Snowy L

I know I'm not using it to forecast storms I'm using it for stratospheric forecasts.

Thanks, so we are above 150 solar flux at the moment, good news seeing as we are in West Phase QBO.

Are there any sites that give current observations for solar flux 10.7cm?

I think it's safe to say that we are past solar maximum now. Also the solar maximum was a very low one. The correlation between solar cycle/QBO/SSWs is more based on actual solar flux 10.7 cm rather than solar maximum/minimum. So even though we are close to a solar maximum, the actual solar flux is low as this has been a very weak solar maximum. I wasn't a great supporter of solar-climate links either, but the soalr cycle/qbo links have shown some good correlations in experiments, particularly solar max/qbo west links. http://strat-www.met.fu-berlin.de/labitzke/moreqbo/MZ-Labitzke-et-al-2006.pdf Page 8 shows the graphs and it shows a decent positive correlation between West QBO, Solar flux and SSWs, though the correlation is weaker when it comes to East QBO and solar flux. Edit: Forgot that they're measuring 30hpa Geopotential height at the North Pole, not SSWs. But greater heights at the North Pole implies displaced/split/weakened vortex.

I was feeling optimistic about an SSW this winter with us being at solar maximum with a west QBO (SSWs are more common under these conditions than in an east based QBO during solar minimum). However, the solar cycle has been very weak this year and it's gone against predictions of a maximum this year. 2011 is now considered to be the maximum and in fact we've seen a sharp drop in sun spot counts to levels last seen in the mid 2000s in the last few weeks. Snow is advancing nicely below 60 degrees and we've already seen a few wobbles in the temperature profile in the stratosphere. I'm hoping we will see a minor warming or 2 to give us a shot at a cold spell in late November/December. Wave-1 activity is set to increase in the next few days, but while it will give a warming it doesn't look like anything too strong and I doubt it will disrupt the vortex too much,

It's a big area of interest at the moment, this is a great read as well http://www.tellusa.net/index.php/tellusa/article/view/19375/html They mention a new observation to keep an eye on, November sea ice cover over the Siberian seas. It's on a short timescale so I'm thinking could it be linked with these early season disruptions to the polar vortex that we have seen in recent years. Ice cover has been low for a decade now, but near the Barents sea (the main observation area) it's been pretty much non-existent. As far as I remember we have seen weakening of the vortex in November/December in 2009,2010 and 2012 in the last few years and these have all had very low Siberian sea ice cover, particularly 2009 and 2012.

It happened last year apart from the first few days? Or was that just in my area.

Very warm (mean temperatures >5C above normal 10% Have we ever had a winter that's been 5c above average? Seems like a very high percentage for something I don't think we have ever seen.

Could anyone help in explaining what happened to the polar vortex in 2010 to cause such a cold and blocked start to the winter? http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/stratosphere/temperature/archive/10mb9065_2010.gif http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/stratosphere/temperature/archive/70mb9065_2010.gif From what I can see there was nothing too out of the ordinary both higher and lower in the stratosphere. There was a small warming at 10hpa at the start of November and at the start of December, with nothing unusual happening lower down. Did this small warming delay the formation of the vortex and give us a cold November/December? Or did nothing happen to the vortex and the cold weather caused by something else?