EML Network

Interesting Fax chart for Monday looks like a possible Thames streamer, but a very weak feature will probably be gone on the next update, one to watch though.

Well with uppers like this on the ECM at + 144 pretty much everyone can kiss goodbye to seeing any snow, warmer air incoming and winning out, we've gone from what looked odds on to be a cold spell, to it vanishing in a puff of smoke before it's even really begun. But then again, did anyone REALLY believe we were about to be slammed into the freezer ?? I started to believe last night, but now I'm a non believer again

I have waited 2 years to see a GFS chart show this, it's nice to see so that's why I'm posting it, as I seriously doubt it will be showing the same this time tomorrow

I hate to say if, but after being gunned down yesterday for my post above I can't help but feel a tad smug this morning, although I would MUCH rather be proved wrong and have a shed load of snow. Problem is with these sorts of sets ups especially when you're looking at a slider coming from the North West, is that if you don't have a sufficient block out to the East then the Low simply stalls over the UK for a day or so, warmer air mixes in and all too often you end up with a one day period of cold weather as the Low tracks SE of North Easterly and again if the block to the East isn't sufficiently strong then the Atlantic gathers pace and then you're looking at another 2 weeks before the next opportunity presents itself. The GFS Ensembles have given me hope this morning though, so there's still a lot to play for. I do think that we will all see something in the way of snow, before this month is out, even here along the S.Coast. If I have to get a coat on and take a wonder into the hills to see some of the white stuff falling from the sky then so be it. My ;pick of the bunch this morning is the ECM, can't see why folks are saying it's a downgrade from yesterday it's clearly not ? It will keep the cold locked in for the entire length of the run, I really don't think a lot of posters understand how to read a chart tbh How is this a downgrade ??

I wont be getting cold and snow in the next 48 hours, far from it in fact, wet and windy sums up the next 48 hours here. I don't understand why I should be getting excited about what someone else 300 miles away is going to experience, to be honest I couldn't give a monkeys what someone high up on a hill in Yorkshire is going to get, good on them if they have some snow but it's not what i'l be experiencing here is it. ?

I know that everybody is excited, but I must be missing something. The pattern to me seems to flatten out very soon after an all too brief NE' sterly and we look to be back to square one all too quickly. Not only that but the ''slider'' isn't far enough West, you end up with a one or two day window , very similar to what happened over XMas and boxing day . I'm sure those in the usual places will get a pasting whilst us in the snow starved south will get naff all Enjoy it whilst it lasts because if you ask me it aint gonna last long

That doesn't surprise me at all. Every now and then we get a day when all of the models (that we have access to), show us a colder solution and tend to be outliers among their own ensemble suite. It's the law of averages that every once in a while the solutions that make up the various ''Operational'' runs , seen by most of us just so happen to all be the coldest solutions on offer and I think that's what has happened today. I would expect that there is some truth in the 20% output and more truth in the 80%, as per usual where the two meet will likely be the outcome , so to that end I would think that more of the same, but with a weakened Jet , lending to the probability or a more North westerly feed , interspersed with drier conditions, but overall slightly colder than ''average'' but nothing extreme , in fact plain winter fare for this time of year

There does seem to be a bit of correlation between the GFS now and the ECM which is always nice to see and the UKMO isn't a trillion miles away from both either. This chart reminds me very much of March 2013, when we had Low pressure slipping South East , centered just West of the UK which ended up in a South Easterly feed coming off a cold continent and many areas especially along the South Coast saw copious amounts of snow from that... I recall the charts showing something very similar and then as the runs went on the Low pressure system kept getting shunted West, but the difference then was that the cold air was already in place across the whole of Europe , this time it's different. However, it just goes to show how the charts can change, I recall about 10 days ago the feeling that we were all looking down the barrel of a long Atlantic steam train, indeed almost everyone was writing off the first half of Jan for cold prospects and today it's going to snow in many places. Let's hope the trend to colder conditions continues, Feb is always in my experience the best time of year to experience snow so long as it's earlier in Feb. Exciting times, but I'm not holding out much hope IMBY

I've seen enough now not to worry about this down this way. Lost count of the number of times a chart has offered up 70-80 Mph gusts 3 or 4 days before an ''event'' only for it to be watered down run after run in the days leading up, ending up with something that isn't even out of the ordinary. So IMBY and I am only talking from experience of this particular part of the world (S Coast from lets say Bognor through to Hastings) and the SE Chunk of the UK covering Sussex, Surrey, Kent and London ... I very much doubt that anywhere in that area will see a gust of more than 70 Mph . I was running along the coast here on Saturday morning and I can tell you that it was gusting a good 65 Mph , there was no warning for that and I can't see this being any worse. It's laughable sometimes. Just my take on it and before anyone starts posting charts, I care not what charts say, it's what you experience on the ground that matters, I'm not going to experience a computer chart am I ? It's Northern Ireland, NW England , SW England and Scotland that are going to get the brunt of this (as per usual)... Not often you'll see a 943 Mb Fax chart Low. The strongest winds in the South are only going to be for a period of a few hours as well and overnight so most people won't even know it's happened.

114 pages of Winter moans tells it's own story...especially given we're not even half way through !! The OPI suggested we'd see a decent attempt at cold and snow by now and it's pretty much failed in it's prediction up until now, likewise the SAI or whatever it's called, was suggestive of HLB over Scandinavia, this too has failed to materialize, so everybody switched over to looking at events over the ple in the hunt for a SSW... then we sort of got one, but the ''wrong type'' ? or something and then there was a failed Greenland warming..so folks have given up on the SSW and everyone's talking about MJO ?? Surely IF the MJO goes into phase 7 or 8 we'll get a cold spell.... Won't we ??? I'd love to see what people say when we go into phases 7 and 8 and STILL don't get a cold spell. The QBO is supposed to aid blocking too ...so lets say the MJO does go into the phases we want to see it go into and we STILL don't get a cold spell. ?? IF THAT HAPPENED !!!....it would mean every single background signal was suggestive of a cold spell and we didn't get one, and then the research into exactly why would begin and after years of study we'd still be none the wiser. I think next Winter on here is going to be very interesting, how many of us are going to be taking the above background signals with a giant pinch of salt I wonder..I think I might.

It's all a big fat pile of horse poo if you ask me. the 12z ensembles have once again stepped back from a cold solution setting up some time around 15th January onward, so that's it I'm officially giving up in the next 2 weeks delivering anything cold enough to produce snow down this way. And looking at how things are panning out, I'm almost at the point of giving up on the whole of January, so what the hell I might as well give up on Feb too. I bet it will snow on the sun before it ever snows here again, what a load of pants

Moan number 1, does mu nut in when people complain about having a snowless winter, or thinking it's extreme to see out two winters with no snow. I lived in London from 1995 through until the early 00's and I think it snowed once and even then it didn't settle, then I moved to Brighton in 2004 I think and If my memory serves it snowed twice between then and 2008 so that's THREE days of snow in 13 years !! BEAT THAT !! so you can see why I cringe when folk complain of going 24 months without seeing snow...grrr 2nd Gripe is about all the so called background signals many of which had pointed towards the UK seeing at least one decent cold spell this winter. OK it's only the end of December and January is yet to come, but let's face it there's absolutely no sign of any prolonged cold spell developing anytime soon, not even the odd stray ensemble run. I'm seriously loosing faith that this winter will deliver anything. The one and only correlation I can see that holds any sort of water is cold winters coming off the back of years where the sunspot count is low, or at least with little sunspot activity. This year and last year saw a fair amount of activity (being peak years), IMO that winter 15/16 will be pants, but a little better than this one is panning out and it won't be until the following winter that we'll get to see something decent. Global warming is playing a big part in things too and is constantly overlooked and has ANYONE on here heard of HARP. It's all a big load of poo if you ask me, happy new year

The 12z GFS Parallel is one mighty storm fest, if (like me), you enjoy extreme's of weather this run is quite exciting. A continuation of previous runs, once again were looking at 7th - 11th January time frames ...here's the pick of the bunch of Max Wind Speed gusts from the 12z Parallel The whole country would feel this one if it came out as modeled and once again the 7th January comes up as a day for high winds, this the day after the chart above !!! try this for size on the 9th, just 2 days later, this is about as high as wind speeds get for the UK... again just 2 days later.... To balance it out though the GFS Op has backed off a little from it's early doomsday type scenario's and has the strongest winds reserved where you'd expect to see them (I.E NW Ireland and NW Scotland) will be interesting to see how the next 4 or 5 days runs come out, I'm not overly convinced the Parallel is performing better then the Op, are there any statistics on how the Op is performing against the Parallel ? EDIT ** Hows this for a MONSTER low pressure system !!

Since there's very little in the way of any decent cold weather on the horizon for the next few weeks (it would seem), my attention is now being drawn to some of the extreme wind speeds that the GFS has been churning out run after run post 192 over the past 4 or 5 days. To kick off the GFS Op for Thursday afternoon +81 shows a large part of Northen England and Scotland with Max gusts of up to 70 Mph WAY in FI but run after run, the 6-11th Jan shows some really stormy outputs, this one the GFS Op for the 9th, showing a system that runs across the SE of the UK, IF this came off as shown then it's batten down the hatches time. The same ''Storm'' exiting the UK Sticking with the OP, and the output showing a windy day for everyone on the 11th Jan... That's JUST the Op run, let's delve into the Parallel to see if there's ANY support or if any of the dates coincide.. No surprise to see Thursdays wind speeds there, but slightly further south and not quite as strong as the Op, still Max gusts 65 Mph are not to be sniffed at and covering a large area of the UK... . The Parallel wants things to get quite windy on Saturday too, getting close to 60 Mph across the South. The Parallel then has a small part of NW Scotland getting absolutely battered on Monday the 5th, although they're used to it up there Just 2 days later and on the 6th Jan the Parallel has almost every part of the UK experiencing wind gusts of between 50-75 Mph THE VERY NEXT DAY...7TH JAN ! 10TH Jan.again on the Parallel.... The Parallel is one of the stormiest runs I have ever seen with day after day after day of extremely high winds and presumably copious amounts of rainfall. FINALLY, looking at the control run for a 3rd and final comparison , looking solely at the pressure charts fr the periods 7-11th Jan... Here's the 7th Jan, looking pretty windy to me and the 10th Jan again looks very stormy If it wasn't the fact that this is about the 5th or 6th day in a row that the time period 6-11th January is showing up as very stormy on the GFS runs, I wouldn't have bothered posting these charts, but if the trend starts to firm up over the next 7 days then IMO the wind and rain will be getting the headlines and the cold will be taken off people's minds for a short while at least

I think I'll await the ECM and GFS Ensemble suite to come out before reading too much into the 12 z GFS OP , Parallel and UKMO. I would fully expect to see small adjustments North or South from run to run, of the High pressure and those small adjustment would mean big differences down the line between getting an Easterly setting or a flattening out of the pattern and a return to mild westerlys. But what I have seen thus far this afternoon has stepped away from the idea of a Scandi High ever so slightly. What I find encouraging is the continue split of the vortex being modeled further out It should help to keep things interesting from a cold lovers perspective.

Well probably the coldest XMas day forecast IMBY for many a year, and not all that cold, which just goes to show how rare a cold XMas day is down this way anyway. I'm reluctant to believe anything the GFS shows now past +96 given that it was so bullish about sending the weekends Low East and barely modelling it to drop South, until the 11th hour (in forecasting terms). That being said it does fall in line with what all the models are suggesting past this weekend, it would appear that we'll see more in the way of drier weather as high pressure becomes to dominant force at least for a while. It would be nice to get a HLB over Scandinavia or better still an ''Omega Block'' , time will tell, if were still talking about the possibility of an Easterly draw on Boxing day then I'll be happy, but I expect we'll see a firming up of the High sinking, and then a period of stormy weather before our next opportunity for cold weather comes later in January. I like how this Winter has started and I'm slowly beginning to believe that the back end of Jan and Feb in particular could deliver some noteworthy cold and snow. Happy XMas everyone.

wow !! that's got to be THE Chart of the winter so far, surely if this verify's the remainder of Winter would be fun and game for cold lovers ?

Some insight as to why the models and the forecasters are struggling to deal with the evolution of the coming weekends low pressure system, highlighted well by the Jet stream Good luck figuring that one out !!!

in regards to the ECM | UKMO V's GFS Op. It's not all that often the ECM and UKMO agree at + 120, so when they do it's more likely they will be closer to the mark than another model showing something different, after all your talking about 2 models with the highest overall consistency at that time frame, both in agreement. The UKMO at +120 The ECM at + 120 Against the CFS Op at +120 GFS P My money is on the UKMO being closer to the mark.

Not sure how we have suddenly got onto the topic of where it's going to snow ?? We don't even know the track, orientation, strength of the low yet ? Some people really need to learn from the past and not build themselves us to be let down. If the low comes off as modeled by the UKMO your looking at Euro home grown cold rather than a long draw from a proper cold source and in my limited experience, that's not really good enough to produce snow at low levels, maybe a little sleet on the hills, but likely rain for most, exception perhaps the usual favored spots in NE England such as Sheffield, Newcastle ,Lincoln down to Cromer. But you'd usually need to have the cold air already in place, to get the dew points low and wet bulb levels down sufficiently for any snow to settle and I can't see that happening. Still it's nice to see the ECM and UKMO in relative agreement finally and like others have said MUCH better than this time last year, it pattern does look to flatten out a little into FI, the GFS is very bullish abut this in recent runs, if were to move away from that to something more blocked we'd probably start seeing it showing up in today's runs. In my opinion of course and I'm new to this, so please don't beat me up :-)

Quite a lot of difference this morning between the model output's and once again a bit more flip flopping around. The UKMO at +120 has the low centered closer to Iceland than the UK By + 144 is all but game over for cold fans, the Extreme North and NE / NW facing coasts would fair well for a time, but the Atlantic waits in the wings and the finger is on the reset button... The GFS OP offers hope and is a step closer to prolonging the cold and offers something to work with. Here show blows at + 120 with the Low centered MUCH further south than the UKMO output about to enter Scotland Again the Low dives SE but with the GFS at + 144 there's a better link up between the Azores high and the Greenland High. Which leads to this at +192 on the GFS OP, an extension of the cold(er) weather and it keeps things interesting. The Parallel is also a very interesting run, reminiscent of the ECM a few days ago, with the Low flattened out and another secondary Low spawning to our West.. Leading to this at + 144 the Parallel run then goes on into FI and develops and Easterly from this at + 192 To a Scandi high of sorts later on and a long fetch Easterly What about the Control run ?? The control run shows yet another different output to all of the above, stalling the progression of the Low, at +120 it's barely made in roads to the UK, but once again is MUCH further south than no the UKMO Once again it is diverted E, or SE fills up, leading this at + 144 pretty windy along the S.Cost on this run !! The Control run goes on to show a return to Westerly's but it's not a million miles off the Parallel.. as you can see at + 228, Leading us onto this mornings ECM Here's she blows at 120 on the ECM, Very stormy for the NE and windy along the South, once more modeled MUCH further south than the UKMO I find the ECM evolution, however hard to believe as the low seems to travel directly south from it's 120 position, to end up here just 24 hours later Those in the SE must be excited about that !! The ECM goes on to something of a half way ground between the GFS Control and GFS Parallel not far from an Easterly this at + 216 Interesting developments this morning and a step away from an Atlantic takeover (except for the UKMO, which should never be discounted) Hopefully we can see further moves toward Height Rises over Scandinavia in the coming days...the roller coaster ride continues !!

Yes the Op and a few other runs have this system filling and deepening as it crosses the uk. And if it came off like that then yes it wouldn't be a bog standard winter storm, I wasn't commenting on what the OP was showing, as I don't believe it will come off as modeled by the OP. If I had to pick a run to highlight my point, then try this one (just as one example of many on the 06z) As I said...a bog standard winter storm...

If you run through the various outputs on the 06z you'll see that the reliable time frame sits about about 3 days out right now. Some runs keep that low pressure system well away from the UK, some don't develop it at all, some have it running through Iceland, some to the South of the UK, I expect if it does develop it will take the normal route through N.Ireland and into Scotland and the reset westerly bore fest would soon follow. IMO this will be a bog standard winter storm and by the new year we'll all be looking for the next opportunity for things to go our way.

I'm just glad that it's flip flopped back toward a colder solution, and not moved further toward a milder one. I don't recall another time when the models have gone cold, mild, cold, mild and back to cold again, it's a shame the ECM doesn't go past 240 as I'd love to have seen the next frame. Not very often you get a uk snow fest showing up on a GFS chart even in FI. WOULDN'T THAT BE A GREAT WAY TO END THE YEAR http://modeles.meteociel.fr/modeles/gfs/runs/2014121906/gfs-2-300.png?6

The only consistent theme I can see in this morning set of GFS runs at about day 10 is to have high pressure straddling the UK. With all the various options on the table it seems to be the only one I can see that tends to crop up a lot at around the 10 day mark, so possibly a settled and rather benign end to the year, it's all going a bit wrong, even the Strat chart seems reluctant to get any decent enough downwelling to get an official SSW. I think it's going to be another very long winter for us here on NW.