[Model Discussion - Spring approaches - how warm at the end of this week?]

4 minutes ago, shaky said:

Sorry what i meant to say is first time ever 20 degrees has been reached in winter in the uk!!

Well, since records have been kept. 20.3C has probably been smashed dozens or even hundreds of times  over the millennia.

[Cold hunt - models and chat]

38 minutes ago, karyo said:

It is quite easy for those areas to get severe cold even without the background signals. They have a large landmass and a huge mountain range in the west. It doesn't take much for the jet to plunge south and give the a cold outbreak. By contrast with have an ocean to our west with nothing to block the westerlies/southwesterlies. 

Yes, but it has been unusually cold, even by US standards.  I quote:

"According to data from the Southeast Regional Climate Center, the following cities recorded coldest ever Dec. 23-Jan. 5 stretch: Bangor, Maine, Worcester, Massachusetts, Buffalo, New York, Flint, Michigan, Green Bay, Wisconsin, Duluth, Minnesota, Rockford, Illinois, Waterloo, Iowa, Lincoln, Nebraska.

According to the SERCC, dozens of other cities from the northern Rockies to Texas to the Great Lakes and East Coast had at least a top-five ever coldest two-week stretch ending Jan. 5."

[Cold hunt - models and chat]

1 hour ago, North-Easterly Blast said:

What has gone wrong with this winter?  Only a weak El Nino, approaching or at solar minimum, and the only background signal that has not been good for cold this winter is that a westerly QBO began in late 2018.  That said winter 2008-09 was reasonable even though the QBO was westerly that year. 

In the mild winters in the middle of this decade; 2013-14 was close to a solar max with a westerly QBO, 2015-16 was in a westerly QBO with a strong El Nino, 2016-17 had a westerly QBO but solar activity was not as low that year as it has been this winter.

With a weak El Nino and approaching solar minimum one would have thought that the prospects of decent cold spells this winter were good, and yet we are very likely yet again to end up with another milder than average winter punctuated by only a modest colder spell in the second half of January.  Looking at the way winter 2018-19 has panned out with the background signals as they have been, one must ask now if the UK winters have becomes poorer still for cold prospects since 2013, and question if even winter 2017-18 is the modern version of the likes of 2009-10, and even a winter like this, or a spell like Dec 2010, or even the relatively cold 2012-13 winter is no longer possible.

Take a look at the severity of cold across a large part of the US and Canada this winter - in some cases, record breaking. One could equally argue the background signals delivered cold big time for them. It's important not to make generalisations based on the very tiny area of the globe that these island inhabit.

[Monday's storm - into Europe.]

It's hard not to criticise the media for their reporting ahead of this storm. Headlines such as "UK braced for Super Storm" implies that a) that the whole of the UK was in the firing line when in reality, it was only the south that was forecast to be at risk from the strongest winds and b - that it was going to be a storm of epic intensity along the lines of 1987 when in reality it was *only* forecast as a powerful storm - unusual but not at all unheard of at this this time of year

[What If? It was the coldest winter in history?]

Would agree with some of that. December 2010 (and the last week of November 2010) were exceptional in terms of persistent cold, but there were no 10 foot drifts or anything like that, just level snow resulting from little wind.

 

You live in the wrong location - here is a shot taken 1st December 2010 here in the North Pennines. 106cms of level snow. We didn't need big winds to whip up deep snow