Captain Shortwave

GFS really starting to show the effects of the ssw, the atlantic train has turned more into a broken down car. Whilst heights are not that strong over Scandinavia, the lows just cannot get all the way across the Atlantic. During mid range, we have a low heading towards us, it literally gets crushed by the high to the north east and renewed lows coming in from the west. Real promising signs. Plus in this run Eastern areas would have snow showers all the way until Saturday night.

Agree, something sinister is lurking in the mist of this uncertainty. we might just be looking in the wrong direction at the moment. Not mentioning any phrases here....

It's looking pretty good for snow on monday I am serious, but don't call me shirley

Nice, but hopefully I will see some snow before monday, hopefully some showers will hit Great Yarmouth over the next couple of days, though tomorrow looks like being a crisp sunny day

The chart just shows the amount of spread and uncertainty around the Northern hemisphere. You can see that the areas with the highest uncertainty are the eastern US and over us, there is no coincidence as how lows exit the states will have a huge effect on our weather, the flatter the pattern, the more likely wet and more mild the weather. More amplification in the states will tilt the jet to give a more favourable weather either polar maritime/Arctic flow or lows going underneath us keeping the weather cold. Pretty much the model has no idea how things will pan out in this run.

Looks like the strat effects are causing chaos with the models. Northern Hemisphere and the netweather mods, time to batten down the hatches

Given the events in the strat, I wouldn't be too surprised if there are upgrades with respect to blocking to our north, what happens to us in respect to level of cold and chance of snow will vary a lot.

Excellent run by the gfs, finally I feel we are on the final stretch now, just give it a few more runs and of course to see if any interesting weather appears towards the end of next week (big snowfalls). Don't worry about precipitation at the moment, get the cold in and hopefully start developing heights to the north and let everything unfold

Canadian, and I think we should take it seriously, it has shown amazing constancy and has run similar runs since the gfs first started showing greenland highs a few days back.

Nick Sussex posted the NAM model prediction, it seems to show that the American high res disagrees with GFS, of course that might be wrong and GFS might have made a stonker of a decision, but whose to say. I think the 12z will make things a little clearer (hopefully)

I took a look at the gfs from earlier, roughly the distance is the distance as the crow flies between Belfast and Cardiff. I would say the correct distance is probably between the two values we stated. The met are still going for a cold outlook (as of their further outlook released a few minutes back). The issue I have with the gfs is that it seems to disagree with the NAM (american high res model which is siding with ECM), surely that is a little odd? Of course it doesn't mean gfs is wrong. The 12z will be interesting, ECM and GFS are converging on the point of no return on that shortwave, anything could happen.

The GFS of actually shows the fine line here with that shortwave, literally just 100miles more correction south on that shortwave and it links with the trough over France and there, well there is only one way that shortwave will go. Wish the ECM was still showing what it did last night as that would give me a lot more confidence.

I suspect an upgrade in the shorter term, it was mentioned earlier that the NAE (high res) model had much colder uppers arriving on Friday than the big 3 (-7 on the norfolk coast as opposed to -3/4). That's if that model is in anyway reliable. This could also have impact on the longer term perhaps if the models have underestimated the initial scandi high for the weekend.

Not too long to go until this would likely verify given reasonable agreement. Given my location, I am very very happy

Very significant upgrades in the short term with a pretty sharp cold spell for the weekend into the beginning of next week. This is pretty well supported with the mean for london around -8/9. If this verifies that cold will be more problematic to shift even if the Atlantic does force a successful attack. Whilst there is a lift in atmospheric temperatures, the ground level temps are less responsive suggesting perhaps a settled spell under the azores high. Well that's my call on it at worst.

It was only a couple of days back where the ECM produced two well supported charts on the bounce that showed a scandi high retrogressing to a greenland high very quickly. Well as soon as the GFS went against this as Ian Brown said would happen at the time it did. Same story, two ECM runs on the bounce show similar things but without the major support of it's assembles. I'm not buying that sort of consistency. Lets see what the 6z GFS comes up with

Have to agree there, unless the new trend is for the polar vortex to have balls of steel

Friends of mine on facebook are complaining about it being so mild. Infact one is climbing some of the mountains in western Britain and it's raining on the tops. I will let these people stick to their complaining whilst I like many others on here feel confident about the increasingly cold weather we might well get soon Not a single article I have seen has said anything about this so far. Which is excellent, no jinxing by media hype.

Have to agree here, add to the fact that the gfs strat forecast this morning was shoving a slab of the split vortex into the Atlantic you could possibly see why it's doing this in the tropospheric run here. Simply put if the gfs has picked up on a piece of vortex landing in the Atlantic It might be getting to the point where you could write off the whole of January and will be waiting on the later effects of the ssw.

Christmas parties are going to be awkward with Uncle Bartlett hanging around (not the user just in case wires are crossed ) Hopefully things will pick up in the near year. Merry Christmas

Yeah you are probably right Nick, but it's nice to have some signs of hope though. I guess it's best to keep your estimations low. Just got to look for further amplification off the Eastern seaboard to pull the Azores ridge away from it's Spanish holiday and do us some real favours. If all go to our hopes, we might not get a white Christmas, but by then we might be able to Nail on some real prospects for a cold spell. Wouldn't be Christmas without a bit of ramping

Maybe (I might be wrong there), but there has been a lot of differences in handling the Russian high over the past week, to be honest there have been cold and very mild runs though over the last 24 hours they seem to have settled of an average and unsettled pattern for the big day. After that it depends, for the run up to new years yet again we seem to be close to some very cold air, but we also have the signal for milder weather to push northeastwards. Small tweaks could put one of these in favour at least for a few days. Though unless things change on a broader scale, we are stuck in this pattern of rather average weather.

Given the way the charts have chopped and changed recently, I would want to give the models more time before writing off December. Look how much they have changed over the last few days. Whilst people seem to think that some are chasing cold. We have seen the azores high modelled to build only for that to back track. I wouldn't rule out mild or cold at the moment. As both seem to edge close to us only for them to slip away again. I'm sure things will look a lot different tomorrow. Maybe better, but of course could be a lot worse. The metoffice seem to be bullish about their average overall forecast temperature wise and that seems to be the way things are shaping up.

I think we need to wait for the 00z to come out before saying anything more here. The pub run might have gone mad tonight. But if there is a continued westwards trend we might see things being modelled very differently, so whilst the runs still point to an unsettled and average if complicated set up, there is the chance (if only slight) that the models might flip tomorrow with a possible Scandinavian high building as the low to the north of Norway starts having a real effect on the Russian high. To be honest the northerly over Christmas is out of the window now, i find some of the charts, posted on the previous page amazing, there is literally a few hundred miles between some very high temperatures for this time of year and us being put into the freezer. Absolutely fascinating.

This feels like deja vu, but in reverse, didn't the models start properly backtracking this time last week. The models are turning into the met-office's nightmare before Christmas