Yes, if nothing else it’s an impressive setup at “only” +120 hours:https://www.wetterzentrale.de/maps/ICOOPEU12_120_1.png

Yes, the ICON model (on WZ at least) really doesn’t model snow cover/precipitation very well. I have never seen it show any snow for this area before.

🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

As ever things could change but the timescale is getting into the “reliable” range.

It really is a stonker out to 230 hours, with very few places missing out on the white stuff.

Do you ever get excited? The charts look possibly the best in many a year and you look to be in a sweet spot. Isn’t that part of the fun the anticipation?

🤣 I’m usually excited when it starts to snow. 

Yes the charts looks good and the “chase” is part of the fun. As I said we are getting to more reliable time scale now. If the ECM 12z is on the same page later then I would say a cold and wintry conditions from the north look probable and that cold should extend to some extent across much of the country, with details and longevity to be established.

Run of the winter so far

It's warmer than the 6z here in the next week, believe it or not, with a lovely little warm sector dumping several mm of sleet during Saturday and Sunday. It's typical, of course, as this sort of to-ing and fro-ing always happens - the general pattern remains a cold one and I have to say seeing this reminds me in some ways of the January 2010 cold spell, especially the way a chunk of the polar vortex settles over Scandinavia. 

The most encouraging thing (for cold weather fans) though is the MetO rewriting their mid-term outlook to mention snow. 

Indeed Ally, almost reminiscent of the winters at the beginning and end of 2010. 

I could count with the fingers on one hand how many times the models have produced runs like some that we are now seeing in the 15 years since. 

https://www.theweatheroutlook.com/charts/ukguk/12_162_2m_min_temp.png 

(There's a -25 lurking there...)

Feet on the ground for me given where I live but for prone spots we're nearly at the getting rather interested point IMO.

UKMO remains a little stubborn on clearing the cold south, which is so far a bit isolated but something to watch if you're in the southern third of the country. Given other output so far though, hopefully it'll fall in line and even if it's right, it's still a nice looking set up. 

So far it all looks very good for a spell of at least 5 days or so of cold weather with snow chances for some but usual caveats about snowfall apply - it's modelled as a convective northerly, so some areas would need to rely on organised troughs, encroaching LPs etc. to bring precip. All too far out to pay much attention to specifics of course and as has been mentioned get the cold in first - my last decent snowfall was in a 'dry' Northerly set up a couple of years ago, with a little LP developing near to the SE and spinning up over MBY and tracking west across parts of the south. That gave around 8-10cm which hung around for 4-5 days from memory. 

Give it another 24-36 hours and I think I'll be happy to go with cold spell incoming and move on to the shorter scale models to check for disturbances etc. Main reason I'm not jumping now being past experiences with model rug pulling and a slight concern that *if* the Greenie HP does come off that runs the risk of the mild/cold boundary ending up north of me if the pattern is too far west and or LP moves up on a NE trajectory and cuts of the cold for MBY.

Potentially fun times incoming!