TillyS

It’s always going to turn around tomorrow. That’s part of the problem Anyway I’m off to the Scottish highlands in a fortnight and really hope I see some snow. I can’t believe the way it has disappeared over the last few days: https://www.ski-glenshee.co.uk/Webcam The outputs show vague signs of occasional meridional zonality in the north with wintriness over the Scottish mountains, with a possible northerly of sorts at some point, so I have fingers crossed.

And today’s 0z ECM? This is the problem with picking and choosing isolated output panels at long range. Yes, it may change. And yes there’s always potential in mid to late February. But right now the evidence remains sparse at long range, and we’re often relying on a series of teleconnections that may, but quite probably won’t, actually connect. The models are consistently pointing to high pressure to the south of the UK, no northern blocking, and (ergo) a predominantly mild south-west to west flow. This is the three-pointed unbreakable curse of winter 2023/4.

@TEITS Neither the control nor the operational get much below 0C the whole run, and the mean is barely -5C out in far flung FI. How is that ‘the greatest opportunity for a significant cold etc. etc.’ when we had genuinely spectacular charts 3 weeks ago? The ECM threw out some stellar charts, which it has to be said downgraded as they always seem to do. Perhaps you and others will be right about gut feeling and luck but in terms of the model outputs themselves, the evidence isn’t really supportive. For now. This may change, although upstream teleconnnections haven’t really proved much more productive so far this winter.

Come now folks let’s be realistic. The ECM is nothing spectacular. It’s broadly zonal but with a ‘possible’ vague hint of meridional zonality at Day 10. It is not opening the portal to a spectacular easterly or anything else drool-worthy. All this ‘it only takes a small tweak to change our fortunes’ is wishcasting. Nothing wrong with that, but the evidence in the model outputs remains pretty scanty. GFS / UKMO / ECM are all for now fairly poor pickings for UK cold. It may change but please let’s keep this as evidence-based as possible. Cool heads, eyes, and hearts needed lest we lead ourselves into grief.

Today’s UK date record for 29/1 is 15.5C which may fall, although we lose the far north Foehn effect because of colder weather there. Somewhere like Norfolk / Lincolnshire might take the record today. I still can’t quite believe 19.6C in January.

In for quite a jump in the CET after yesterday and today. Some balmy overnight maxima. The cold zone is holding off just above the CET area, so this probably balances out those two mornings last week when otherwise mild nights were brought lower by advancing fronts ahead of the 9am minima cut-off. I prefer not to move the goalposts with regards to the CET and climate change. If you keep shifting the sands, you lose the impact of what’s happening. Yes it’s shocking. That’s the point.

Incredible. It was bitterly cold in the highlands a week or so ago. Now this. That’s an incredible temperature for January.

@WYorksWeather The Met Office have hitherto used ‘Well above average’ for a month of >1C, or ‘Well below average’ for a month of <1C

I think the maximum date record has fallen today? @Roger J Smith Looks like the month may finish close to 5C, which would be 1.2C above the average or officially in the ‘well above average’ category. A month with one notably cold spell.

That fleeting pressure rise over Greenland, which is gone as quick as it arrives, is the wrong kind of high. You need greens, yellows and, best of all, deep orange. A proper solid block, which this isn’t: There’s little of cold consequence in the main models for the UK in the foreseeable future. That may change, and probably will, but there's no real evidence of it for now.

Nothing much of interest still in the models. A chance of a bit of a northerly later out in unreliable timeframe: But the problem remains a lack of northern blocking and a persistent Iberian High. Any talk of pattern changes and telling us something is about to happen in mid-February is really little more than understandable straw-clutching at this stage. Feet on the ground and eyes on the actual main models please.

Dire stuff:

A finish in the low to mid 5’s looks pretty certain now. 5.2C might be about the landing point. 24 x 4.0C = 96 7 x 9.4C = 66 = 162 / 31 = 5.2C which would be 1.4C above the mean.

The faintest of faint glimmers on the 0z ECM at T240. There’s a possible evolution from this of the high retrogressing into mid-Atlantic: Otherwise, exactly as @IDO says above.

3.9C to the 23rd. Hadley lists this as 0.0C above the average but I’m assuming that’s because of rounding. The January mean is 3.8C isn’t it? Met Office Hadley Centre Central England Temperature Data Download WWW.METOFFICE.GOV.UK

Temps are now dropping a notch under clearer skies. In fact, looks like it was warmer in the night than it will be in the day for some places. Not that unusual with frontal activity. 26th and 28th do indeed look like vulnerable records this week.

Whatever the polar vortex is or isn’t shown as doing, the outputs on all 3 x 0z runs all look very zonal for the UK to me. Minor variations on an Atlantic-dominated theme with the persistent heights to our south. I’ve spent previous winters chasing the polar vortex around and in my humble opinion it rarely delivers. No northerly blocking. High pressure to the south. = a recipe for ongoing mild, with predominantly westerly flow.

Double digit minima overnight

Big temperature rises this afternoon across central England. It is still 15C in some places at 19h00. Daily maxima are ‘open’ until 21h00 so I’m guessing the CET will see quite a hike.

@Midlands Ice Age Indeed and as mentioned previously by @Penrith Snow, the one teleconnection that is frequently left out of discussion here on the model outputs is climate change. I know that sounds horribly vague when we’re dealing with intricate scientific weather patterns, but it’s affecting so many of the upstream signals. Right down to the SST anomalies off the Azores, for example. Someone mentioned the other day that we seemed to have had in place the synoptics for last week's cold snap to be memorable. To turn into something that was seen by those older than I in the 1970’s and 1980’s. It really was looking juicy, with some truly eye-popping charts on the ECM for instance. Then it all went down the pan. Maybe every time we see a juicy looking chart that’s out beyond T168 we should then stop and ask ourselves, 'now how might a warming climate affect the outcome?' It was always knife edge in this country. Now it seems to fall the wrong side 19x out of 20.

I think the kind of euro high that’s showing up across various model runs at the moment i.e. stuck over northern France / Benelux / north Germany is the worst of all possible outcomes for UK winter cold. It leaves us in a predominantly south-west mild, moist, feed but as you say without any of the drama of storms or even northerlies. It’s the lack of northerly blocking and a resurgent jet pummelling across the north of the high and into Scandinavia that’s going to be especially disappointing for some. This sort of thing: These outputs are eating up prime winter time.

Yep up 0.3C over those 24 hours. The month will go above the January average with Wednesday’s update. Then it’s a relentless rise until the end by the look of it.

That's not ‘unlucky’ It's the prevailing wind direction for the UK. It’s also what keeps Britain looking green and pleasant, without having to worry about running out of water. It’s a mild climate for its latitude and in a world of ever-rising temperatures we can be grateful that for the most part we are avoiding the extremes, for now. People should perhaps either stop moaning about the plentiful rainfall or go and live somewhere else, if they can.

The issue with the hp in the south is that in the absence of any northern blocking, and a powerful flat northern jetstream, it tends to get squashed back onto the continent. A high residing over northern Germany is the worst of all possible outcomes for UK cold. Leaves us in moist south-westerlies, which is the predominant pattern now showing. As you say, the south-east ‘may’ catch a break from the high if it can hold on.

All 3 0z main models are zonal, with a Bartlett high. A very westerly and south-westerly Atlantic dominated pattern for now. And Scandinavia getting pummelled by mild winds, so any colder pools are being blown away. Here are the big 3 at T240-ish (ECM, GFS) and T168 (UKMO): Zonal, in a word.