Jason M

If the charts all agree that a low will be sat right on top us in 10 days, I'll take comfort from that because I've never seen a day 10 chart be exactly right. Following that logic, the reality at day 10 has to be better than what is currently shown

We have had soft hail in Basildon.

Heights to our south / south east have been largely dominant for over a year. Little sign that's going to change anytime soon. Given that in a couple of weeks we are heading into spring, that might not be the worst pattern to be going on with. Its a winter killer but a summer maker!

My thinking as well. A very cold, dry, stratus fest but with very little snow. Under these set ups pressure tends to be too high which even with very low uppers stops convection.

Models also tend to over egg PM shots. By the time they arrive the pattern is often a little flatter and 850s a little higher. The dominance of high pressure to our south is not a pattern that will be shifted easily IMHO. Its been in place for most of the last 12 months and I'm not seeing anything whatsoever to suggest northern heights are likely. Nobody can completely write off the period from late Jan through to end Feb as things can change but the form horse here is the pattern to largely maintain. My guess is that Feb will be more high pressure dominated in the south and that we will be looking at another mild month. Only route to meaningful cold that I see is that we drag in a punchy cold pool around the base of a mid lat high next month (15% chance?). A 24/48 hour PM or Arctic blast is always possible but they are usually blink and miss them affairs under this regime away from the north. Interesting to see very high temperatures modelled again for tomorrow. Every warm sector now seems to push temps up into 13/14c range whereas 11/12c would have been the more likely outcome some years back. In our part of the world we have already had 2c of warming which given that we sit on the boundary between competing airmasses is to be expected I suppose.

Nothing record breaking in our part of the world yet. I do think the key word here is 'yet' though. With the persistence of heights to our south its just a matter of time before we tap into something very warm for the time of year.

Agree, but unless this happens nothing else matters. If we have heights to our south and southeast its basically game over away from the far north. Remove those and we at least have a chance.

GEFS now out to 276 hours. Not many straws to grasp in amongst them. Best I can say is that 'more runs needed' and look forward to another shiny set tomorrow morning.

Looking on the bright side, even the weather is fighting for Ukraine.

Just looked through GEFS at 192 hours. It has no real support. Looking at the overall set up its not a completely ridiculous evolution, but sits at the very extreme end of the envelope as things stand so IMHO its very unlikely.

I'm not an expert on the strat stuff but I know bad charts when I see them, and the output today is utterly dire. Sadly, I think you are right about the first two thirds of the month. When was the last time we had a real 5 star convective easterly in January?

I'm not looking for something this side of the 5th. In fact, I think the 15th would be a better reflection of where we are. Very small possibility that we could drag a cold pool in around a mid lat high but other than that its a similar position to this time last year.

Well, just looked through the GEFS which are out to 186 hours. No crumbs of comfort to be found I'm afraid. Yet again we go into a January with an awful set up. Heights to our south and south east are rock solid across the suite. Oh well, its Christmas .

Other way of looking at this is that the area where do want uncertainty is high confidence. That is the area to our south and southeast. This illustrates the southern European high is absolutely rock solid. After that point the rest doesn't matter because with that in place we can't benefit even if we ended up with a huge Greenland high or even Scandi heights. Doesn't rule out cold in Scotland but for most of the highly populated area in England its pretty much a game over situation. Until the situation over southern Europe changes, no deep cold will occur and looking through the output today there is little sign of that bar the odd rogue ensemble.

Sadly this feels more realistic from GFS. The cold air is going to struggle to clear the south coast next weekend due to our old foe over southern Europe. I still think there is room for further corrections north from here tbh.

That certainly feels possible. I just think that GFS would be equivalent of winning the lottery in Weather terms. Its the 'everything goes perfectly right' run. ECM is maybe the other extreme end of the scale. Being the UK, the half way house solution will feel a lot more like ECM than GFS. North of England northwards though...... maybe. Central belt of Scotland northwards in with a good shout I think.

Well, place your bets. GFS or ECM? I'm going for ECM simply because of the heights to our south. It just makes more sense that we will be mild in my honest opinion. ECM won't be exact of course but odds wise I'd say 90% on ECM in very broad terms.

You miss my point. This isn't about whether those heights stay or go. The issue here is that the GFS is showing snow over the far South on Xmas evening with a great big fat Iberian high in place. Its just my opinion but the odds of that happening are remote at best. If we start to see snow being modelled in conjunction with those heights having relented that's very different! I might be proved wrong (hope so), but this just looks to me like nonsense.

Experience shows us they rarely do. Its very rare to get anything other than a very brief glancing northerly with a significant area of high pressure over Spain.

I suppose its possible but with the Iberian heights firmly in place I'm just not buying what GFS is selling. There is an envelope here for Xmas and I suspect this is the far extreme cold end of it. Not impossible, but very unlikely IMHO. I suspect it will adjust northwards over the next few runs. Sticking my neck out here I'm going Northern England northwards, with the cold air making little impact in the South.

Oh dear, now I know were in trouble. By the end of this week I suspect we will be reminded of 1947 and 1963 Running into the Christmas period the north still seems to be at least in the game, for anyone in the southern half of England and Wales though until the Iberian slug moves away, its going to be me more Wet, Wet, Wet than Snow Patrol. Does look like it might relent a bit towards new year so maybe another ticket to the lottery in early Jan?

I think the further north you go, they do have a chance. For us in the far south though, I think the slug over Iberia kills our chances stone dead. Love to be proved wrong but once you get the reds and oranges over Iberia its game over for the south. Could be some good falls in north though depending on where the polar boundary sets up.

So, West based is where we have ended up. Looking through the output today I think northern England northwards might see some white stuff over the next week or so, but for us in the South, its a poor outlook. We have increasing heights over Iberia and SE Europe and unfortunately its very difficult for us down South to see anything very cold once the big red blob of doom sets up over Iberia. This trend is showing across most output and ensembles and I suspect its likely to happen (thereby also hopefully causing all models to flip cold tonight ). You can see the impact on many of the GEFS where a northerly looks ready to set up, but in the next frame it gets swept away east.

Form horse probably remains a west based set up with UK on the mild side, but GFS is not a complete outlier so interesting to see how we go from here. GEFS were certainly colder than last nights.

What came first? the chicken or the egg? The question you pose here is the weather equivalent . FWIW, I always favor the chicken but as to your question I'll let others more qualified than me answer it. The charts are blowing up the low to our north which stops it sinking away south. I suspect the answer may lay in what is causing that. Either way, the trend of the day is height rises to our south and south east and when that happens its rarely good news in this forum. Lets see what tomorrow brings though as looking through the output further out its not yet a done deal.