we're really missing a deep plunge into eastern scandinavia, or a plume of warm air out of Turkey to really kick an eastlery up a notch.

Instead its all rather... tame.

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Well HP still very influential at 228 on GFS not without potential

It’s all looking rather bland at this moment in time the laughable part I suppose is over on the other forum (which shall remain nameless) they’ve been searching and hyping up cold spells for weeks now, and yet we’ve still not seen anything of note other than the odd frost and a bit of sleet in someone’s backyard. 😜

We have another 'pizza' this again?

 

 

You're likely to see one every time there's a depression with a non-occluded warm sector, so they're going to be very common whenever the set-up is more or less zonal.

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Back to the SSW that's being consistently forecast by models: - Latest on 06z run.

 

I wanted to ask does the center of the warming i.e 0c or +5c have to be directly over the North Pole or just within the Arctic circle to have a major SSW - it get's up to -15 or -10 at best but the warmest strat air temp is 0c or +5c and on meteociel it's +8c but this never get's directly on top of N. Pole it stays off the top of N. Siberia?

It's a good question and is something that concerns me too, especially as the centre of the warming seems to be pretty much right on the opposite side of the Pole to us. The effect seems to be to "squash up" the polar vortex towards our side of the Pole. It doesn't look from those charts as if the normal stratospheric westerlies would be any weaker than usual in our neck of the woods.

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It's a good question and is something that concerns me too, especially as the centre of the warming seems to be pretty much right on the opposite side of the Pole to us. The effect seems to be to "squash up" the polar vortex towards our side of the Pole. It doesn't look from those charts as if the normal stratospheric westerlies would be any weaker than usual in our neck of the woods.

As has been said on here many a time over the years, major SSWs are defined by a reversal of zonal winds, not just temperature. So even if it gets to +20 over the pole, if the overall circulation is zonal it's not a major SSW.

What you see in those charts is a minor SSW, the sort that displaces the vortex rather than causing a reverse zonal flow. If it's a breakdown of the pattern you want, you want a major, not a minor.

(The Holy Grail was said in the old days to be a Canadian Warming. We saw one of those prior to the "Beast From the East" earlier this year and, as you can imagine, they're rare beasts!)

 

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12Z GFSP gives a spell of snow from the E Midlands north on Saturday.

 

 

Then it runs a 945mb dartboard across Scotland early next week. Meanwhile the GFS operational tries to build another mini Scandi high, keeping things a little cooler for a while.

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Projected strat warmings aside, it all looks fairly uninspiring longer term to be honest.
If there were to be effects from any SSW, the longer range NWP should start to pick them up in the next week (presumably). It otherwise looks back to unsettled Atlantic driven stuff after this weeks much discussed and dare I say it overanalysed cool snap.

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-9c uppers into London Fri with light snow flurries !!!

ECM looks interesting at 144 👀

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-10C at 850 on the ECM on Friday

 

 

And then a cheeky wraparound of colder air as a breakaway low goes through.

 

 

 

Still just delaying the inevitable mild mush though.

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So the models have completely backtracked in the last 3-4 days, It just goes to show that continually forecasting the same atlantic scenario often comes to bite you on the bum-

@Shropshire @moomin
Even Mr Hugo probably wishing he hadnt tweeted dismissing the cold-

Even the ECM not immune to change ---Just 3 days ago ECM predicting -3c 850s for London at day 7 with the atlantic moving through- today the 96 chart is at -10c with atlantic a long way stepped back-
So much westward correction & downward change of the uppers it really does cement the UKs chances of a decent snow event this weekend...

Well, I'm pretty underwhelmed by the block hanging on for an extra day or two before being robustly shunted aside by the end of Saturday.

 A fairly low key event, serving if nothing else to at least cool things off a bit to something more akin to winter.  

10 days now and the days will start to lengthen, the long climb out of the darkness begins.

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Well, I'm pretty underwhelmed by the block hanging on for an extra day or two before being robustly shunted aside by the end of Saturday.

 A fairly low key event, serving if nothing else to at least cool things off a bit to something more akin to winter.  

10 days now and the days will start to lengthen, the long climb out of the darkness begins.

Given that the block was supposed to be shunted aside by Wednesday and it's now Saturday, that's still five days agreed.  I don't think it's yet certain to be 'shunted away' either.  We've seen days now of the models constantly shifting as the signals have shifted and I'm not convinced that process has ended, nor is there any reason to believe it must have ended.    The block to the east doesn't get blown away and the jetstream isn't being modelled to become reenergised into the weekend.

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I've gone through the GEFS and I don't seem many hints in the way of blocking.

Looks like we will have to wait for 2019 before we see anything of note 

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I've gone through the GEFS and I don't seem many hints in the way of blocking.

Looks like we will have to wait for 2019 before we see anything of note 

I threw in the towel for December weeks ago Marcus. Yeh I know I am Mr Negative.

But I genuinely believe we are in for something quite mega in January. Just need a lot of patience and it will arrive. 

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I threw in the towel for December weeks ago Marcus. Yeh I know I am Mr Negative.

But I genuinely believe we are in for something quite mega in January. Just need a lot of patience and it will arrive. 

I know you did , I only comment realistically on what is on offer, currently there really isn't much blocking available ( looking at GEFS and the Met update )

Darren made some decent comments on warming high up also 

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I think we should be paying attention to what is going on in the next 3-5 days before making wild sweeping statements and assumptions of weather patterns next week, next month etc etc.

THE GEFS is laughable at the way they are surrendering to the cold in the short term.

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I think we should be paying attention to what is going on in the next 3-5 days before making wild sweeping statements and assumptions of weather patterns next week, next month etc etc.

THE GEFS is laughable at the way they are surrendering to the cold in the short term.

Not so sure Steve , if anything was in the offing you'd see hints in the Met forecasts , I don't think anyone can possibly make an assumption about the weather …………...can they ?

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Not so sure Steve , if anything was in the offing you'd see hints in the Met forecasts , I don't think anyone can possibly make an assumption about the weather …………...can they ?

People have forgotten what happened last winter ;)