feb1991blizzard

In Crewe!!!!!!

I was pessimistic lately as it looked like the strat warming wouldnt deliver but if we can just scrape this easterly in and keep niggling away at the Vortex all the way through the atmosphere we might be alright, the good thing IF and its a big IF but if we could completely destroy the vortex by February, it might never be able to recover thus we could be in for another 2013 where we got beltings even in late March.

Stopped - End of fun - hopefully not for long though, hopefully this is just a pre-cursor to whet the appetite, hopefully before the winters out we will get a powerhouse Easterly

Settling!!!

Belting down, reasonable sized flakes.

That displacement event still showing on the 0z. EDIT : and it looks like its there on the parallel as well.

Another warming underway again. http://www.instantweathermaps.com/GFS-php/showmap-strat.php?run=2015011218&var=TMP&lev=1mb&hour=384. A few runs lately have shown a shift of the vortex way to the East, not a million miles away from a reversal surely. http://www.instantweathermaps.com/GFS-php/showmap-strat.php?run=2015011218&var=HGT&lev=1mb&hour=384 http://www.instantweathermaps.com/GFS-php/showmap-strat.php?run=2015011218&var=HGT&lev=10mb&hour=384 http://www.instantweathermaps.com/GFS-php/showmap-strat.php?run=2015011218&var=HGT&lev=30mb&hour=384 The question is can we maintain this on the next few runs.

yes but they may be from earlier runs, fwiw though, I broadly agree that my area will get very little snow Tuesday.

The top - middle strat looks like it will be cooling now so the best we can hope for between now and the first third of Feb in my opinion is that some sort of 2 wave trop pattern can at least stave of any downwelling of the re strengthening vortex up top and buy us some more time and have another go later on, Glory A of course would be a load of sliders followed by the end of GFS(p) FI and we get the scandi high first time around (outsider of course). EDIT : first day for ages today that I never even looked at the Berlin charts, I as nothing posted here then I guess they didn't take your breath away!

Blocking of sorts showing deep into FI on the 18z and some insanely frigid cold not too far away.

Is there any light at the end of the tunnel for feb or are we really staring down the barrel for getting any significant warmings in February, its not looking too crash hot to me right now.

http://www.meteociel.fr/modeles/wrfnmm.php?ech=3&mode=42&map=5 Here, but don't hold your breath for it verifying.

Ive got a phobia of moths (and spiders), just shows you how warm its been this last year, I had big house spiders right up until December, they normally die or hibernate by mid October.

I remember 1995 well, the winter was crap, we had a cold spell between xmas and new year and apart from an inch which quickly turned to rain on a Friday afternoon in late January (west midlands then) we didn't get nothing until a dumping of about 5 inches on a Thursday overnight into Friday in early March, just out of interest how much did you get from that late Jan snow to rain event, I remember watching an FA CUP tie on the Saturday between Burnley and Liverpool and the snow was piled at the side of the pitch even though it was about 9c, I thought to myself I would love to move up North, I just thought the North was best for snow end of, but in reality ive realised since that its very very localised, those March snow showers lasted right until the last 3rd of March as well, excluding spring though, the meteorological winter of 94-95 was garbage, I don't agree that the 90s was the worst decade though, the naughties was much worse, there were still some really decent events in the early nineties, the 90s was poor compared to the 80s but the 80s was a stonker right up until 89-90, even 87-88 gave me about a 6 - 8 inch fall in the second week of Jan and some showers in late February.

Judah Cohen's page on Aer.com has updated. Not sure if he means the cold could get this far west though? The longer-term prospects for the AO are complex for a few reasons. Typically following a SSW, the AO turns more negative in the lower stratosphere and eventually throughout the troposphere within 2 weeks. However, given that this warming was a minor SSW and that the vortex will be slow to recover, the transition to a tropospheric negative AO likely will be delayed, potentially until week 4. In terms of tropospheric forcing influencing the AO this period, current tropical convection across the Maritime Continent is anticipated to move into the western Pacific but then possibly weaken. The current convection pattern promotes a warm signal for much of North America and a positive NAO for Europe into weeks 2 and 3 (there is a 8-14 day lag in the signal based on the literature). Thereafter, if the convection does indeed weaken, the impact of the tropics on the polar jet stream will weaken and thus allow the AO to shift to more neutral conditions. Thus, we foresee that the AO should average near neutral or slightly positive for week 3 and part of week 4 before turning more negative with the downward influence of the SSW. Sensible weather impacts for the long term will be a progressive flow pattern across the hemisphere and overall variable temperature regimes. Models continue to show mild to potentially warm conditions across North America and much of Eurasia for week 3. Colder air should begin to seep into northern Europe and Asia during the end of week 3 and into week 4. This change is typical of AO regime changes to a negative phase – i.e., the cold air typically enters Eurasia first with a dip in the jet and then changes in the jet stream occur downstream http://www.aer.com/science-research/climate-weather/arctic-oscillation

Another warming in deep FI on the GFS showing up top, what do the experts make of it?, I know its hard to take seriously given the erratic output lately but is there any reason to believe it could verify? could it end up significant enough to deliver the knockout blow to the vortex? is there anything forecast that teleconnects to it well - ie- mountain torque event etc?, and ultimately could any trop blocking set up favourably to deliver cold to NW Europe? http://www.instantweathermaps.com/GFS-php/showmap-strat.php?run=2015010806&var=HGT&lev=1mb&hour=384 http://www.instantweathermaps.com/GFS-php/showmap-strat.php?run=2015010806&var=TMP&lev=1mb&hour=384 http://www.instantweathermaps.com/GFS-php/showmap-strat.php?run=2015010806&var=HGT&lev=10mb&hour=384 http://www.instantweathermaps.com/GFS-php/showmap-strat.php?run=2015010806&var=HGT&lev=30mb&hour=384

This is quite a stonking chart for March, only a degree above freezing in some parts!!!! The Feb one is none too shabby either.

The site works fine, its just that the data hasn't updated for days now, the analysis charts at the beginning of the runs still showing 28th December.

Bugar all according to this is going to happen.

Yes although the warming takes it to well above average 10mb temps, if you look back to recent past, the warming events in mid winter onwards that have successfully lead to persistent blocking have tended to include the deep red colours (not far off freezing point) at 10mb over the pole, clearly wave 2 events obliterating the PV from top to bottom tend to be the best, On the subject of what constitutes an SSW that has cropped up a lot lately, of course the definition is a mean Easterly wind at 10mb at 60N, I wonder what threshold temperature wise is required to be a guarantee of this happening though (roughly), apologies if this has been answered before.

I have also thought that the first half of Jan has been set in stone (barring a couple of EC EPS runs), has been set in stone in terms of maritime influences for a good few days now, you only have to look at the GEFS consistency in terms of the lack of wide ranging solutions on the spreads, it also seems very likely that we will get some snow at times for Northern areas (polar air injected on the western side of lows by the Jet digging south), although I don't think that is what floats many peoples boats further south, indeed it doesn't really float mine, the last bit of snow on the peaks went overnight although I still had lying snow yesterday morning even at my 600ft altitude, which was good considering we only had an inch anyway, typical that a few years ago I had to rush my decision to move from Salford (mate splitting with his missus) that I couldn't even consider altitude, at least he let me choose area though and a lot better than Salford after missing a pasting by 5 miles on 1st-2nd feb 2009!

The 6z CFS run from 31st Dec 2014 shows you just how we COULD still have a below average Jan but this chance receding with every OP run from the reliable timeframe models.

It looks to me like the warming just isn't going to get right into the core of the vortex, there is yet another warming creeping into deep FI on the GFS run right up top, there are multiple problems with that though, a) getting it into a reliable timeframe, b) the same problem as in the charts posted by you, ie - will it push the vortex sufficiently over the other side of the pole as to allow heights to build far enough North, and c) will it propagate.