Nouska

Sorry to take off topic so that I might ask Mr Fergusson the question as to whether GloSea5 can differentiate between a Canadian warming, where the vortex is pushed so far into Siberia that it temporarily creates a wind reversal, and a bona fide SSW. I saw the Strat. graph from the model forecast for last winter in the Aemet pdf - very accurate.

Holly would be an appropriate name for a snow event. Can autumn stay calm enough to leave that one for around Christmas time. Hubby's name on there - most definitely a windy one.

There may have been a few more spotless days but I wouldn't agree about the much weaker part where geomagnetic activity is concerned. In that respect, activity was stronger last year than in the year of maximum. It takes a while to wind down. 2014 2016 to date. Compare the Bartels music diagram for 2009 - that's a signature we want to get to for further testing the theory of cold winters at solar minimum. Sources. http://wdc.kugi.kyoto-u.ac.jp/kp/index.html http://www.gfz-potsdam.de/en/kp-index/

The PA Newman paper was another nice find by @knocker http://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/agu/article/10.1002/2016GL070373/editor-highlight/ I've searched for a no paywall version but no luck to date. Maybe a presentation PDF after the AGU conference in December. Snippet from NASA https://gmao.gsfc.nasa.gov/research/science_snapshots/rebooting_QBO_2016.php

The 'blob' that is really impressive currently is the hot spot in the NE Pacific. It faded a bit last year but is back with a vengence now. Was this not linked with the extremely positive PNA pattern over north America two winters ago? In between the Nina signature in the tropical Pacific and the big Kara/Barents positive anomaly, it is all looking very similar to 2014 at our latitudes. 2014 2016 Atlantic sub-surface will still be cold so I expect the cold blob to extend if the autumn sees big depressions in the central north Atlantic. http://weather.gc.ca/saisons/sea-snow_e.html

Thanks, it's not a familiar jargon but makes sense now. Ant Masiello has posted a graph in the last couple of days: it does rather show why some other folk were confused too. Wonder what happened in October 2015 - the 10mb level seems to have gone into a big deviation at that point. https://twitter.com/antmasiello/status/776102504232804356 With that mess can anybody really say what effect it will have on winter circulation?

Thank you @Yarmy - I'm remiss not to give a link - wrongly assume most folks in here know where to go. Here's another illustration of just how strange the picture is - from an article by one of the authors of the paper we have been discussing. http://iprc.soest.hawaii.edu/news/press_releases/2016/16_09_Hamilton_QBOdisruption.pdf Just one query, they are talking the opposite of what is in the other diagram where west is shaded - is it a different criteria they are describing? Edit - I understand a now - an easterly is a westward jet - my brain kept wanting to change the text, just found it confusing in terms of the conventional descriptions.

There's certainly some big totals forecast for the area overnight/tomorrow am. AROME zoom from 18Z run.

Swimming with froglets - as difficult to catch as they are to photograph! Dived in anyway while the sun was out. Here's two I netted later. The hybrid back in a pond and the garden frog back under the tomatoes, along with many siblings!

Just for season posterity but not worthwhile making individual threads. Ian and Julia have formed but will not get beyond tropical storm status. Julia, due to be downgraded to a depression later, will be a rainmaker in SE coastal regions and Ian moves north east in the Atlantic. NHC tracks below. Julia Ian All images courtesy of NHC. http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/

Super typhoon Meranti is the strongest recorded typhoon to cross the Luzon strait. Beautiful image Currently at 155knots (down from 170knots) but undergoing an ERC and disruption due to land interaction. Track Wider image with Malakas following in the wings.

So stressed here the greengage has lost most of its leaves! The Pampas grass is loving it though - shame it will be battered to bits in an hour or so. The green lines in the grass are the waste water soakaways to the ponds.

Can I take it you are sceptical of the warm Arctic, cold continents theory? Winter 12/13 was extremely cold in Europe and that followed the record low ice of September 2012. Personally, I think solar activity is probably the overriding factor but I'm also sure that there is a connection there too with the ice loss. So much going on that is unprecedented for the records we have, it is difficult to make assumptions about what any season will be like.

Nice job on the 34C

Ouch!! 36 hour total That will break the drought in a rather spectacular fashion. http://propluvia.developpement-durable.gouv.fr/propluvia/faces/index.jsp An edit to add a couple of links from Meteo France about the new September heat records and the storms that followed. http://www.meteofrance.fr/actualites/40476083-nouveaux-records-de-chaleur http://www.meteofrance.fr/actualites/40517706-bilan-des-orages-de-la-nuit

On the AROME zoom,there's even a tiny pocket of 34C forecast for tomorrow - what is the September record? Here's the link for the ensemble mean charts. http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/research/climate/seasonal-to-decadal/gpc-outlooks/ens-mean Z500 T2m An edit regarding the question from @northwestsnow - yes it is GloSea5 - model info in the 'technical user guide' link just under the important details header.

On the subject of that low... .....quite an unusual occurrence for mid September I would have thought. On wednesday we were due to meet up with family for a few days in Bordeaux - that's been cancelled due to illness (not severe) - I'm very glad of that seeing those charts. Perhaps the high-res ARPEGE is being a bit aggressive in the modelling but still quite noteworthy even if less deep. It's a win win situation - you guys get some late season heat, maybe followed by storms and I'll hopefully get the rain we desperately need.

I enlarged as much as I could and would guess the bird is a peregrine falcon. The reason for that is the facial markings and the closeness of the body banding. Difficult to say for sure with no wing fingers showing and the tail closed but for a Harrier, I would expect much broader dark bands on the wing. PS, there's a male hen harrier near us - hubby alerted me by telling me about a strange 'gull' he saw at the lake. Now seen him for myself - haven't seen a female yet but there are so many raptors here it would just be another one in the sky if I didn't have binoculars with me.

There's another section I find more interesting... Scientists have identified several possible causes for the break. The QBO is thought to be driven by tropical waves—generated by warm, circulating air—that propagate up from the troposphere into the stratosphere. But when Osprey's team plugged the anomalous QBO data into a climate model, the disruption appeared to originate outside of the tropics. One possible culprit is this past winter's strong El Niño, which not only brought unusually warm waters to the eastern equatorial Pacific Ocean, but also shook up atmospheric waves and weather patterns well beyond the tropics. A "blob" of warm water that has been growing in the northern Pacific Ocean since 2013 is another possible cause, as is a sudden stratospheric warming event that occurred this past winter in the high latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere. I've illustrated up the page that the previous ENSO strong events showed little change to the rhythm but there was one thing unprecedented (in modern record keeping) last winter and that was the strength of the SSW and the fact the winds never returned to westerly for rest of the winter - ie. the earliest and strongest final warming recorded to date. An edit to add a couple of key points from another article on the new paper - further evidence of response to extreme events in the stratosphere or all responding to an as yet unidentified driver. I keep going back to the very unusual events of late December/early January and the extraordinary WAA up into the central polar regions at the height of winter - what chain of events could this set in motion? In February 2016 the quasi-biennial oscillation, a regular feature of the climate system, broke down from its regular pattern. The eastward winds in the upper atmosphere unexpectedly reversed to a westward direction. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/09/160908151118.htm

This illustration of the historic QBO cycle does not show anything out of the ordinary for the previous very strong El Nino events. In fact, the '97/'98 looked to be a smooth and fast transition downwards. The 30mb figure increased again in August so the downward progression appears to still be out of kilter. http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/data/correlation/qbo.data

That's not a good forecast with it being Labour day weekend. The beaches and barrier islands will be packed with visitors on what is traditionally the last big beach holiday of summer. Some of the models stall it there for quite some time too.

A white Christmas 2010 Archive..... http://www.natice.noaa.gov/ims/gif_archive.html

NHC had it officially at 80mph for landfall. Twitter feed of someone covering the storm - during and after videos included. https://twitter.com/Heather_Lacy1 She looked a lot better prior to landfall than what I expected.

Well! - she'll never be a Southern Belle but we finally have tropical storm Hermine.

The IMO site has 6 hourly means for the 15 days covered by the ensembles. It only covers part of the British isles for 850 temps but from what I see of the 00Z run, the peak of the plume is at +138 hours. It's all looking pretty good out to the end of the run and based on this I've put in a high CET guess next door.