summer blizzard

Lovely and sunny.

A beauty. I'd expect with such pressure and a strengthening sun inland you'd probably see the cloud burn back.

Having not got up until 1 i just assumed it had been sunny all day.

My memory of March must have overwhelmed any memories of sunshine last February.

Another lovely day here. GFS high resolution takes us to day 13 with no precipitation.

A dry and blocked month on the whole but the high may be west enough to produce inversions in the first half before it drifts south east in the second. 7.1C for me at this point, 0.5C above the 1981-2010 average.

I guess that's our target then.

When was the last February to breach the 100 mark?

I'd hate that minima but i'd be happy with that maxima if i could just lounge about. I have to say that the 3rd August chart is probably the most synoptically perfect chart i've seen.

In all honesty there's no guarantee, this year could follow one of the analogues or a mixture and they will change over time. One area of success i have had is using them for a percentage based forecast and also for the hurricane season.

I agree, its bringing back memories of last March which is getting me all happy. Looks sunny to me does the forecast though not as warm. As the high resolution output goes i'll be at 12 days with no precipitation which is a feat.

We may want to look at the GEM in future... MAJOR UPGRADE TO THE GLOBAL DETERMINISTIC PREDICTION SYSTEM GDPS- VERSION 3.0.0) AT THE CANADIAN METEOROLOGICAL CENTRE ON WEDNESDAY FEBRUARY 13, 2013, STARTING WITH THE 1200 UTC RUN, THE CANADIAN METEOROLOGICAL CENTRE (CMC) OF THE METEOROLOGICAL SERVICE OF CANADA (MSC) WILL IMPLEMENT VERSION 3.0.0 OF ITS GLOBAL DETERMINISTIC PREDICTION SYSTEM (GDPS), HEREAFTER REFERRED TO AS GDPS-3.0.0. THE MAIN CHANGES OF THIS UPDATE ARE: - CHANGES TO THE 4D-VAR DATA ASSIMILATION SYSTEM: - THE USE OF ADDITIONAL REMOTE SENSING DATA: - AN INCREASE IN HORIZONTAL RESOLUTION FROM 33 TO 25 KM: - IMPORTANT CHANGES IN THE GEM MODEL PHYSICS: - AND 1200 UTC RUNS NOW DONE TO 240 HOURS AS FOR 0000 UTC RUNS. OBJECTIVE SCORES DONE IN DEVELOPMENT AND PARALLEL RUN PHASES SHOW IMPROVEMENTS IN THE FORECASTS WITH MOST METRICS THROUGHOUT MOST OF THE ATMOSPHERE, IN PARTICULAR OVER NORTH AMERICA IN WINTER. THESE IMPROVEMENTS ARE OF AN ORDER OF MAGNITUDE USUALLY SEEN ONLY ONCE IN A DECADE. A SUBJECTIVE EVALUATION BY OPERATIONAL METEOROLOGISTS AT CMC CONFIRMED THOSE IMPROVEMENTS. OTHER FORECAST SYSTEMS WHICH DEPEND ON GDPS OUTPUT ALSO BENEFIT FROM THE GDPS-3.0.0. CHANGES WERE MADE TO THE REGIONAL DETERMINISTIC PREDICTION SYSTEM (RDPS) TO HARMONIZE IT WITH THE NEW GDPS, AND THE RDPS FORECASTS ARE ALSO IMPROVED AS A RESULT, SO ITS VERSION NUMBER IS ALSO INCREASED TO 3.1.0, AND IS HEREAFTER REFERRED TO AS RDPS-3.1.0.

Looks dry for me.

Wow, in the highly unlikely event that the GFS18z came off we'd go 18 days at least with no precipitation. Upto 11 days in the high resolution (unless we get a surprise trough obviously).

Aye, getting towards the time of year when we can get some good durinal ranges. Yes but the difference was that there were plenty of troughs forecast, this for whatever reason away from the coast is forecast to be very dry.

Yup, constant dry frosty nothingness.

I had not realized how cool the first half of Feb 10 must have been then, i just remember snow in the second half. Strange winter, fantastic cold spells in late November and early March but in Winter a kind of numb coolness. I recall it being most interesting because of a complete lack of mild spells and 'easterly topplers'.

Was 2010 not pretty cold in its latter half? Additionally the latter half of 2006 was probably colder than 2005.

No, the last dozen operationals.

Not sure if people have missed this but for Leeds because its inland the GFS is suggesting that we could go 10 days with no precipitation (even then we are relying on a low resolution low)..

I believe i am, GFS now takes us to 10 days. Indeed, it will be amazing to see just how quickly we can go from soaked fields to hard, cracked ones (probably won't with frost). Meanwhile its 8C and sunny here, quite nice.

In terms of the raw number 1990 and 2004 are both close to the December-January values observed now and both saw a neutral-positive/weak El Nino and neutral-positive PDO develop. They were rejected from the PDO analogue list because 2004 was already positive and 1990 was trending negative rather than trending positive like now.

Okay, so i was going through some analogues and 1990 stuck out at me so whilst it certainly won't last i thought i'd take a look at that wonderful summer since i was only 1 at the time. Supposedly parts of the UK went around a month without any rainfall in the south east and it culminated in 37C at Cheltnam.. Several charts which stick out at me are...

Frankly it looks to me like pressure will too high and uppers not significantly low so here inland i would expect a chilly spell but nothing more (GFS would suggest a more typical sunny, dry high with frost at night and 5-10C by day). Of more interest is probably the northerly which may come after. Frankly i'm more interested in the GFS, it suggest at least 9 days of no precipitation.