Kirkcaldy Weather

Looks like that coupled with the Indian Ocean dipole have contributed towards the heat Also a large "blob" of warm water near New Zealand The strange Pacific Ocean 'hot blob' off New Zealand coast and why it's growing WWW.NZHERALD.CO.NZ Patch of water bigger than New Zealand has temperatures six degrees warmer than average.

just went below freezing here -0.1 C / DP -0.9 C

1979: Huge waves batter Kirkcaldy - Fife Today WWW.FIFETODAY.CO.UK As 1978 came to an end the new year arrived with Fife subjected to some of the worst winter weather for may years.

Overnight low of -0.5 C here now 6.0 C and Wish I could of experienced that 1979: Huge waves batter Kirkcaldy - Fife Today WWW.FIFETODAY.CO.UK As 1978 came to an end the new year arrived with Fife subjected to some of the worst winter weather for may years.

not quite correct as still in phase 7 and a few go into phase 8 (though some also go toward phases 4/5) but as I mentioned in my last post I still think we are in a bit of a lag period in terms of feedback of conditions. http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/mjo/graphics/rmm.74toRealtime.txt

If only we could go back 9/10 years... Come on winter / snow god's get yer act together

Looks like the NASA/GEOS5 was closest for the UK but the JMA done well with the position of the lows in the Atlantic, overall the models struggled with the higher pressure over the UK and over done the lower pressure / trough to the east. Hope everyone had a lovely Christmas. Well we are now in phase 7 MJO although models only want to stay in phase 7 for a few days ( I would say the longer the better should any higher pressure develop like shown in the those phase 7 charts above to give us a better chance at something colder, though I think we are in a slight lag period and still stick with that general outlook above, also the phase 7 for January looks more favourable than that for December so ideally remaining in phase 7 heading into the start of January would be best but not sure if that will happen.) Looking at the charts for the strat some warming perhaps developing during the first week of Jan and some hints of a possible displacement of the PV toward Scandinavia (though the models have struggled this year with strength of the PV and any warming so caution / low confidence with this)

Just want to wish you all a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year, has been another brilliant year of weather and some great photos, videos and discussions in here as usual this year, heres to another year of all weather types again in 2020

Winter is over not even a full month in... Merry Christmas Don

He is not throwing in the towel, think he and probably a few others are just confused with the current state of things (ie non favourable for colder weather) but still time for things to change in JAN / FEB "But if I don’t see much reason to feel confident about the forecast, in large part contingent on a weak/disrupted PV, I also don’t see strong evidence to walk away from the forecast. Maybe in large part because it has been challenging for the weather models to correctly predict the state of the polar stratosphere and the behavior of the polar vortex with so many poor and contradicting forecasts and therefore, I have low confidence in any one scenario or outcome. So, for now I remain steadfast in the winter forecast that based on high fall snow cover/low Arctic sea ice that they will in tandem perturb the PV."

From Judah Cohen's latest blog "I have said many times the first thing that you learn as a seasonal forecaster is humility and these are one of those times. What is humbling me at the moment is that I have expected a weakening of the stratospheric polar vortex (PV) based on fall Arctic predictors – extensive Siberian snow cover, more limited Arctic sea ice extent and a relatively warm Arctic. Following the PV weakening or disruption, severe winter weather would be more frequent at least regionally across the mid-latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere (NH). But to be honest it is hard to see from today’s viewpoint how this verifies. And as I have shared on Twitter the new operational GFS, the FV3, has been especially bullish on a strong PV. The biggest challenge that I see right now is the center of low mid-tropospheric heights currently just north of Alaska and is expected to expand in breadth over the next two weeks enough so to fill the entire Arctic basin. This a fairly class pattern of low heights in the Arctic and high heights in the mid-latitudes resulting in a cold Arctic/warm continents pattern, all consistent with a positive AO. It seems a bit ironic (at least to me) that with the record low sea ice in the Chukchi-Bering seas this fall, the incredibly warm year Alaska just experienced both in part due to persistent ridging in the region, this same region is predicted to now experience an extended period of low heights and below normal temperatures. As an aside, this is something that I had a hard time anticipating even just a few weeks ago. Another example where it is easy to become overconfident in outcomes based on recent trends. By itself this is not necessarily a threat to the veracity of the forecast but coupled with a strong stratospheric PV this pattern could become persistent and even dominate the winter means. I would be confident in a near term pattern reversal with a forecast of Ural/Scandinavian blocking as predicted by the GFS last week, but the GFS has backed off those forecasts. But if I don’t see much reason to feel confident about the forecast, in large part contingent on a weak/disrupted PV, I also don’t see strong evidence to walk away from the forecast. Maybe in large part because it has been challenging for the weather models to correctly predict the state of the polar stratosphere and the behavior of the polar vortex with so many poor and contradicting forecasts and therefore, I have low confidence in any one scenario or outcome. So, for now I remain steadfast in the winter forecast that based on high fall snow cover/low Arctic sea ice that they will in tandem perturb the PV. Given the westerly quasi-biennial oscillation (QBO) I expect a scenario somewhere between winter 2016/17 and winter 2017/18. Both of those winters were westerly QBO winters and the most significant disruption of the stratospheric PV took place in February. The PV disruption in February 2018 was achieved major warming status and the coupling to the surface was much stronger. Still the more minor disruption in February 2017 did result in coupling to the surface and an increase in severe winter weather, at least as far as snowfall in the Northeastern US. I include in Figure i, the polar cap geopotential height anomaly (PCH) plot from this winter starting on October 1, 2019 and the analogous plots from winter 2016/17 and 2017/18 for comparison.It is my impression that often winter shows its true character around the transition of the calendar year. It seems to me that December is often an outlier to winter as a whole that January-March are more in common weather-wise with December going its own way. It will be interesting to see what the weather models are predicting in about a week’s time. I will be especially focused on the atmospheric vertical energy transfer. The below normal sea ice in the Barents Kara Seas and the lack of snow cover in Eastern Europe both favor heating of the atmospheric column and high pressure in that region so favorable for exciting vertical energy transfer. But as we are seeing now, favorable boundary conditions don’t always translate into atmospheric anomalies." AO Blog Update | AER | Weather Risk Assessment WWW.AER.COM December 16, 2019 - Dr. Judah Cohen from Atmospheric and Environmental Research (AER) embarked on an experimental...