Retron: I don't doubt your figures for a second.

But if there were hotspots such as yours on the Kent coast, it just goes to show how incredibly cold the bulk of the country must have been to record such a low final average for the month. 

My gripe is that the bulk of the country seems to have erased that experience from its collective consciousness. It's now taken as read that UK winters have been rubbish for 35 years, and will be for evermore. Every episode of wintriness, or month of record-breaking national cold, is just dismissed as merely localized or the wrong kind of snow.

I wouldn't complain about Feb 2009 or Dec 2010 here and to a lessser extent Feb/March 2018.

What I don't think we see so much these days though (and I'm just flying on gut instinct here) is the solid anticyclonic North-Easterly of the type that always managed to get East Kent on the national news with huge piles of snow blocking everything. To me that is a 20th century thing.

Even here in SW London we are much too far from the East Coast to get that very often even in a really strong Nor-Easter but it just seems ages ago  to me that we had one of those events

 

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I wouldn't complain about Feb 2009 or Dec 2010 here and to a lessser extent Feb/March 2018.

What I don't think we see so much these days though (and I'm just flying on gut instinct here) is the solid anticyclonic North-Easterly of the type that always managed to get East Kent on the national news with huge piles of snow blocking everything. To me that is a 20th century thing.

Even here in SW London we are much too far from the East Coast to get that very often even in a really strong Nor-Easter but it just seems ages ago  to me that we had one of those events

 

Fair enough. I'd just take issue with "always". How often, on a century scale, have anti-cyclonic n-easterlies actually struck Kent?

https://www.kentonline.co.uk/kent/news/can-you-believe-this-happened-in-kent-220634/

This lists three events in the 19thC, three in the twentieth, and two, so far, in the 21stC.

(Worth clicking on the link and disabling your adblocker, just to see the photos, particularly of 2010 and 2018 in Kent. 

Darren really is unlucky.

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If I recall correctly we had one significant fall of snow here in December 2010. The period mid Dec 2009 to mid Jan 2010 was far better with 3 big snow events. The truth is that in my locality December 2010 was statistically notable for the cold but nothing else. 

Hi Brian - A message of you!?)

The TWO's 150 day forecast are these purely computer generated or model based automated? I recall yesterday it was going for 10 snowy days in the south of England and a min temperature of -3c.Looking at the summary:

https://www.theweatheroutlook.com/twoforecasts/daily-ultra-long-range.aspx?region=1&summary=y

Looking at your TWO 150 day forecast today it shows a min temperature of 3c and no snowy days!?

Or is this something not worth looking at?

 

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It looks like a moderate to strong La Nina this year and statistically that does favour  colder conditions in November / December with very strong westerlies later  (from sometime in December onwards). The W QBO also favours strong westerlies

It looks like a moderate to strong La Nina this year and statistically that does favour  colder conditions in November / December with very strong westerlies later  (from sometime in December onwards). The W QBO also favours strong westerlies

 That could mean something like:

November may bring a short sharp northerly with sleet or snow showers in the north and a few dry but chilly days in the south. By December the Atlantic steps up a gear and it remains the dominant feature through a mild and wet winter. 

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 That could mean something like:

November may bring a short sharp northerly with sleet or snow showers in the north and a few dry but chilly days in the south. By December the Atlantic steps up a gear and it remains the dominant feature through a mild and wet winter. 

Just when you thought last year was bad enough and couldn't get more mild, zonal and westerly even if it tried to..!?

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Not really a forecast but wow! This strength of zonal winds will stay positive before going record breaking positive yet again - usually coincides with a positive AO and NAO in combination with a strong PV!!Things could change however, less than a week many ENS even the GEFS members went for a weaker zonal flow and the AO as well as NAO was forecast to go neutral to negative and we saw signs of northern blocking in several of the model runs but now it has flipped sadly

 

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^^^^^

If that's accurate we are in big trouble -kiss goodbye to a cold Winter 

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JFF 

Can live in hope lol

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^^^^^

If that's accurate we are in big trouble -kiss goodbye to a cold Winter 

Exactly - the ENS members are going off the scale there.

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This is starting to look like a mild winter , obviously things can change but its not looking great is it ?

Last year was bad enough here , no snow at all , I didn't expect a repeat 

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Didn’t that cold spell in January 87 come from nowhere? The rest of that winter was mild so there’s always hope... or straws 

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This is starting to look like a mild winter , obviously things can change but its not looking great is it ?

Last year was bad enough here , no snow at all , I didn't expect a repeat 

I remember thinking the same thing when we had that awful mild and wet November in 2009 Marcus.

Too early to be sure one way or another at the moment, IMO. November still has three weeks to go yet.

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I will never understand how December 2010 could have been the coldest December in the Met Office record by over a whole degree celcius, yet I seem to be the only person in the whole of Britain who was out there day after day revelling in the weeks of unprecedented cold, snow and ice which that statistic implies.

No one alive had been blessed with a December anything like that. Even the one December slightly colder in the CET record came long after Dickens' death, so even the man himself never experienced a Dickensian December remotely as cold as the one this country did just a decade ago.

But, you know. Global warming, our climate's heated up beyond redemption, and all that.

Of course December 2010 had prevaling winds from the NE so here in Edinburgh we had copious amounts of snow. Even down in the city near the sea. Up in the southern suburbs we had 20cm + on the ground from the last few days of November until the end of December.

Many days of sunny spells and streamers of heavy snow showers coming into the Forth

Edinburgers were walking or skiing around the city. Most cars were snowed in for a month

I'm not sure I'll ever witness that again!

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Of course December 2010 had prevaling winds from the NE so here in Edinburgh we had copious amounts of snow. Even down in the city near the sea. Up in the southern suburbs we had 20cm + on the ground from the last few days of November until the end of December.

Many days of sunny spells and streamers of heavy snow showers coming into the Forth

Edinburgers were walking or skiing around the city. Most cars were snowed in for a month

I'm not sure I'll ever witness that again!

I'm pretty sure that many of us here a little over a decade ago were wondering the same thing, Jerry. I know I was, although we had a pretty good foretaster of what December 2010 would bring when we had the month-long severe spell from just after mid-December 2009 until mid-January 2010.

Even the "Beast from the East" at the end of Feb/start of March 2018 showed us how severe wintry spells can and still do happen, and that one came right at the end of the meteorogical winter season. Sometimes our weather can still catch us out, and we can still get those dream winter conditions if the synoptics and other things play ball.

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Of course December 2010 had prevaling winds from the NE so here in Edinburgh we had copious amounts of snow. Even down in the city near the sea. Up in the southern suburbs we had 20cm + on the ground from the last few days of November until the end of December.

Many days of sunny spells and streamers of heavy snow showers coming into the Forth

Edinburgers were walking or skiing around the city. Most cars were snowed in for a month

I'm not sure I'll ever witness that again!

Yes, I can also remember Arthur's Seat resembling something more like a skiing resort in the Alps at that time, given just how much snow we had then. Yet (perhaps rather surprisingly), those bus services which are provided by Lothian Buses were only suspended for one day due to the weather during that entire spell, whereas these same services were suspended for a number of days during the last Beast from the East event in February/March 2018.

 

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Couldn't agree more! Part of me feels that it's only November and we have 3 months or so to go - but another part of me feels we have been here before last year and year before is a prime example and only to be let down by endless southerly or south westerly winds for 3 whole months as well as record breaking zonal winds. Despite coming out of solar minimum and a negative IOD and a hyperactive Atlantic/Hurricane season we still manage to get the same old mild and wet dross.

My only thought would be the fact that it's down to the strong La Nina in the central part of the pacific region 3.4 as well as the above average SST's in the NE pacific as well as the failure of the easterly QBO. (AGAIN!) Also we are seeing temperatures at 10 and 30hpa plummet - the same in recent years so this is helping to power up the PV.

Anyone know why we are seeing temperatures in the stratosphere always colder /well below normal in recent autumn/winter months? Or is this a rhetorical question?

Met Office Glosea5 seasonal updated today so will be interesting to see what that says. But i agree it's not looking good. 😞

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I ask the same thing every year: What is the ideal set-up for a cold winter in the UK? Whenever we get a mild winter - which let's be honest is most years these days - x, y or z was wrong! Back in the 80s there was a reasonable expectation that most of lowland Britain would see at least some accumulating snow which would hang around for a few days or longer. Surely x, y or z was often "wrong" in some of those years but it didn't prevent decent cold snaps developing.  

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This is starting to look like a mild winter , obviously things can change but its not looking great is it ?

Last year was bad enough here , no snow at all , I didn't expect a repeat 

It's November 9th! 

But seriously, if it happens it happens. Cold snowy snaps often develop really quickly and irrespective of whatever 'background signal' and 'downstream/upstream patterns' are in play at any one time. 

 

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It's November 9th! 

But seriously, if it happens it happens. Cold snowy snaps often develop really quickly and irrespective of whatever 'background signal' and 'downstream/upstream patterns' are in play at any one time. 

 

Yes it is , you are correct , but we are 3 weeks from December and I currently don't see anything that is giving any hope ( see Tally's post )

I'm not saying there wont be a cold snap ( 1, 2 or 3 days ) but with a forecast or zonal winds powering up , it gives me little to smile about .

Still might get out on the golf course with the clubs Santa is bringing 

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