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One thing which I like about Gavin P.'s videos is that he will always admit to getting a particular forecast wrong whenever he has done so, and then try to go more into what he thought, went wrong with that and in the case of seasonal and monthly forecasts, this will usually be in a brief but separate video. I don't know of any forecasters out there who would do that, and I'm not even sure that the legendary Michael Fish who is still doing the same sort of stuff over at Netweather these days, would have done that either, especially back in his earlier days with the BBC.
I can see where Gavin P. went wrong with his latest winter forecast though, and he has already recently admitted that this forecast is well and truly bust. As you know, he always gives an NAO forecast every summer, for the following winter based on what the Atlantic SSTs are like in May and in the last such forecast, he went for a weakly negative NAO during this winter.
As it turns out though, the NAO has been consistently positive throughout this winter, having turned positive on around the very first day of the winter. That was therefore, a forecast which he got wrong right away but then as time went on, it didn't take long for the signs of trouble ahead in that regard to appear as the NE Pacific Ocean got a lot warmer.
Every time that this happens, that is always bad news for here during the following winter and that has ended up being the case yet again. That was something which I spelt out quite a lot on this forum during that period. Later on, the Atlantic then eventually turned colder in the wrong areas after being quite warm for a while, and that is probably what resulted in the NAO becoming more positive as that was similar to what had happened a year earlier.
When Gavin P. gave his initial NAO forecast, he probably didn't see that happening and that is probably why he gave what has now, turned out to be that rather incorrect forecast for a weakly negative NAO during this winter. Based on that, Gavin P. might have been thinking that this could be enough to give us a slightly colder than average winter although to be far to Gavin P., a lot of the analogues which he was showing us in his weekly winter update videos were showing that as well.
However, the long-term models even back then were all consistently going for a mild winter and in the end, Gavin P. paid the price for not going along with that. There is probably one other factor which explains that as well, and that is the QBO which is expected to transition towards its easterly phase very soon. If that had already been the case to begin with, that would have favoured a colder winter. However, Gavin P. has always said himself that there is a lag between any change in the QBO, and any effects which that has down in the troposphere where all of the weather action happens. This means that it was always going to be case that the fact that the QBO was starting off in its westerly phase was always going to be the dominant factor here which in this instance, would have favoured a milder winter.
When all of that is taken into consideration, I would have gone for a mild winter at around the time when Gavin P. gave his forecast as I would have listened to what the models were saying, a lot more than what he did. Anyway, one thing which has bugged me a lot about Gav's most recent shorter term forecasts has when he has consistently used the phrase "especially" or "more focused" followed by "England and Wales". This is nothing against Gavin P. himself as anyone else doing those forecasts would just have said the same sort of thing in their own different way. However, that just rubs in the fact that the weather always seems to be more interesting in England and Wales than what it is here in Scotland and that is consistently always the case, that does get on my nerves quite a lot.
That is therefore what led to give my latest comments above, about this latest spell of high pressure and potentially frosty weather because that after all, is something which is mainly affecting England and Wales, whilst not affecting Scotland to anything like the same degree if it does even affect here at all. Yet, the English-biased so-called UK mainstream media will treat that as though it was like that across the entire country due to their unwillingness to understand that the UK does actually extend beyond the southern half of England. That then gets on my nerves even more, especially when the actual reality of the situation up here is completely different from that.
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.