Nouska

The EUROSIP seems to have been updated on the NOAA NMME page. http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/NMME/iMMEindex.shtml

According to their paper, all work is carried out using The NCEP archives which are available on Meteociel and Wetterzentrale - that goes back a long way but only 1976-2012 is used for the study.

Yes, Phil - the ECM epsgram for Reading also suggests daytime temperature around 8c at the nine to ten day period. It will probably change as time progressses but I doubt it will feel like shorts weather. http://i.imgur.com/AF5qCoG.gif

Thank you, Lorenzo. Here's the blog that goes with the tweet. http://www.wsi.com/blog/energy/it-might-be-time-to-start-monitoring-the-stratosphere/

I haven't seen anyone link to the NOAA FIM model - they have nice animations, out to +336, of the stratosphere and include flux and ozone mixing options. Menu for NH is new Arctic option. http://fim.noaa.gov/FIM/Welcome.cgi?dsKey=fim_jet&domain=201&run_time=10+Nov+2014+-+00Z

Yes, you are right about the warm air advection ridging up over Greenland being the upside of our cold pool but no need to have any worries or guilt about enjoying your UK snow. There will be no melt at a time when the UK is capable of seeing lowland snow - even if you see big areas of red (warm) anomalies on the weather charts it is still well below freezing. When it does matter in late spring and summer, you'll be under one of these horrible green blobs of low heights that have plagued some of the very wet British summers of recent years. Get the woollies out of the cupboard, dust off the sledge and enjoy anything that comes along in the way of snow.

JMA have an archive back to 1958 - 300hPa flux, 100 and 30 height anomaly available. http://ds.data.jma.go.jp/tcc/tcc/products/clisys/figures/db_hist_mon_tcc.html 2009 monthly mean.

Hi, Allseasons - I'll not publish the direct link but Google, brunnur vedur and that should take you to the indexes where I got it.

Sudden burst of activity on the plots.

At the same timescale as we are referring to now, the CFS was hopeless. The two forecast events you mention, one month prior.

From the details early on in the OPI thread, I did some research and pattern matching which led me to the conclusion that 76/77 would be a good analogue to choose for this winter. I'm pleased to see the move into November continues to forecast something broadly similar. Could this be the year we once again see a Canadian warming - time will tell, as with all things weather related. Edit to add that the NOAA upstream analogues are agreeing with my ramblings ....for the time being.

The supplementary material would certainly indicate that is how the modelling sees things progressing. http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/vaop/ncurrent/extref/ngeo2277-s1.pdf

This is far from new research but I was wondering if anyone had Institutional access to the old journal archives to get the gist of what was being discussed. In light of what we now know about the 'Pause', standing waves, Arctic amplification and solar variability, the abstract from this paper seems to have been quite prescient. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1364682697001193

Aaah ..... the first wafts of the Siberian silly season.......time for us old codgers to get the soup, slippers and slanket before viewing model output discussion.

Nice work Steve! As you say, no reanalysis for the below years but Meteociel have them in the archive in NH view - 15 day, mouse-over format makes it relatively simple to run through the pattern and get an idea of the month October. 1899/1900 2.2 4.4 2.6 1916/1917 1.9 1.6 0.9 1928/1929 3.4 1.3 0.4 1935/1936 2.8 3.7 2.6 1939/1940 3.2 -1.4 2.6 1940/1941 3.8 0.5 3.5 Starting with October 1899 - just change the year for others. http://www.meteociel.fr/modeles/archives/archives.php?mode=2&month=10&day=16&year=1889&map=4&hour=0

Would an animation of the ECM 500mb anomalies help to display the points being looked at? Unfortunately, free sites dont have the jet stream levels. http://www.tropicaltidbits.com/analysis/models/ecmwf/2014102512/ecmwf_z500a_nhem.html

Using reanalysis which goes back to 1948, I looked at the October Z500 anomaly for the three coldest winters in France, prior to the beginning of the OPI data set. The first and last chart had a November Canadian warming which would, I assume, dramatically alter the pattern portrayed. What is clear to see is that the overall pattern is very different to that which is discussed in the Taymyr theory - low geopotential heights over the peninsula on all of them. May be ice loss but money would be on the recent solar changes as being the overall driver in this change of circulation pattern.

That is the new, very high-res, icosahedral model that the DWD and Max Planck Institute are testing. Similar to the NOAA FIM in how it segments the Globe. http://www.dwd.de/sid_FY01JKLF7LLH6N1txQJl7FbgXckQb7mFqZrzDBzpLlgz4xLgN4vL!-1888403501!535701719!1414154309203/bvbw/appmanager/bvbw/dwdwwwDesktop?_nfpb=true&_pageLabel=dwdwww_result_page&portletMasterPortlet_i1gsbDocumentPath=Navigation%2FForschung%2FAnalyse__Modellierung%2FFU__koop__proj__ICON__node.html%3F__nnn%3Dtrue Really neat 700mb RH presentation on the Meteociel version.

Steve mentions the Eurasian index above - there is a recent paper on this that I posted in the last strat thread. Some interesting theories that relate to the solar cycle fluctuations. http://www.atmos-chem-phys.net/13/6275/2013/acp-13-6275-2013.pdf

In the absence of the snow extent charts, we can maybe glean some insight from the GFS forecast for snowcover. A loop from FIM :- http://fim.noaa.gov/FIM/jsloopLocalDiskDateDomainZip.cgi?dsKeys=fim_jet:&runTime=2014102300&plotName=weasd_sfc&fcstInc=360&numFcsts=57&model=fim&ptitle=Experimental%20FIM%20Model%20Fields&maxFcstLen=336&fcstStrLen=-1&resizePlot=1&domain=fim Initialisation (which is maybe incorrect due to loss of data) The run at T+192 We can see there is a bit of loss in Scandinavia due to the forecast pattern but there are some gains westward, south of 60 degrees.

As a side benefit of providing food to enable taming and neutering of a number of the stray farm cats, I've acquired a sizeable population of hedgehogs. I was very surprised to note that they liked the cat biscuits - soft food not an outdoor option with the heat and flies. The only thing I would add to your great post is to put out some water in shallow dishes for them if the weather is dry. I've got plant pot saucers with water placed all round the garden and they are well used by all the little animals and birds. Can you still burn garden rubbish piles? - If so, mind and check there's nothing living/sleeping in it.

JMA now have extensive parameter, composite anomaly charts for the MJO - might be a link of interest to some. http://ds.data.jma.go.jp/gmd/tcc/tcc/products/clisys/mjo/composite.html Other analysis charts and monitoring indices here:- http://ds.data.jma.go.jp/gmd/tcc/tcc/products/clisys/acmi.html

I see we have team OPI with us - a very warm welcome and please do join the discussion.

Hi RBJ - at first glance your ECM T+192 chart doesn't look so good but if you look at the placement of anomalies, you can see that the lobes of low heights are still well scattered with the core still positive.

I've deleted the charts in your post for economy of space. As far as I understand, the pattern needs to be looked at in terms of geopotential height anomalies - these charts do not show that and as far as I can see not available in archived data. Probably can do it in reanalysis if important. What the anomalies of the month to date show, is that it will take very negative poleward heights to make inroads on what we have already 'banked'.