other things ahead it, particularly Siberian/Scandinavian snow cover through the autumn.

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My ultimate winter based on life experience would be if I'm insane enough...

Late November-19th December 2010, 20th-25th December 2009, 26th December 1995, 27th-30th December 2000
31st December 1996 -1st January 1997, 2nd January-9th January 2010, 10th-19th January 1987, 20th-25th January 2013, 26th-30th January 1996, 31st January-2nd February 2009, 3rd-7th February 1996, 8th-13rd February 1991, 14th February-25 February 1994, 26th February-28th February 2005.

Based on that it would be a snowfest!

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I had two objections to the Met Office's use of the May North Atlantic tripole as a predictor for the following winter's tripole. Firstly the claim that the sign of the winter NAO was correctly predicted 67% of the time was way too close to 50% (a toss of a coin) for my liking, particularly since there are so few years of data available from which to calculate these seasonal probabilities.
And secondly I never saw any explanation of why May in particular should have a special relationaship with Dec/Jan/Feb. Why not April or August or any other month for that matter? This looked horribly as though the researchers had committed the cardinal sin of first looking at the numbers for a system that worked rather than first devising a physical theory and only then looking for evidence in the observational data.
If I'm wrong on the latter point (of no physical mechanism having been proposed), I'll gladly be corrected.

It can be useful in some circumstances. It makes up around 5-10% of my final winter forecast, but I would rate other things ahead it, particularly Siberian/Scandinavian snow cover through the autumn.

This is the bit that always puzzles me. I think we all agree seasonal forecasting with accuracy is impossible. Completely impossible, so how can anything be judged as more useful than anything else?

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My ultimate winter based on life experience would be if I'm insane enough...

Late November-19th December 2010, 20th-25th December 2009, 26th December 1995, 27th-30th December 2000
31st December 1996 -1st January 1997, 2nd January-9th January 2010, 10th-19th January 1987, 20th-25th January 2013, 26th-30th January 1996, 31st January-2nd February 2009, 3rd-7th February 1996, 8th-13rd February 1991, 14th February-25 February 1994, 26th February-28th February 2005.

Based on that it would be a snowfest!

That would be awesome, and no doubt would have people begging for mild southwesterlies

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Back from a disappointing cool 3 week holiday in Cornwall.

Late September temperatures in August ?..somethings brewing.

Its 8pm and I'm home, its dark, X factor is back, the heating is on because after my body is craving warmth after several sub 10c nights in a damp tent.

I've had a couple of beers to lift the spirits and having analysed all of the output and carried out pattern matching based on this Augusts sudden and dramatic decline I'm going for one winter month in 14/15 being a real shocker with a CET of less than -1.0c

Its coming..be prepared.

 

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Back from a disappointing cool 3 week holiday in Cornwall.

Late September temperatures in August ?..somethings brewing.

Its 8pm and I'm home, its dark, X factor is back, the heating is on because after my body is craving warmth after several sub 10c nights in a damp tent.

I've had a couple of beers to lift the spirits and having analysed all of the output and carried out pattern matching based on this Augusts sudden and dramatic decline I'm going for one winter month in 14/15 being a real shocker with a CET of less than -1.0c

Its coming..be prepared.

 

Lol, sounds like one our camping trips.

Back from a disappointing cool 3 week holiday in Cornwall.

Late September temperatures in August ?..somethings brewing.

Its 8pm and I'm home, its dark, X factor is back, the heating is on because after my body is craving warmth after several sub 10c nights in a damp tent.

I've had a couple of beers to lift the spirits and having analysed all of the output and carried out pattern matching based on this Augusts sudden and dramatic decline I'm going for one winter month in 14/15 being a real shocker with a CET of less than -1.0c

Its coming..be prepared.

 

  and i hope that being december how cool to see snow at xmas.  something that is so RARE, 

Back from a disappointing cool 3 week holiday in Cornwall.

Late September temperatures in August ?..somethings brewing.

Its 8pm and I'm home, its dark, X factor is back, the heating is on because after my body is craving warmth after several sub 10c nights in a damp tent.

I've had a couple of beers to lift the spirits and having analysed all of the output and carried out pattern matching based on this Augusts sudden and dramatic decline I'm going for one winter month in 14/15 being a real shocker with a CET of less than -1.0c

Its coming..be prepared.

 

Ramp-tastic stuff there Steve.    Welcome back.

 

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I had two objections to the Met Office's use of the May North Atlantic tripole as a predictor for the following winter's tripole. Firstly the claim that the sign of the winter NAO was correctly predicted 67% of the time was way too close to 50% (a toss of a coin) for my liking, particularly since there are so few years of data available from which to calculate these seasonal probabilities.
And secondly I never saw any explanation of why May in particular should have a special relationaship with Dec/Jan/Feb. Why not April or August or any other month for that matter? This looked horribly as though the researchers had committed the cardinal sin of first looking at the numbers for a system that worked rather than first devising a physical theory and only then looking for evidence in the observational data.
If I'm wrong on the latter point (of no physical mechanism having been proposed), I'll gladly be corrected.

It can be useful in some circumstances. It makes up around 5-10% of my final winter forecast, but I would rate other things ahead it, particularly Siberian/Scandinavian snow cover through the autumn.

This is the bit that always puzzles me. I think we all agree seasonal forecasting with accuracy is impossible. Completely impossible, so how can anything be judged as more useful than anything else?

I wouldn't say it's always going to be impossible though in terms of things like the North Atlantic Oscillation (for the UK it certainly is), we just need to improve our understanding of such processes. I think with more research we could find some more clues given there is past data which hasn't been analysed as of yet. I do find it odd though that the Met Office looked at May SSTs, why not save it till November when SST patterns are more consistent and more likely to resemble what could occur in the winter ahead?

 

 

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Back from a disappointing cool 3 week holiday in Cornwall.

Late September temperatures in August ?..somethings brewing.

Its 8pm and I'm home, its dark, X factor is back, the heating is on because after my body is craving warmth after several sub 10c nights in a damp tent.

I've had a couple of beers to lift the spirits and having analysed all of the output and carried out pattern matching based on this Augusts sudden and dramatic decline I'm going for one winter month in 14/15 being a real shocker with a CET of less than -1.0c

Its coming..be prepared.

 

 

I'm with you on this Gusty. 1890's pattern matching lead to the 1894-5 winter...

The weather has been doing mad things in the last 5 years. Who knows what it will do next.

There is also the bizarre pattern match of bad winters and England cricket tours of Australia. 2014-15 England should have had an Ashes tour but the Convicts changed it to avoid the World Cup...so we're still going there this winter anyway.

England went to Oz in the following "bad" winters...

1894-5, 1928-9, 1946-7, 1962-3, 1978-9, 1986-7, 1990-1, 2010-11

Be prepared...as Gusty says. If it doesnt happen, think what you can do with the money you'll save on your gas bills

 

 

 

 

 

I had two objections to the Met Office's use of the May North Atlantic tripole as a predictor for the following winter's tripole. Firstly the claim that the sign of the winter NAO was correctly predicted 67% of the time was way too close to 50% (a toss of a coin) for my liking, particularly since there are so few years of data available from which to calculate these seasonal probabilities.
And secondly I never saw any explanation of why May in particular should have a special relationaship with Dec/Jan/Feb. Why not April or August or any other month for that matter? This looked horribly as though the researchers had committed the cardinal sin of first looking at the numbers for a system that worked rather than first devising a physical theory and only then looking for evidence in the observational data.
If I'm wrong on the latter point (of no physical mechanism having been proposed), I'll gladly be corrected.

It can be useful in some circumstances. It makes up around 5-10% of my final winter forecast, but I would rate other things ahead it, particularly Siberian/Scandinavian snow cover through the autumn.

This is the bit that always puzzles me. I think we all agree seasonal forecasting with accuracy is impossible. Completely impossible, so how can anything be judged as more useful than anything else?

I wouldn't say it's always going to be impossible though in terms of things like the North Atlantic Oscillation (for the UK it certainly is), we just need to improve our understanding of such processes. I think with more research we could find some more clues given there is past data which hasn't been analysed as of yet. I do find it odd though that the Met Office looked at May SSTs, why not save it till November when SST patterns are more consistent and more likely to resemble what could occur in the winter ahead?

 

 

Because May SSTs have so far been found to correspond more closely than November SSTs with the pattern in the following Dec/Jan/Feb. 

As I said, the two obvious objections are firstly that even the May SSTs are still only a little more than a random predictor, and the suspicion has to be that with another few centuries of data we would discover that there is in fact no correspondence at all; and secondly that there appears to be no physical explanation offered as to why May SSTs should reappear six months later on anything more than a random basis.

Regarding pre-winter threads in general, I do wish one or two people wouldn't keep dismissing these early discussions on account of an accurate forecast being impossible. That simply is not what is being attempted. Instead there's plenty of worthwhile discussion of which factors might permit possible cold or mildness or wind or rain. It's nothing to do with making a forecast; it's a discussion of what might happen and possible reasons why.

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http://modeles.meteociel.fr/modeles/cfs/runs/2014083000/run1/cfsnh-0-2712.png?00

 

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i dont know if anyone can enlighten me on this, but i was talking to someone this morning when i was out and about and they were saying about some north /north east wind or something from that direction which was coming down 8 weeks early, which will give the rain in second half or september, and he said that we could see winter starting early cos of this, with snow, is this to do with the SSW  or is this guy talking baloney to me as he said he read/saw this on the net/ wetaher forums ect..