Cheshire Freeze

Surely SURELY that developing high pressure west of Greenland has a chance of gaining a sufficient foothold on this run as LP backs off even further than on earlier runs (which were an improvement each time) If it can't gain a foothold from there it's time to pack this weather malarky in

This isn't usual November weather though is it. Some areas further S must have seen 100mm+ over past 3 days or so. That's pretty exceptional. These 2 systems haven't been your usual zonal W-E warm front then cold front jobbys. They've been absolute rain makers. To rain for 10 hours solid is excessive...and it's still going.

Absolutely horrid day today. It has been raining for 10 hours pretty solidly with a brief respite between about 1-2. Surface water flooding on the roads, pretty deep in places. Absolutely vile. The wind is starting to whip up now as well.

That low across the Atlantic at or around day 8/9 is the common theme on most of the output and it is causing a nuisance i.e preventing Atlantic ridging to reinforce the fledgling Canadian blocking. You couldn't have picked a worse time for this to happen (synoptic progression wise) as in all the crap runs we've seen today, the common factor is this LP flattening the attempted Atlantic ridging...

Well that's great but not everyone has had snow (me included) and what has already happened has no actual effect on what will happen as we progress through winter. Personally I haven't seen more than 1cm of snow since 2013...that's coming up to 4 years ago.

Yes, that chart would do 2015 proud! It's far out and hypothetical to say the least, but once you get Euro heights like that they can be massively hard to shift. I guess that's in the back of everyone's minds.

We hear this same line trotted out every year though....then we end up at the end of February with most of lowland UK still waiting for a snowfall. Happens far too often. Seasons are far shorter than people think. I don't care about patience, I want some snowfall ASAP from now on in then the rest of winter can do as it pleases.

I feel the modelling has been going the 'wrong way' for the best part of a week now. It wasn't s long ago that we had all the medium and longer range products going for a near unanimous pressure rise just to our NW very end of November into December. I suppose, in a way, that signal is still there but what has changed (or beginning to be firmed up) is that the UK may well miss out on the cold goodies with far too many complications flying around the N Atlantic sector. The 18z GFS run is in that group of ensembles I mentioned earlier that were far from stellar

ECM follows that group of ensembles in the GEFS which sink the high SE into Europe. Mixed results as to what follows but this isn't the 'stellar' route,

850s ensemble graph doesn't look too bad, but doesn't tell the story RE the synoptics on offer. By 384 a lot are either 'messy' and unsettled or the last vestiges of a colder spell between 240-300 hrs are on their way out. Too many images to post but here are a couple picked at random

A lot of dross in there too...circa 60% end up with no discernible wintry pattern at all by day 16. No wonder Ian F has said there's a raft of outcomes on the table at present.

Oh I do love a nice unstable northerly Yep there are some decent looking perturbations around but would like to see these at 144 hrs rather than nearer 384!

I saw all of this coming when we missed out on the first attempt at retrogression progged for early this week! It's why I was so annoyed when the GFS backed down to the ECM.

Saying that, not far off a 78/79 grail scenario here. I suspect the N of the UK would be buried under feet of the stuff whilst the south is slightly milder Zonality reversed there!

As Nick has pointed out...I wouldn't get excited at all given the complexity of the evolution to get to that point. Frought with difficulty around the Greenland/Iceland area. Also, the theme of WB -NAO crops up again..

How the hell did we get into a position where heights to our S are an issue?

Surely that one conveniently placed shortwave isn't going to stop the retrogression is it?? This is the UK...it probably will!

Ok so when do we reasonably start to suggest that things perhaps aren't going to the (earlier) plan? In my eyes, the GFS runs of today have 1) Moderated the modelled stratospheric activity towards month's end (as has been noted by others) and 2) They have produced very underwhelming FI periods whereby the tropospheric vortex seemingly gathers some traction I Just hope we see some swing back in the modelling soon to evoke some excitement once again. Mid latitude features aren't many peoples' cup of tea when they're after some snowfall and a bit of a cold period.

I read cluster 2 as more wet than white...would be dependent on depth of LPs and just how much any weak blocking to the N deflects/disrupts them to our advantage. A high risk,potential high reward scenario. Cluster 3 is a banker for cold.

If we can't get cold I guess I'll have to settle for having my roof blown off

Cluster 3 is the one we're after....Otherwise we'd all have to descend upon the eastern tip of Kent to get a sniff of a snow chance!

All a bit of a mess.... From this, you'd think an easterly was likely with the troughing advecting the cold air under the block eventually. However, as we've heard from bluearmy earlier today, this idea is not even on the table as far as the EC goes Haha after all that, the high sinks into SE Europe

Getting that deep troughing down into E Scandi/Russia/NE Europe is a major part of the jigsaw going forward

All systems go at 174 hrs. We have the pebble shaped block, primed for retrogression...energy disrupting against the western periphery of block

That warm pool though...All brought about because of a poorly aligned/positioned Russian HP. Going to have to grit our teeth through this one.