Ian Brown

Obviously a cooling trend but I'm not too excited by either of the options that the ECM and GFS put forward from day 8 onwards. As for the GEM, it was awful last winter.

Well I can sure there will have been plenty of snowless Novembers in the m/w era in Ireland.

I don't think there is anything to suggest the NAO going negative, neutral at best beyond the T200 timeframes. As for PPN, we need to remember high SSTs around the UK in mid-late November. Its meaningless at this range.

It wouldn't be frigid. It would be maximas of 3-7 North to South.

I wouldn't call it epic, it's cool with a possible wintry mix thrown in. Good to see pressure low over Europe, it can't become mild quickly from the set-up shown at day 8.

168 hours is a long time away to be looking at specifics. I wouldn't get your hopes up.

Well you usually are HD ! But yes, I see HLB as tough to achieve in the coming weeks and for the winter as a whole.

I think on the face of it at the moment there is the possibility of parts of the UK being on the cold side of the PFJ for a time, but there isn't anything to suggest High Latitude blocking, with general factors seemingly against this happening. The negative anomaly does seem to persist over Europe though hence the GFS is settled in FI.

Do you expect to see snow before the middle of November ? Pretty rare for England and Wales.

Yes, we miss it completely when the PPN takes the track that it has today, but then have it full on if there is that North Westerly flow.

We have seen no rain today Mark, it's all gone to the NE. Nearly 17 years since this belter (for us) : http://www.wetterzentrale.de/pics/archive/ra/1996/Rrea00119961119.gif

The GFS and ECM are quite similar, there is a more meridional pattern shown than what we have seen of late, whether we can get those height rises towards Greenland to deliver a potent northerly remains to be seen.

That's right, I think the most interesting update is the METO, although stressing uncertainty, calling for the possibility of below average temps at the end of Nov/Early Dec. They must have seen something to believe that conventional zonality could possibly be off the table for a while.

I don't have any faith in these long range models - Matt Hugo was posting every week last Nov/Dec about the ECM 32 dayer showing +ve height anomalies around Greenland which never materialised and the colder spells from Jan onwards came from a different set-up.

I will take the jibes on the chin as usual - but if i had had the time last night I was going to respond to Phil before Steve put it well - I find it astonishing that blocking could be ruled out simply because of how the Strat is looking. Has this factor really taken on such eminence that it must be the tool that we use solely to determine whether blocking can occur ? I'm not having it.

Not much to be said really, zonality began on the 15th October and shows no sign of abating, At least we are not seeing a strong PV over Greenland in the outer reaches of the output.

Yes, it is carry on zonality for the forseeable, I just hope that the GFS in FI comes off and we can get a mid-latitude High to give us a break from the wind and rain.

An outrageous chart !

Yes, I was saying the other day that when a zonal set-up is possibly going to change the post reliable charts from T192 onwards often do start to play around with the differing scenarios. At the moment though there is nothing to suggest a change from barrelling zonality, and I think we can say with reasonable confidence that this will take us through to at least November 20.

Yes it is.

And of course he did go for the Easterly last December that was scuppered in dramatic fashion, though of course his knowledge will be greatly missed. Interesting to see the Accu forecast and probably explains why there haven't been any reported hyperbole from Joe B thus far. They seem to be going for HP over Western Europe with the occasional dig of cold air going on the SE flank of the High to the Baltics etc... though of course it's hard to sum up winter in one chart - unless it's 88/89 !

That isn't a Bartlett, and the core of HP there could easily be transferred West or North. For a Bartlett look at the late 80s or late 90s winter archive charts and you will soon find a proper Barty.

I think it will be tough early on, and the only possible break from the zonality could be a mid-latitude High later in November that soon gets flattened as the jet piles back in. There could be an SSW, we don't know, but with the QBO set-up that we will have, sometimes the PV never leaves the Greenland/Iceland area despite other factors becoming favourable. and we know that that is the killer area for us.

The METO are often cautious with their updates, as the last thing they want is to be caught out in winter and I feel that their probably even more confident of a mild Nov-Jan period than the wording suggests. Certainly when you consider more recent years with this QBO set-up, then +ve NAO is strongly favoured though of course we have seen a change in recent winters. I certainly get the feeling that HLB will be hard to achieve in this period and perhaps some are taking some of the synoptics that we have had in recent winters as a given to happen again. It's only a few years ago that it was being widely discussed on the forum that stable HLB in winter was a thing of the past.

Yes, a relentless zonal barrage this morning from the GFS taking us through to the mid point of November, with nothing to suggest that we could see any sort of break in the pattern never mind a complete change.