Optimus Prime

Great to see the negative anomaly to the north of us is still hanging on. Whilst the postitives on the main are becoming cooler. If you're after a full blown cold easterly, those positive anomolies to the east of us are a little worrying. But on the plus side may help to pick up on large ammounts of moisture as the cold air comes across slightly warmer waters? Still looking ok, would like to see the seas inbetween Alaska and Russia cool down some what...

Are you sure a little bit of mild air can up the negative anomolies up there at the moment? I think it'll take one hell of a warm spell to cool down them cold anomolies up there. And I don't really believe mild air warms up the seas that significantly.

It's so early on -41c was an exceptional value. -24 is still frigidly cold. I suspect it will turn a lot milder over the next week...to then become very cold again. Be interesting to see how warm it actually gets up there.

Nice to see the cold anomalies sticking to the north of us. What is worrying though are the warm anomalies hugging the east coast of america...I could quite easily see them joining onto the warm anomalies dotted around the Atlantic. Hope that doesn't happen. Otherwise a large warm pool might threaten our current cold reserved to our north. Perhaps the government should drop a load of ice cubes around the warm areas?

so because we get a cold winter everyone dies off? That's how they seem to interpret it. If we can't survive a cold winter then how did we ever survive the winters of 1991 and 1987? The most recent years with a very cold month. Simple, we could get a winter like 1917, 1947, 1955, 1963 and even worse and we would be ok. Their making a big deal out of nothing. As usual.

Admittedly, looking at the CET figures from December 1995 to December 1996 there were some cold months. Both Decembers of 1995 and 1996 were much colder than average. February 1996 was pretty cold to. But January 1996 was 0.1c above average. Surprised that it was colder then 1986/1987. I calculated 1986 Decembers CET, January 1987 CET, February and march-Divided it by 4 (Ended up as 3.675) (Hope I’m right) did the same with 1995/1996 and surprisingly 1995/1996 was 0.2c colder at 3.4c during Dec-Mar.

But the Meto never said it would be a cold winter. They just said the Coldest since 1995/1996. When in fact 1995/1996 wasn't really a cold winter. it was on the cool side but not notably cold. If we end up with a slightly mild/average winter it will still mean the coldest since 1995/1996. There hasn't even been a winter of 0.1c colder then average since then!

if you want snow November rarely ever holds much hope. There was some snow last November wich amounted to about a 0.1MM covering, that's rare! Even cold Novembers rarely give any snow south of Scotland. The average CET for November is 6.9c. Last time we had a below average one was November 1998. last time we had a very below average one was 1925! 1993 was fairly cold though.

I doubt that would make a lot of difference to sea temperatures. Generally, if the sea is cold the air just above it stays cold. Milder air usually stays well above sea level. Something to do with heat rising and Cold sinking? So any warmth like that won't make much difference at all to sea temperatures but it may be a bit of inconvenience for Greenland ice, poking some slightly less cold air, most of it hitting Iceland. Thereafter it turns distinctly cold again with the north going into quite a freeze with the mild zonality being forced southwards, just south of England. So possibly turning severely cold again? I actually think it might not be a bad thing pushing some slightly milder air into Greenland and Iceland. May in fact be a good thing. The mild moist air rapidly being taken over by much colder air may form a deep LP and bring some large outbreaks of snow in that area with the mild and cold air colliding.

I'm in agreement with the cold rampers here That + anomaly in the atlantic is hardly anything at all now. And even some negative anomalies starting to kick in possibly eroding any warmth left. The cold pooling to our north IMO is more potent that what it has ever been. The +2c anomaly a few days ago that was hanging onto north east Greenland has diminished some what and the only thing I can see is cold anomalies starting to invade much of the Norwegian sea and further northwards. I’ve been following the sea temperatures for some time now and things are cooling down quite rapidly. WIB never likes to be proven wrong so I doubt we will ever here the last of his obsession with the slight warm anomaly currently hanging on in the atlantic

SST update; Things are looking very good indeed. The cold pool around Northern Iceland is very intense. Some 3.0c below average. There are however warm anomalies north of the intense cold around Iceland. The cold seas around the area I would estimate as being larger than the size of India. So any cold blasts we get are most certainly going to be intensified. The warm anomalies for the atlantic are much less warm and a cool pool seems to be developing amongst it which I expect will soon develop into a negative anomaly. Moving onto North America, there are some potent warm anomalies that seem to be hanging around east Canada and the eastern seaboard of America (Particularly potent around the Rhode Island/New York region) while there seems to be a cold pool developing south of that. far north Canada has rather cool seas. The chuchki sea (Bit between Alaska and Russia) is still very warm and hasn't shown signs of cooling. Perhaps slightly cooler than a week ago. So overall, exciting to the north of us and I don't see them - anomalies dissapearing into the near future. otherwise it's on the warm side.

What's notably different this year is the Greenland ice sheet is aveage or even above average. What a turn around from last year!

So, are these temperatures about average or above/below average?

So by saying that you don't want a channel low that can give some tremendous snow cover to the south? A warm sea should allow for channel lows to develope deeper then a cold sea.

I would actually prefer a warm english channel much of the eastern sea mild then a cold one. During 2003 we had a notable easterly spell which caused some surprisingly deep snowfall around the south east. London recorded 10CM and some parts a lot more. I haven't got the SST's for that period but I expect the sea's were warm around us then to allow a front to develop across the north sea. If we get warm anomalies with cold air going across it I personally think it increases our chances of a big snow event similer to 1991. If the cold air is coming across cold sea surely there's no convection to allow much of a front to develop

More ice-pack and heat energy reflected is one thing but actually getting the heat through the atmosphere back into space is another. With the atmosphere, everyday getting more and more full of Carbon Dioxide, Methane...ect. Considering we are sending so much CO2 into the atmosphere the heat is finding a hard time escaping through the layer of Carbon Dioxide currently stuck there.

There are some nice signs to the north now. Although some mild sea temperature anomalies around north east Greenland there has been some more substantial cold pooling around much of the north. More particularly around the coasts of Iceland. Also the warm anomolies across the rest of the north hemisphere are showing signs of cooling down.

Grey and chilly...with some heavy pulses of rain. Temperatures just 17.1c

Well, it is one of the busiest cities in the world That snow even on 2004, polor low was quite impressive. Here I got 3cm in just 15 minutes with thunder and strong winds. The temperature drop was something like from 5c to 1c in 5 minutes..ended up at -4c hat night.

I've joined the club and also complained. Not like me at all!

Very warm and extremely muggy. Temperatures around 16.5c.

Rather cold and snowy...as if we didn't know already! 1.1c and falling.

Countless snow showers here in reading. A 10 minute ice blizzard then mostly a thaw and clear skies. Now very cloudy again with light snowflurries.