I'm happy for you or others to shoot me down, but I believe a (possibly weak) correlation has been shown between mild autumns and mild winters. The view that "things even out" is largely bunkum, at least when looked at over this length of time.

Hmm.. I don't know but I don know this autumn is exceptionally mild so far anyway. What I do know is that autumns over the past 10 years have been a lot milder than average in general. I can't quite remember a year when we had a below average Autumn in terms of CET for the most of Sept/Oct/Nov. No one can predict and at any rate - if we get a SSW and a reversal of zonal flow then this could lead to northern blocking and cold and we do have more chance of this happening this winter 2021/22 due to the weaker zonal winds forecast as well as the easterly QBO unlike the past two winters which were westerly, we also see colder than average SST in the NE pacific as well which is different to previous years. So interesting times but a lot of conflicting signals. 

 

It's impossible to argue against this from the perspective of cold winters as they are the exception. To say that they can even out would suggest we get an even number of cold and mild winters which would be ridiculous.

Surely that depends how you define "cold" and "mild". If we just take that to mean colder than average and milder than average then by definition they do tend to even out....

 

Surely that depends how you define "cold" and "mild". If we just take that to mean colder than average and milder than average then by definition they do tend to even out....

I think there are 2 points there:

1) If background temperatures are rising then you constantly would need to re-baseline to achieve that

2) My point was more about month than years. I don't buy into the idea that because Month X and Y were mild month Z is more likely to be cold. In fact I would suggest the opposite is more probable.

Another interesting flip in the models at 240z from 00z run:

240z at 12z run (Most recent):

A warm day today 13.1 and after a dip in a few days, looks pretty mild for November. Continuing the trend for autumn

Exceptionally dry 6 days of November so far here. Only 1.6mm rain , very dry for an autumn month in any period

 

I think there are 2 points there:

1) If background temperatures are rising then you constantly would need to re-baseline to achieve that

2) My point was more about month than years. I don't buy into the idea that because Month X and Y were mild month Z is more likely to be cold. In fact I would suggest the opposite is more probable.

To he fair it does depend on the definition - I read it as because the last few winters were mild then the next one is more likely to be cold.

 

To he fair it does depend on the definition - I read it as because the last few winters were mild then the next one is more likely to be cold.

A commonly held misconception based on the entirely spurious 'Law of Averages'. If long range weather is random (as I suspect) then mild or cold outcomes are equally likely (think of tossing a coin); if there are connections from one year to the next, then that next year is IMO more likely to follow any existing pattern than to change it.

WX summary; the march of cold weather from the NE resumes in week 2 (0C isotherm into Poland and over a fair amount of the Alps) while the UK cools (14C isotherm moves from N Ireland to N Spain). PPtn is back to the pattern of a few days ago - currently N Atlantic , W Med and Baltic but in week 2 W coastal Europe and Med generally.

Jet - briefly looping N wards then until about Sun 14th across or close to Scotland before a big and strong plunge takes it down the W side of Uk and through the Med. That 'blows itself out' and normal service over Scotland resumes from Sat 20th

GFS op - W-ly pattern with LP never far from N and HP never far from S until Mon 15th when 965 mb Iceland moves SE to 980mb NE Scotland Tue 16th continuing S-wards and filling to set up a broad area of Lp over France Sat 20th having dragged cold air down with it. Pressure rise from SW ridging to Norway behind it. The LP fizzles out over Italy and W-lies resume over UK by Mon 22nd

GEFS - Mild or v. mild to about Tue 16th thereafter cool or cold but as usual with increasing uncertainty. Rain generally from Tue 16th in the S (snow row figures making an appearance 2s or 3s). Scotland has a dip in temp in the middle of the mild spell (11th) and rain starting a few days earlier in all parts but not much in the E.

ECM - at first keeps pressure higher over Britain than does GFS but still a W-ly pattern. The evolution from Sun 15th is different; first the LP near Iceland extends a trough S-wards in the E Atlantic with S-lies for UK and although this trough fills though with a general lowering of pressure over the UK  the parent LP shows no sign of moving from its base near SW Iceland even by Wed 17th

Interesting GFS 6z with a scandi high building at quite short notice, cold uppers also.

I saw that - models are really flip flopping especially this Siberian high spreading westwards into western Russia and then Scandinavia or not at all, it's like one run it's there and the next it's flat as a pancake. I really hope for some snow when I go to Stockholm. I would be interested to see where this 06z OP run stands with it's ENS members or if it's a cold outlier or colder ENS member.

Surprised the UM 168 hasn't been mentioned this morning.

https://www.theweatheroutlook.com/twodata/ukmet.aspx?run=00&charthour=168&chartname=500hpa_height&chartregion=na-region&charttag=500hPa%20GPDM

Surprised the UM 168 hasn't been mentioned this morning.

https://www.theweatheroutlook.com/twodata/ukmet.aspx?run=00&charthour=168&chartname=500hpa_height&chartregion=na-region&charttag=500hPa%20GPDM

 

Not a million isobars from the 0z ECM (but it doesn't last in that model)

Surprised the UM 168 hasn't been mentioned this morning.

https://www.theweatheroutlook.com/twodata/ukmet.aspx?run=00&charthour=168&chartname=500hpa_height&chartregion=na-region&charttag=500hPa%20GPDM

 

Lots of noise on Twitter about this. That’s the sort of high pressure that leads to something….we shall see.

Surprised the UM 168 hasn't been mentioned this morning.

https://www.theweatheroutlook.com/twodata/ukmet.aspx?run=00&charthour=168&chartname=500hpa_height&chartregion=na-region&charttag=500hPa%20GPDM

 

Very foggy for northern britain under that

Be interesting to see where we will go from here ...........into FI of course 

UM 12z building high pressure again.

https://www.theweatheroutlook.com/twodata/ukmet.aspx?run=12&charthour=168&chartname=500hpa_height&chartregion=na-region&charttag=500hPa%20GPDM

Looks like the signal is for temperatures to be at least a little lower in the mid term than was being favoured a couple of days ago.

 

I'm happy for you or others to shoot me down, but I believe a (possibly weak) correlation has been shown between mild autumns and mild winters. The view that "things even out" is largely bunkum, at least when looked at over this length of time.

There were certainly no cold winters after our three 12C+ autumns since 2006. And the big cold winters of the deep past all had cold autumns.

1979 is an exception, but not enough to disprove- and this is a sample of winters of course. I reckon you could be on to something there- and maintenance of sea temperatures in the autumn months could be an impacting factor. A challenge for the correlation champions? GW or KB?

How did the autumns of 2009 and 2010 turn out for CET?

I don't recall either being notably mild or notably cool, although I do remember November 2009 being mild and very, very wet.

I see the models continuing with relative accuracy as they have all year with above average temperatures

It would be foolish to expect a cold winter or cold december based on current run rate and climate temperatures in the UK for 2021 so far

2021 YTD is running......

+0.6 vs 1960-1991

+0.2 vs 1981-2010

-0.14 vs 1991-2020

Seen as 2021 is running close to the average for 91-20 then we should expect the final 2 months to run similar to the Nov and Dec average for this period

This would potentially mean Nov around 7.4 and Dec around 5 

That looks more than possible based on current 16 day forecast for Nov and LR models for December

You need to have some dose of reality when looking at the coming months rather than hoping. Hoping is where all the fun is though lol