Mike Poole

Clusters!! T120-t168: My take: Cluster 1, troublesome low seeps away SE and allows clean easterly to develop. 21 members. Cluster 2, troublesome low remains annoying. 18 members. Cluster 3, troublesome gone south early, undercut of next one, maybe a bit like GFS, 12 members. But, and here’s the thing, it is not at all clear to me which would bring the best longer term cold prospects.

Yes, Matt, but the op was such a ridiculously cold run that it had to be an outlier on the mean. I think the middle part of that plot is more telling - consistency towards cold. Reliable on ensembles is generally a couple of days longer than the ops so is good to see.

ECM mean T144, and this has got to be good: Uncertainty distorts the picture later on so will wait to see the clusters before making comment on the later evolution.

Be careful. The best outcomes are always from high risk high reward situations, the safe scenarios don’t generally deliver anything spectacular. We are in one of those high risk high reward scenarios right now.

No pub run for me tonight. Alarm set for 4am GMT.

ECM T240, this just the most incredible run I’ve seen, beats last night’s pub run and that is saying something:

ECM T216, and you could make an argument that there is a lot more to come here:

If, unlike that one, it happens, then YES.

T192 ECM , LOL

We’re all 6 again if it snows!

ECM T168, and a look at the uppers and they are AWESOME!!

T144: GFS snowfest we know, UKMO decent, ECM sides with UKMO!! Brown trousers there for a mo but it is all good

T120: ECM could be dodgy for the south, still a fair bit north of the UKMO.

T96 on the big three: ECM looks a little north of the UKMO with the low, need to wait to see how this goes, still big uncertainty here. GFS further south, well we know how that goes.

GFS // T144: Not quite the GFS op, but excellent nonetheless. And the next low is going to slide here.

Just WOW! Worth adding the wind gusts chart to that!!! T162:

GFS and UKMO T144, GFS spectacular! UKMO still pretty good.

Think I prefer GFS, UKMO just taking a little longer to clear the low T120, but should be OK:

Much better GFS 12z, T108 with T114 from the 6z for comparison: And all good over the pole too.

Well, huge interest in this 12z suite. I don’t usually follow the morning runs in any detail because 4 times a day is too many, and there is a risk that one is commenting on the noise rather than the signal, which changes usually over a longer timescale than 6 hours between runs, but the 0z suite was obviously very promising, but the GFS 6z shows that not everything about this spell is sorted yet.. Minimum satisfactory outcome this evening is a UKMO and ECM hold. Hope we can do even better and get full cross model agreement on the easterly, but I just feel it is slipped back in time slightly over the last couple of days, so may take another set of runs to have it sorted.

GFS // at T168, not convinced about this run, it has got horribly messy in the middle! Nonetheless, the route for cold to the UK remains open, even if it has to contend with Operation Brock:

Case of spot the difference there, Si! What has stuck me about this upcoming spell of weather, which admittedly hasn’t happened yet, let’s not forget that, is it isn’t just a Greenland ridge or a scandi high that is being progged, it is a full-on cross polar flow, complete slice and dice of the trop vortex. This doesn’t happen very often and we still need to play to luck that we’re on the right side of it but it is awesome synoptics being shown, so interesting.

GFS, on top of everything else, delivers a lovely purple rabbit at T312

GFS 18z // T120, and I needn’t have worried, the problem low seems to have evaporated so it’s on the cold chase again, few hours behind on this one though...

GFS 18z // doesn’t follow it’s brother and puts the oomph into the northern of the two lows I mentioned earlier, the one that affects the UK, so we won’t see a Cobra run off of this...