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All eyes on ecm tonight.....I'm fully expecting the gfs 12z operational to be a mild outlier once more

Crumbs of comfort.....at least the 12z gfs is cold and dry for the medium term!

Although I'm fairly new here I've been an avid model follower over on TWO for a good 13 years, so I've seen plenty of these come and go in that time! I certainly won't be taking any model at face value, I was merely stating the 6z wasn't great as an individual run. Glad to see its in a minority and the majority is still cold!

Poor 6z again, a small coldish blast is replaced by yet more SW mush. Real cold ends up in the Balkans again. How can it be that we have a rampant jet and no blocking in December leading to the awful mildness we had.....then we get a massive arctic high, Greenland high, AO and NAO all in our favour.....yet still potentially end up with the same cack weather. Just doesn't seem fair at all!

If nothing does come of this, I want access to some of the data the meto and accuweather have been using! Both said yesterday they had doubts over anything sustained, and there is a greater chance than ever of this being true today.

Some extremely hard frosts overnight on this ECM run with light winds and a few snow flurries dotted around. Some of our usual suspects will be down in the -15c range in 10 days if these verify! Brrr!

Those of you fretting a lot over details in tonight's output, bear this chart in mind: According to the ooz GFS run on New Years day, the south of the UK should be getting battered by a monster storm at 7pm this evening! Nowehere to be seen. Only 162 hours away on the chart forecast too. Things can and will change!

I get what Steve says here wrt teleconnections and making a long range forecast - in that the further away you move from the start point, the greater the unknowns, and the more messy the picture becomes. Almost to the point where the forecast isn't valuable. The massive El Nino this year at least gave everyone a head start for the first half of winter, an it panned out how most thought it would, albeit on an extreme level with the warmest and wettest month ever recorded here, and similar things happening in the east of the USA. I'm certainly looking forward to what's ahead for winter part II, it sure as heck isn't going to be like the first half!

Some absolutely brutal cold shunted down the Midwest over in the states on this run! Bone chilling 850s down to -24c! http://www.meteociel.fr/modeles/ecmwf/runs/2016010412/ECH0-216.GIF?04-0

For my tuppence worth (which isn't worth much I know!) I'd say the ECM tonight is one of the better runs this winter. If only for the fact that some actual cold air is covering the UK in a fairly reliable timeframe! We haven't seen much of that have we! Sure it's nothing exceptional, but it would certainly result in some the white stuff covering parts of the UK.

Before we know it we are going to be in mid january, and only have about 6 decent weeks left to salvage anything from this train wreck of a winter so far! Come on weather gods, give us a break. I've got this sinking feeling that everything in 10 days time is going to start to revert back to something like we had in December. Hoping to be proved so very wrong.

I think it's more the realistic view? The ensembles never veered to agreement on a cold shot, it was always odd runs showing it, whereas the bulk showed what we're going to end up with - chilly cyclonic conditions with lots of wind and more rain. The stuff of nightmares if truth be told! Hopefully this colder air should hold less moisture, and if we're lucky we can avoid scenes like we've seen his last month in the north.

I think Santa must have delivered a job lot of rose tinted specs this Xmas reading some of the stuff on here! disappointing all round I'd say. The cold pool looks like retreating and being bottled back up north both here and in the states. Blame that big El Niño monster for this tripe! Even with a shift in pressure pattern we still end up on losing side :-(

I agree, to me the colder clusters were outweighed by the not so cold ones....it looks horrendous from here. A huge block stopping all those Atlantic lows going anywhere, so we're stuck right under the trough with copious rainfall again and gale force winds. Yuck!!!

One thing is for sure.....the euro slug has been well and truly stamped on!

Great....looks like we're trading mild wet and windy for cold wet and windy instead. Loads of low pressure, loads more rain for those who could really do without it. I can understand why the bbc and meto don't fancy a cold outcome. Looks to me we will be sat in the trough again for a while longer.

How incredibly disappointing from a few days back....the mass ensemble agreement of a large high pressure cell over the uk has been obliterated by the jetstream again. Looking like we're going to be waiting a while into the new year for anything cold.

They are anomalies on the 500mb heights....but they are so far into the positive they are off the scale!

Looking like the 12z is following on from previous runs of the last few days in painting a stormy outlook with plenty of wind and rain in the week up until Christmas, with things gradually settling down between then and new year. It'll be one hell of a turnaround if things don't change now with the amount of runs showing high pressure!

More of the same on the 00z runs, continuing very unsettled, with slightly more cooler sectors crossing the UK than at the moment, but overall on the mild side. Looking like a white Xmas is off the cards unless you've got a house up on CairnGorm, and even then I wouldn't bank on it!

I guess it's boring in a sense that it's not what you'd expect for December....but on the flip side, any potential record breaking month isn't boring to me! Hopefully this month will smash the record, and nicely in time for the start of January the Atlantic steamroller will run out of gas and the synoptics will change. GFS has been quite strong and consistent in showing a pattern change around the months end. All eyes peeled!

ECM 12z is one big mild-fest....not as unsettled as the GFS, and winds much more from a WSW quadrant keeping temps well above. John Hammond has mentioned there could be record breaking temps later this week, and the CET looks like being up at around 9.5c by the 20th still. Incredible, and providing no cold shots appear at the months end, this is going to be possibly the most record shattering month we've ever seen. Astounding.

Looking mild right out for the next week, before some colder shots digging in behind the low pressure areas interspersed with the mildness again. http://www.wetterzentrale.de/pics/Rmgfs120sum.gif Rainfall totals out to 120 hours up to 50mm in the NW areas that don't need it, 10-20mm in the drier east. Could turn a lot wetter in the period after though as the jet intensifies and takes a more direct hit over the UK. Potentially worrying times in the NW once again, which is most sad.

We wish you a merry Christmas......and a balmy new year?? http://www.wetterzentrale.de/pics/Rtavn3841.gif No sign of anything cold with the jet firing up to turbo speed again straight into the UK: http://www.wetterzentrale.de/pics/Rtavn17415.gif Hoping for some improvements on the12z runs!

You'd have to favour the other outcomes really, I can't see this whopping high forming with the jet as it is. Seville is forecast to reach the low-mid twenties this week! Crazy times.