I think coastal areas are more marginal than inland. It has always been the case but now with AGW - more so. 

It's an interesting point, and down here it's different from anywhere else in the UK. The reason being our close proximity to the European mainland, which can give proper deep, non-mixed out, non-marginal cold. It still can, and still can for at least a couple of decades yet.

The trouble is to access that cold, we need a robust easterly, preferably one that self-reinforces (the classic Scandinavia -> Greenland -> Scandinavia setup). The last time we had anything close to that was the Beast in 2018, before that it was 2005 (which Philip Eden said at the time would be the last proper easterly. 19 years on and we've not had one since, just that truncated one of 2018 and an even more truncated one at the beginning of the recent cold spell).

In other words, the climate we knew down here, the one which brought us continental air every few years and with it, powder, icicles, ice days etc has gone - whether it'll ever come back, I don't know, but it's been 19 years now. Without it, it becomes much, much more marginal, even without the 1.5C of daytime warming over the past 30 years. Now marginal can be great if you're on the right side (as it means more moisture, more snow, albeit the sopping wet stuff more often than not) but as can be seen from the others down here, more often than not we're on the wrong side of marginal.

It'd be interesting to hear from you folks up north: are there local snow-bearing weather patterns that have become rarer of late? That northerly, for example, seemed pretty unusual to me - but as I'm not really a fan of them, I've not paid as much attention as I have to the lack of Scandinavian highs.

And if I were younger, and looking to do a masters, I'd be doing it on the lack of Scandinavian Highs in a globally warmed world. I'm convinced there's some sort of feedback loop going on in our warming world, one which makes it disproportionately harder to attain the right synoptics to bring us a Scandinavian block. Whether that warming eventually tips things back, synoptically, remains to be seen...
 

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Interesting read Darren it also in my mind do those scandy populations really sick and tired of the low pressure always there all winter without a break?

Headline in the 'i' quoting Royal Met Society as saying that the current intensity of storms will become the norm in a decade.

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It's an interesting point, and down here it's different from anywhere else in the UK. The reason being our close proximity to the European mainland, which can give proper deep, non-mixed out, non-marginal cold. It still can, and still can for at least a couple of decades yet.

The trouble is to access that cold, we need a robust easterly, preferably one that self-reinforces (the classic Scandinavia -> Greenland -> Scandinavia setup). The last time we had anything close to that was the Beast in 2018, before that it was 2005 (which Philip Eden said at the time would be the last proper easterly. 19 years on and we've not had one since, just that truncated one of 2018 and an even more truncated one at the beginning of the recent cold spell).

In other words, the climate we knew down here, the one which brought us continental air every few years and with it, powder, icicles, ice days etc has gone - whether it'll ever come back, I don't know, but it's been 19 years now. Without it, it becomes much, much more marginal, even without the 1.5C of daytime warming over the past 30 years. Now marginal can be great if you're on the right side (as it means more moisture, more snow, albeit the sopping wet stuff more often than not) but as can be seen from the others down here, more often than not we're on the wrong side of marginal.

It'd be interesting to hear from you folks up north: are there local snow-bearing weather patterns that have become rarer of late? That northerly, for example, seemed pretty unusual to me - but as I'm not really a fan of them, I've not paid as much attention as I have to the lack of Scandinavian highs.

And if I were younger, and looking to do a masters, I'd be doing it on the lack of Scandinavian Highs in a globally warmed world. I'm convinced there's some sort of feedback loop going on in our warming world, one which makes it disproportionately harder to attain the right synoptics to bring us a Scandinavian block. Whether that warming eventually tips things back, synoptically, remains to be seen...
 

Very interesting post Darren and yes I think you’re spot on. Lack of deep cold easterlies. 

Up here things seem more marginal than they used to be, but we still get a fair few little snowfalls most winters. The reason being is that NW’lies don’t seem to have receded very much, if at all. 

However they rarely bring deep cold and lasting snow. Instead they tend to bring short bouts of moderate stuff. 

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This winter is starting to look like a complete bake. Given where we were a few weeks ago it must be one of the most dramatic u turns of all time?

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Who remembers this forecast?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qc49oYbAIr4 

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Who remembers this forecast?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qc49oYbAIr4 

Amazing. He’s so chilled out. 🤣

This is one of the most spectacular forecasts too - from RTE1 in 2018.

https://youtu.be/_jEmWF_ro2E?si=84fUw7bdhJGlEGkv 

 

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This winter is starting to look like a complete bake. Given where we were a few weeks ago it must be one of the most dramatic u turns of all time?

You do love hyperbole, my friend! 😁
But, with the best of the winter calendar now behind us (Dec-Jan), I'll admit I've mentally written this one off now for anything truly memorable (eg, month-long freeze-up with copious amounts of snow)

 

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It's an interesting point, and down here it's different from anywhere else in the UK. The reason being our close proximity to the European mainland, which can give proper deep, non-mixed out, non-marginal cold. It still can, and still can for at least a couple of decades yet.

The trouble is to access that cold, we need a robust easterly, preferably one that self-reinforces (the classic Scandinavia -> Greenland -> Scandinavia setup). The last time we had anything close to that was the Beast in 2018, before that it was 2005 (which Philip Eden said at the time would be the last proper easterly. 19 years on and we've not had one since, just that truncated one of 2018 and an even more truncated one at the beginning of the recent cold spell).

In other words, the climate we knew down here, the one which brought us continental air every few years and with it, powder, icicles, ice days etc has gone - whether it'll ever come back, I don't know, but it's been 19 years now. Without it, it becomes much, much more marginal, even without the 1.5C of daytime warming over the past 30 years. Now marginal can be great if you're on the right side (as it means more moisture, more snow, albeit the sopping wet stuff more often than not) but as can be seen from the others down here, more often than not we're on the wrong side of marginal.

It'd be interesting to hear from you folks up north: are there local snow-bearing weather patterns that have become rarer of late? That northerly, for example, seemed pretty unusual to me - but as I'm not really a fan of them, I've not paid as much attention as I have to the lack of Scandinavian highs.

And if I were younger, and looking to do a masters, I'd be doing it on the lack of Scandinavian Highs in a globally warmed world. I'm convinced there's some sort of feedback loop going on in our warming world, one which makes it disproportionately harder to attain the right synoptics to bring us a Scandinavian block. Whether that warming eventually tips things back, synoptically, remains to be seen...
 

In my opinion, the much warmer north Atlantic sea temps play the biggest role. Weather patterns just seemed a lot more extreme, both in winter and summer, when the whole basin was in its cooler state. 

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You do love hyperbole, my friend! 😁
But, with the best of the winter calendar now behind us (Dec-Jan), I'll admit I've mentally written this one off now for anything truly memorable (eg, month-long freeze-up with copious amounts of snow)

 

I do at times! 😁However, there is a grain of truth to my point. A few weeks ago there was widespread discussion about an extended period of cold weather, perhaps lasting for much of January and February. Background signals such as the -QBO, MJO and ENSO favoured it, as did developments in the strat. Even the UK Met were sounding quite bullish about the prospects for most of the rest of the meteorological winter. Now look where we are today. There is more speculation about the potential for it to be very mild than very cold as we head into February. Also, I don't count the last two weeks as a major cold period, certainly not in the southern half of the UK.

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In my opinion, the much warmer north Atlantic sea temps play the biggest role. Weather patterns just seemed a lot more extreme, both in winter and summer, when the whole basin was in its cooler state. 

I agree with this completely. (edit - although i'm not sure about the 'whole basin was in a cooler state' statement...)

https://climatereanalyzer.org/clim/sst_daily/ 
https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/binaries/content/assets/metofficegovuk/pdf/weather/learn-about/uk-past-events/summaries/uk_climate_summary_calendar_year_2023.pdf 

Its the unprecedented North Atlantic surface sea temperatures;

-23/24 is on course to be the most named storms in a season!
-2023 was the second warmest year (UK) on record bar 2022!
-LTA rainfall for England @ 120% (met office) 127% (GOV) - the sixth wettest on record!
-IMBY we only achieved 80% sunshine duration for the year...i live 20miles north of the so-called sunnies place in the UK...Eastbourne!

Screw SSW's, and all the other so called signals that almost never deliver... just look at whats happening to our Oceans, thats all the information you need!

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It's an interesting point, and down here it's different from anywhere else in the UK. The reason being our close proximity to the European mainland, which can give proper deep, non-mixed out, non-marginal cold. It still can, and still can for at least a couple of decades yet.

The trouble is to access that cold, we need a robust easterly, preferably one that self-reinforces (the classic Scandinavia -> Greenland -> Scandinavia setup). The last time we had anything close to that was the Beast in 2018, before that it was 2005 (which Philip Eden said at the time would be the last proper easterly. 19 years on and we've not had one since, just that truncated one of 2018 and an even more truncated one at the beginning of the recent cold spell).

In other words, the climate we knew down here, the one which brought us continental air every few years and with it, powder, icicles, ice days etc has gone - whether it'll ever come back, I don't know, but it's been 19 years now. Without it, it becomes much, much more marginal, even without the 1.5C of daytime warming over the past 30 years. Now marginal can be great if you're on the right side (as it means more moisture, more snow, albeit the sopping wet stuff more often than not) but as can be seen from the others down here, more often than not we're on the wrong side of marginal.

It'd be interesting to hear from you folks up north: are there local snow-bearing weather patterns that have become rarer of late? That northerly, for example, seemed pretty unusual to me - but as I'm not really a fan of them, I've not paid as much attention as I have to the lack of Scandinavian highs.

And if I were younger, and looking to do a masters, I'd be doing it on the lack of Scandinavian Highs in a globally warmed world. I'm convinced there's some sort of feedback loop going on in our warming world, one which makes it disproportionately harder to attain the right synoptics to bring us a Scandinavian block. Whether that warming eventually tips things back, synoptically, remains to be seen...
 

IMHO, this gets right to the heart of the problem.  It has, I think, been pretty clear for some time that, probably because of a combination of factors, it is now much harder for Scandinavian blocking to become established (in winter, at least, I don’t know whether it is equally true for summer).

These plots give a good impression of how less frequent positive height anomalies over Scandinavia (and Western Russia) have tended to be in recent years: https://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/data/teledoc/scand_ts.shtml 

Simply looking at the amount of red versus blue in the first two rows and the last two gives a good, albeit subjective, impression of how things have changed.  Naturally, there is not going to be a perfect correlation between this and memorable winter weather in the (souther half of) the UK but it does, I think, give an interesting perspective.  And there are some obvious “red peaks” — early 1991, for example.

The obvious question is, of course: why has this change happened?  I would not claim to have anything like the understanding of atmospheric physics to be able to give a proper answer to that, but I rather suspect that simply having more energy (to put it very loosely) in the North Atlantic basin, coupled with (quite frequently) less sea ice, makes it harder for old-fashioned blocking to become established.  It would be good to hear some more objective answers to the question, though.

Andrew

Simply looking at the amount of red versus blue in the first two rows and the last two gives a good, albeit subjective, impression of how things have changed.  Naturally, there is not going to be a perfect correlation between this and memorable winter weather in the (souther half of) the UK but it does, I think, give an interesting perspective.  And there are some obvious “red peaks” — early 1991, for example.
Andrew

That's a really useful chart, thank you for finding it! It confirms that highs over Scandinavia (whether they extend as far as us or not) are diminishing... and the really interesting thing is that the pattern has been going on since the 60s! I'd assumed things had been relatively stable up 'til the 90s, but it seems that the wheels have been in motion for far longer. I guess there was a fair bit of "slack" in the system to start with, so it wasn't really noticeable, but since then we've crossed a tipping point.

(It's a bit like the way those up north still get snow opportunities, as they were well inside the "snow zone" to start with, whereas us down here, with less margin to play with, end up with rain more often).

As for why - it's got to be due to the warming trend, but the precise mechanism for it would need to be delved into. It'd be a fascinating area of research.

Incidentally, the Beeb has an article about the Elfstedentocht, the ice-skating race in the Netherlands. It was something which was mentioned from time to time in the early days of the Web (back in the 90s). I've not heard much about it since, and no wonder: it's not taken place since 1997, as the ice simply hasn't formed to the required depth (if at all)

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/winter-sports/67926417 

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First time I've ever heard of the 'Scandinavian index'. 😲

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Incidentally, the Beeb has an article about the Elfstedentocht, the ice-skating race in the Netherlands. It was something which was mentioned from time to time in the early days of the Web (back in the 90s). I've not heard much about it since, and no wonder: it's not taken place since 1997, as the ice simply hasn't formed to the required depth (if at all)

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/winter-sports/67926417 

Though the fen skating enthusiasts did get some outdoor skating last week near Ely.
https://www.wisbechstandard.co.uk/news/24067415.ely-photographer-captures-fen-skaters-upware-cambs/?ref=rss 

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Though the fen skating enthusiasts did get some outdoor skating last week near Ely.
https://www.wisbechstandard.co.uk/news/24067415.ely-photographer-captures-fen-skaters-upware-cambs/?ref=rss 

We went to watch outdoor skating near Spalding back in the late 80s but it was stopped for safety reasons. The ice, if there is any, is no longer to be trusted, I am told. Our neighbour near Dogdyke spoke of skating on the River Witham up as far as Lincoln and down as far as Boston when he was a kid. The river is managed now to try to avoid freezing and maintain drainage by varying the level, so that is very much a thing of the past, but most old timers here have skating memories - and quite often their old skates.

The First Lincolnshire Rifle Volunteers skated on the frozen River Witham 1861 when it was too icy to drill on land! Hard to believe.
https://www.antiquemapsandprints.com/categories/prints-and-maps-by-subject/sports-hobbies/winter-sports/product/the-first-lincolnshire-rifle-volunteers-skating-the-frozen-river-witham-1861/I611051~I611051 
 

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I spent nearly every afternoon for a couple of months in 1963 skating from Cambridge to Grantchester and back. The ice was strong enough after a while to bear a small car - it might have been an Austin 7 - and the university engineering dept built a lethally fast ice yacht out of Dexion.

At one point in February there was a slight thaw but the ground was too frozen for the water to sink in before it re-froze. The result, for those who know Cambridge, was that the hockey pitches on Parker's Piece in the city centre turned into a set of outdoor ice rinks, well lit by street lamps at night and easily accessible - the population of Cambridge turned out by the hundred to enjoy it.

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That's a really useful chart, thank you for finding it! It confirms that highs over Scandinavia (whether they extend as far as us or not) are diminishing... and the really interesting thing is that the pattern has been going on since the 60s! I'd assumed things had been relatively stable up 'til the 90s, but it seems that the wheels have been in motion for far longer. I guess there was a fair bit of "slack" in the system to start with, so it wasn't really noticeable, but since then we've crossed a tipping point.

(It's a bit like the way those up north still get snow opportunities, as they were well inside the "snow zone" to start with, whereas us down here, with less margin to play with, end up with rain more often).

As for why - it's got to be due to the warming trend, but the precise mechanism for it would need to be delved into. It'd be a fascinating area of research.

Incidentally, the Beeb has an article about the Elfstedentocht, the ice-skating race in the Netherlands. It was something which was mentioned from time to time in the early days of the Web (back in the 90s). I've not heard much about it since, and no wonder: it's not taken place since 1997, as the ice simply hasn't formed to the required depth (if at all)

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/winter-sports/67926417 

Pure speculation on my part (and the caveat is that, pre-TWO, I'd not really monitor the models that closely), but the regularity of blocking to our north/over Greenland seems if anything to have increased since the turn of the century.

 

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When Valencia hits 30c in January you should know in your guts we’re in serious trouble. I don’t know if it’s more depressing or shocking. Probably the former. 

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Back to relentless garbage since the snow went. Just absolutely hideous, coma-inducing unusable dross all the time.

Absolutely sick to the back teeth of the relentless vile wind rattling away all the time. Storms no longer pack the punch they used to and anticyclones never produce calm weather. There's no difference in the conditions when there's supposed to be a storm compared to the rest of the time. It's just the same relentless force 4 to 6 winds howling away regardless.

If you want to see a real stormy month look at January 1974 and even it managed more light calm winds than the utter filth that passes for winter these days.

Looks like it could be close to the mildest final third of January on record, with a ridiculous mean of 6.4C since the 21st, yet there has been zero mild feeling days due to the horrible wind and temperatures generally being 4-7C during the day only to rise to stupid levels after dark 🤬 No concept of normal diurnal behaviour anymore with regards to either temperature or wind.

At what should be the coldest time of the year with regular frost it hasn't dropped below 2C in over a week and we are looking at yet another week of abject hell ahead with nothing seasonable or enjoyable. No variety or changeability. Just more endurance test nonsense. Everything that used to make winter bearable - snow, frost, foehn effects have gone to be replaced by the worst possible crud of wind and/or rain which I utterly despise. Hardly even had a good sunrise or sunset this year. It has been grim beyond words.

Would like to go out on a long bike ride but can't see me lasting long out in that windy garbage. Can't see any benefits of this filth over the snow whatsoever. It truly is awful, dispiriting rubbish 🤮

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