Model banter and emotions

[Don]

5 minutes ago, Nick F said:

Think there is something in the idea that sub-tropical high pressure belts have shifted further north in winter recently, preventing cold getting as far south as it used to and explains drought persisting through the winter months now in southern Europe, as far north as the Alps.

This seems to have been a key feature since winter 2018/19?

[Don]

2 minutes ago, damianslaw said:

In the meantime model watching presently is dumb founding me, as the expected outcomes seem not to be occuring making me question my ability to sense things clearly.

I think it's down to strange things going on within the atmosphere, throwing everything out of kilter?

[alexisj9]

 damianslaw well I'm not planting my new sunburst out, till I know, needs to be after last frost, surly that won't be in may again.

[weathercold]

 nick sussex Absolutely- this winter is a total bust.

It’s a bust for all those pre winter seasonals, it’s a bust for all those background drivers, and it’s a bust for those wholly inaccurate Ec46 forecasts which have proven so poor.

I genuinely can’t recall a winter which has delivered so badly with so much pre winter hype attached to it.

I feel this winter is a real eye opener though, with an EQBO on our side as well as a couple of other noted drivers, we have still had another bust of a winter season. Makes you think - can we really ever achieve a real ‘winter’ here in the UK (widely). 
 

Today’s model output has to make you laugh it’s as though we are being punished for wanting cold and snow - there is no chance of anything wintry across most of lowland Britain after a brief non event tomorrow for most.

Eagerly now looking at the output hoping for some early warmth into March- too much to ask for after a bust winter?

[Djdazzle]

 weathercold Agreed. And the usual suspects will learn nothing from this winter, and will ramp it all up again next time the models / signals hint at a possibility of cold.

In some ways, we've made great advances in forecasting but in other ways, we've only scratched the surface.

This winter has been a real eye-opener for how badly the UKMO and ECM have performed. Yet people will still say that they "can't both be wrong" at T96.

I for one am now enjoying feeling the stronger February sun on my skin and looking forward to a warm spring (which no doubt will have loads of northern blocking!!!)

 

[mountain shadow]

It currently is not looking good for all those long range forecasts and teleconnections that pointed towards proper Winter arriving in mid February. 

Even the mighty Met Office have been promising Winter to arrive from mid month with Northerlies, but there is little sign of that. 

The Iberian High curtesy of the expanded Hadley cell now rules supreme with proper Winter now confined to Scotland. 

Edited February 7 by mountain shadow

[Penrith Snow]

 weathercold Agreed Nick, their is far too much emphasis these days on so called background signals with clever sounding AAM's and MJO's all of which didn't exist a decade ago and don't get me started on Mountain Torque!

There are few teleconnections that truly affect the UK climate but a strong El Nino is one of them and you only had to look at 1998 and 2016 to see what this winter had in store.

As for the models GFS has led the way recently, accurately pushing tomorrow's low North rather than East and I suspect GFS has the correct solution going forward with any blocking high aligning to bring southerly winds and early warmth to western Europe

After this miserable non winter that surely will be welcome.

Andy

[E17boy]

 MJB The way things are as they stand and if they don’t change I think the Met outlook will change a lot. As you say we still don’t know us coldies will always hang on and clutch to hope, but I feel time is ticking we need something to rescue us from this mess.

[E17boy]

 Met4Cast

[mulzy]

 MJB It's the 7th of Feb today so strictly there are still 22 days of 'winter' left.  However, everything is trending in the wrong direction for any kind of 'late' show.  As for March, no thanks - let's have some sunshine to top up our depleted vitamin D levels.

Things may change if 'winter' does deliver this month, but this winter has been dreadful simply because of the hype and expectations.  I am used to snowless winters in London as this has become the 'norm', but the ramping (and not just from amateurs like me) has been stratospheric (forgive the pun) this year.  AGW is a massive spanner in any 'winter' works - something we all need to mull over.

[mountain shadow]

 Penrith Snow I do not agree entirely with your post.

The Angular Momentum theories are very real and do impact our weather, the issue I think is that the projections of the MJO  AAM anomalies etc now have to be of significant magnitude to overcome the expanded Hadley cell into Iberia.

Twenty, maybe even ten years ago, I think this Winter would have been very cold and Wintry, but we are over the tipping point.

Spain is becoming a desert.

[In Absence of True Seasons]

10 hours ago, Hotspur62 said:

what has caused us snatching defeat from the jaws of victory

Sheer bad luck. Nothing more or nothing less. That genuinely cold spell we had in Jan *should* have delivered widespread snow, but the snow band instead landed a tad more south than was predicted and so dumped snow over Northern France, Belgium, Netherlands, Denmark etc, instead of over Britain. 

[ANYWEATHER]

Whilst teleconections are useful, I think there are many missing links which as yet and may never know. The teleconnections are part of a puzzle or maze of jigsaw pieces ,we have some of the pieces ,but a lot are missing. Unfortunately there is no handbook on how the planet and nature work togeather ,so makind has to search and find ,but it may well end that there are some things that we will never find ,hence long range forecasts may be as illusive as the proverbial gold at the end of the rainbow....☺

[Spah1]

 Drifter

Amber as expected. 

[joggs]

Ec46 has hardly ever come to fruition.

Everything day10 and watered down to nothing.

Iberian heights kill us.

What a poor excuse for a winter.

God only knows what the mo are seeing.

Can see them backtracking re longer-term.

I know there a few weeks if Feb left but we need a instant turnaround for me, personally to be interested.

Bring on the warmth for march.

 

[andy989]

 Spah1

I find that really strange, how can they be so sure of that little indent of yellow into the amber, especially seeing as that a mountainous region with the the highest mountains outside of Scotland 

[TonyH]

 andy989 lower ground.

[MAF]

 andy989 Maybe the wind direction against the mountainous area and geography means the snow won't hit the higher ground. puurely guessing here though. 

[TEITS]

I share everyone's frustration.

What frustrates me is my expectations are pretty low. I do not seek prolonged, cold spells or extreme snowfall. Just a short lived 5cm-10cm of snow would do nicely.  Even that I have struggled to achieve since 2018.

The model output has been odd at times this winter. The way the models have been handling this weeks low pressure is odd and I would not of expected this to track N as projected.

[rwtwm]

1 hour ago, Penrith Snow said:

...AAM's and MJO's all of which didn't exist a decade ago...

That's tantamount to saying that we only got stuck to the ground once Newton spotted gravity!

One thing that does strike me though is that a lot of the predictions driven from these phenomena seem to be based on correlations. That may just be a weakness of my knowledge, but the discussion is often X promotes Y, or makes Z more likely.

But rather than seeing a phenomena and then hoping something should happen after n days, we should be able to trace the ripple effects from the initial forcing. If enhanced convection in a certain part of the Pacific is the butterfly that leads to a Jet Stream rising over Greenland and diving into Spain, it should be possible to construct the chain of events that leads to it. Or conversely, see what interactions broke the chain if the expected or hoped for result failed. 

Correlations based on a small sample of past events in a rapidly changing climate are unlikely to be very useful. Understanding the mechanisms and following them will be much more instructive. 

(FWIW, this is why I'm dubious of AI models. I think they can be useful, but you need the physical equations to describe how things change when the energy balance changes)

 

 

[Chris K]

 Met4Cast

Yea I think I'm done with this winter already It stinks of endless chasing and in the end an overall soggy and mild one, at least for the majority of southern UK.

We keep seeing optimism in longer range models and trends, yet when it comes closer to a more reliable timeframe, we seem to end up scuppered.

Keep up the good posts on twitter by the way

[mountain shadow]

Has there been a Winter where forecasts from the Professionals have been so poor?

The Met Office have been promising Northerlies for weeks without them materialising.

[Don]

 MP-R I don’t want 2019 style warmth full stop, but it’s something that will become more common sadly.

[MP-R]

 Don I mean, I'd rather a northerly or easterly, but there's no denying a Feb like 2019 is much better than relentless dull featureless southwesterlies which, in February, are about as seasonal as constant cold northerlies in August...

The entire GFS 06Z and 00Z wouldn't look out of place in November. 

[AnnyPl]

4 hours ago, weathercold said:

It’s a bust for all those pre winter seasonals, it’s a bust for all those background drivers, and it’s a bust for those wholly inaccurate Ec46 forecasts which have proven so poor.

I genuinely can’t recall a winter which has delivered so badly with so much pre winter hype attached to it.

I feel this winter is a real eye opener though, with an EQBO on our side as well as a couple of other noted drivers, we have still had another bust of a winter season. Makes you think - can we really ever achieve a real ‘winter’ here in the UK (widely). 
 

Today’s model output has to make you laugh it’s as though we are being punished for wanting cold and snow - there is no chance of anything wintry across most of lowland Britain after a brief non event tomorrow for most.

Only here I can feel myself relaxing. Eagerly now looking at the output hoping for some early warmth into March- too much to ask for after a bust winter?

Indeed, the lack of heavy snowfall and cold weather after all the hype that preceded the season can be a cause of disappointment. Models are constantly being improved, but perfect accuracy is difficult to achieve.