During nearly every single winter, those of us who are looking for a lot of cold weather and snow at that time of the year will the be relying on there being quite a bit of northern blocking around to deliver that with a strong Greenland/Scandinavian High feeding in really cold winds from either Siberia (if that is an easterly wind) or the Arctic (if that is a northerly wind).
Yet all too often, it is the Azores High which then becomes our unwelcome visitor at that time of the year as that then brings in really mild air from the Canary Islands which has then ruined many recent winters in particular. Now that we are into what is supposed to be "summer" though, this now brings us into the very time of the year when we want the Azores High to be around so that it then builds toward the UK and delivers some proper summer weather with a lot of hot, dry and sunny weather.
Indeed, we even got our wish from that last year and we ended up with a really good summer as a result. However, that is once again being shown to be an exception rather than the rule because just when we want the Azores High to be around, it is now posted almost completely missing.
What we have instead of that, is the very type of northern blocking which we look for during the winter to deliver some really cold weather except that at this time of year, this tends to result of low pressure forming underneath it and then sitting in a certain particular location such as right over the UK, resulting in us then experiencing a really poor summer such as what we had in 2007 and 2012, and which has also caused this so-called "summer" to get off to such a poor start.
When you all of that together, you couldn't really make that up. Two questions then arise from that and the first such question is the one of where that Azores High is at the very time of the year when we need it to be around and secondly, why can't we get that sort of northern blocking during the winter which is around at the moment (if we did, our winters would no doubt be colder than what they are turning out to be with those snow and cold weather lovers being much happier as a result)?
The north of Edinburgh, usually always missing out on snow events which occur not just within the rest of Scotland or the UK, but also within the rest of Edinburgh.