Empire Of Snow

18z, the Icelandic LP at 138h forces the Azores to ridge eastwards underneath Scandinavia, similar scenario to the ECM if I'm not mistaken.

168h and 182h totally different with the high ridging eastwards will lead to a Northerly/Northeasterly probably. Game on.

You're right. It's from yesterday.

Full suite of 12z is out on my Meteociel app. It still supports the Easterly scenario. Is it right or am I watching a previous run?

12z is a big downgrade for Eastern Europe, Balkans and Greece. 3 hours of snowy conditions and nothing else as there isn't any support for something more than this. These - 10 or - 16 don't provide any kind of precipitation as the cold travels through thousands of km of dry ground.

I've been doing it since November. Maybe that's why model fatigue kicks in. Anyway, good thing to read some posts of calmed experienced members. It is therapeutic.

It's a disaster. Simple as that. 0z at least kept the possibility of an Easterly after the first failure. Now we're back to late December 2018 model watching. Again looking at 300+ hours for a good blocking, a good ridge of the Azores high into the Atlantic etc. I'm clearly disappointed so sorry for being a bit pessimistic. I hope UKMO will not flip but I fear the worse.

This run is the worse case scenario. It's a nightmare. Even in FI I'm afraid that the main cold pool will be pushed east/southeast because of another NW ridge into us. And again it seems North Greece will have another snowfest.

As long as DP remains under zero and T at 3 or below it's going to be snow or at least sleet. I can't see though the DP remaining below zero.

It isn't just one run. Even if gfs overestimates the LP, we have in our side 2 other scenarios which lead eventually to an Easterly/Northeasterly. And as you correctly said it's not FI anymore.

The extremely deep LP (950) west of Iceland that gfs 6z "invented" is a big game/pattern changer. It will lead to a quite snowy Northwesterly initially and after this the High will settle in a good position mid Atlantic leading to a proper Easterly. Give me this run as it is and I'm happy. Best run this winter.

Authorities in Athens are closing schools even with 2cm snow and it's ridiculous imo. Athens is also surrounded by mountains so there are places 400m+ that have regularly a decent amount of snow. In North Greece where I'm from, snow amount right now is huge. Hometown is buried under almost 50cm of snow but that's quite usual there every winter. Ski resorts are also properly buried and it's going to get even better for them from tomorrow. Let's hope things will change here in UK after the 20th of this month and we will finally get our share.

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Most data is indeed automated but there's still human input.Here's a good read that it doesn't cover fully our questions but still provides some good info. https://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/pdf/10.1175/WAF-D-16-0179.1

We need more upgrades near the 192h mark. As it is, even in FI, it seems we will be moving into a cold/unsettled theme and vice versa. The High finally moves further WNW but the Canadian vortex comes into play waking up the Atlantic. To be honest that's fine for me right now after this mild nightmare we've been through.

It seems spot on for me. We're talking about 2m temp. Even if some areas, for example in Greece, reach - 12 in 850 it's all down to the surface cold transition from the North. Which apparently wasn't enough.

Yes but plenty of data is going in manually as it comes from external observations.

It's all about initialization data and the GIGO, "garbage in-garbage out". When you put more accurate data into the weather model then you have better initialization but much slower requiring much more time and computing power. Pumping in more data though doesn't necessarily mean more accurate data and things can go really wrong. That said, it's possible the festive period the initialization data lacks some observation data because the people that provide it are on holidays. Still if we don't know anyone that is working there we can only make some logical assumptions.

18z gfs is a massive upgrade. There are already signs of the Azores high moving west, the cold pool within a reasonable time frame extends to the west and it's still early as we might see more upgrades. Some posts about Greece and charts for the 14th Jan don't make any sense (I'm from Greece originally). No snow for Greece if these charts verify in FI.

Thank you! For some reason it is not working on mobile (Chrome/8.1). It worked on my desktop PC.

Is it possible to have some help regarding adding details like my location and changing avatar photo etc.? I can't find any option. Thank you.

Hi to all here and a happy new year. My favourite weather website for many years, just decided to join (and hopefully in the right time after a horrendous mild December). I have decent knowledge in analysing weather models and even though English is not my native language I'll try to be as useful as I can. Hopefully we will start seeing some better runs in the next 2-3 days. I expect the Azores high to gradually move into central Atlantic. I have no doubt that the cold pool will remain to our NE and intensify so let's hope the right heights will build for the so much needed cold here.