Froze were the Days

Blimey someone has lost his sense of humour in the New Year ...it was all based around the wording 'Hunt for' rather than being scientifically based or even serious!

On the whole though the events you're mentioning are generally quite sporadic...not saying you won't experience cold anomaly months any more they're becoming infrequent compared to the rash of mild/warm anomaly months. In my opinion too summers particularly in the south/south east are becoming warmer and no doubt Spring months and Autumn ones are too. Last poorish summer was 2012! last cool winter 2013!

We're still waiting... though I compare the 'hunt for cold' comparable to the 'hunt for bigfoot' - very mythical beast (sometimes from the east sometimes from the Pacific north west) which could be stirring in the distance and it's different from the norm and blurry in nature but might be making a move towards us, when it gets close there will be nervous excitement. Just hope it's not the normal hoax.

Yawn! - get out the ol' perturbations, let's be honest how often do the best one's come off?

blimey!...very quiet on here, haven't looked at GFS 12z in FI - it's obviously showing not a lot in the immortal words of Mr Daniels.

After the 14th basically...so no change really.

Green lane, Burnham Jan 1987

Here we go something to get the juices flowing from Jan 1987 from one of the lanes near Burnham

Happy New Year all! Right to the here and now and yet another mildish end to the old year and start of the new one!! - seems to be annually mild at this time. Here are the maxes and mins from where I live for New Years Eve and New Years Day of recent years: 2009/10: 31st 4.2, -1.2 1st 3.1, -1.8 2010/11: 31st 6.0, 4.9 1st 6.8, 3.3 2011/12: 31st 12.4, 8.7 1st 12.3, 8.5 2012/13: 31st 11.4, 8.9 1st 8.9, 8.9 2013/14: 31st 9.6, 5.5 1st 10.5, 6.1 2014/15: 31st 6.2, -0.7 1st 11.3, 4.5 2015/16: 31st 10.5, 6.5 1st: 8.2, 1.9 2016/17: 31st 8.0, 4.8 1st 9.0, 4.5 2017/18: 31st 12.9, 7.9 1st 7.0, 5.2 2018/19: 31st 10.0, 8.5 Very few frosts here in my local and no doubt others across the area - sorry for all the stats with the banging heads at the moment!

Happy New Year Tom and best of health and everybody else on NW and let's hope Sammy snowman has lots to look forward to! cheers FWTD (Tim)

Difficult one to call...the signs are there with the global models and SSW, but for a month long/longish cool/cold/very cold spell would be pushing it. So I'm expecting some cold but how long it last's is the question - 4.2c for me

Please don't curse it, aware of your December LRF with a wintery start and some noteworthy cold after Xmas!...couldn't have been more the opposite in all reality! Slightly better ecm certainly an improvement on this morning, maybe some room for further improvement around day 8?

Well certainly 'potential' there (please don't shoot me)...I believe that's why there's so many posts

Looks like it's flattening out at 216z sadly - energy over the top.

I have little faith in GFS full stop...occasionally picks out trends in FI just commenting on what would happen on that brief excursion with HP to our north west on that 06z, nothing more nothing less.

Followed by a toppler...no doubt and into default mode.

216z seems a bit flatter than the 0z (I know we should be comparing like to like) but feel like we're getting nowhere quick with the ops...

But why the impatience?...you can't go against all the signals (as you told me a while back) , all good things come to those who wait...and that wait will probably go on until a few days in March!

Well I said he might possibly be correct but I'll stand by my post as I've read some strat posts that say we're in a very 'tentative' phase of the down welling affecting the trop but Chris has largely been using the GFS which has been unfavourable though ECM still shows weakening of zonal winds at 60N in the next week or so...

Please no more about Chris Fawkes...we know his thoughts about this winter (he might be right) but he's certainly tweeting every image he can which backs up his thoughts and showing lack of propagation of the down welling...we seem to be hearing more from him than any other Meteorologist or Strat person currently and I don't believe he's one 'hunting' for cold.

Not a chance from that...heights remain over Spain/SW Europe, looks good at 144 - 198 but the fly in the ointment is still that main low which doesn't advect northwards (near Greenland) followed by the feature developing from near the Azores and then 'balloons' ...another near miss on the cards or the building blocks?

Looks like an old fashion toppler...but better than anything over the last few weeks!

Read the article from Simon Lee about generally 2 types of SSW's on the Start thread, this one appears different to Feb 2018 and some models are struggling with the downward propagation into the trop...but as he mentions this SSW is in a tentative stage currently so we might still get lucky

Yep! I mentioned that the other day...we get so few days with fairly persisting frosts it's untrue. Xmas morning so far this late Autumn/Winter has been the highlight with minima just below freezing and the first slight ice I've seen on puddles, this was a regular feature even in Novembers back in the mid 90's and further back, all we seem to get now days is dull, damp/wet interspersed with brighter conditions and largely mild.

Can't beat a beat of morribund - though have to completely disagree with 'TV Quick' - not as bad as December 2015 which was horribly mild but this is almost it's smaller brother! A. Partridge