len

Sorry, I've been wondering for weeks....What is an MMW please?

Unfortunately the models seem to be settling on a very iffy trajectory for the Low descending from the North. Somehow the High gets away NW, without us ever getting into the Arctic shot! It's very reminiscent of post Christmas. As the Low descends over us it keeps the real cold shot out in the Atlantic. North West will be best if this happens, and Western Ireland as well, which will be a replay for them to. I know the Toppler-Northerly usually deflects East at the last moment, but this is not the same scenario and indeed it played out as advertised last time. Only hope is some teleconnections referred to on the Tech Thread that don't support this rapid retrogression

The sun enhances land convection only because it rapidly raises the temperature of surfaces. This effect is much, much less over water, and even more reduced over open, moving wind-mixed water

The solar-driven-inland snow-showers are nice, but are equally quickly melted & evaporated by the sun except for when they accur towards sunset. Often see this late Feb/March

Several have commented on the now very cold North Sea helping to reduce warming modification. But it also reduces the convective potential by reducing moisture & energy transfer into the air mass. But convection is also driven by cold uppers of course which don't look too terrible although not Snowmaggedon. But as several have pointed out, my own experience is that a lot of snowfalls come from minor developments that occur at short notice, whereas many potential blizzards disappear after agonising waits.

In years of watching this thread I've never seen NOGAPS mentioned so often on one page! I wonder?.....Is it, by any chance, showing something people want to see???? Let's try to be consistent & objective.

It looks as if the agonising over a possible Easterly flow will continue. But it might not end there. The deep cold, that had crawled across Poland into Germany last week, has been thoroughly booted back far far away into deepest Russia. http://www.uni-koeln.de/math-nat-fak/geomet/meteo/winfos/euisoTTPPWW.gif Even if we get the Southeasterly flow being touted it may not be the end of the waiting??

Don't understand this & other similar posts. I've been watching quietly every day. It was ECM who had everyone going ape the other day with its absolutely mythic Easterlies. And when GFS did(patchily)show an Easterly, ECM usually had a better one. GFS was reluctant then hesitant about it; Only UKMO has held consistent. Remember, the mild run is usually the right run.

I don't know why some on here are talking about real cold arriving. I've been watching it. (surface cold even). It's taken two days to get from East Poland to Cental Poland http://www.uni-koeln.de/math-nat-fak/geomet/meteo/winfos/euisoTTPPWW.gif Even if it was programed to head this way (which it isn't) it would take another twelve days to get here at this rate!

Perhaps one of our more expert contributors could clarify something that was touched on a year or so ago? I understood then, that the AO / NAO charts were just extractions from the models. They did not represent different sources/data/inputs. They are just a different way of looking at the same model outputs/data, but with reference to specific pressure distributions (Arctic/Iceland/Azores). Many on here talk of them as if they are something separate, that might show something as yet hidden from the models. Can someone qualified please clarify? Len

AAt T160 now, and this more favourable for cold run, looks as if the Vortex could be split by the rising heights between the GIN sea & Baffin

I've looked at this many times http://www.wetterzentrale.de/topkarten/fsreaeur.html Between the 20th Dec & Boxing Day 1962. There was a very deep vortex over Baffin which split and sent a centre over to NW Russia. This allowed the rapidly developing East-Euro High to duck under the Eastward travelling vortex and transfer quickly to Greenland, they passed like two slippery blobs.It makes interesting watching. While this kind of this is possible, that does not mean it will, or even can, happen on any occasion. I rely on GP, Brickfielder, Chionomaniac et al to tell me if it could or should happen. Presumably in the final days of 62 there were compelling physical forces and/or teleconnections that made it happen

Must say I don't get all this excitement about a Siberian High. It's called a "Siberian" High because that's where it lives. It's there virtually all of most winters (and people are always pinning hopes on them). But there is always cold to our North in the Arctic (and it gets here a lot quicker when it decides to come). And yes the Siberian pressure is very often over 1050. The looming situation is worrying because it is all to threatening of a very familiar , and very stable, pattern. Large Siberian High + South Greenland PV. (It's not quite the usual yet) Perhaps there will be an Easterly, but the ones that limp here over weeks usually land up very lame affairs and just because it's there, don't mean squat that it's headed this way. Same goes for the split jet. Personally I believe we've had these very rare oldtime synoptics of late precisely because at last we had a Southerly unitary jet. Bifurcated jets to our West have plagued us with dreary raw faux cold & returning TM air in recent winters and to our East they send winter into Greece and the Levant with tastes of faux cold for us

Yes it looks like the models have notched another click of the ratchet back towards our more familiar winter pattern today. As this trend of Atlantic awakening has been emerging, it looks like the long overdue solar cycle has been finally kicking off. http://www.solen.info/solar/ Any coincidence???? Len

Yes indeed. The ECM has completely flipped to follow the GFS suit this morning;..... just as it did last week when the GFS was the first to show the Atlantic spoiling things. Len

In the breakdown situations that are beginning to show in the models (Now that ECM has caught up with GFS)we always have lots of posts about how the "embedded" cold with resist (and perhaps even shrug off) these attacks. Of course there is some obvious truth in this phenomenom, but I don't think it should be overated or become a straw to clutch at. Have you ever thought that, if cold is so difficult to shift, we would never successfully get those WAA southerlies into Greenland that cause the height rises that create Greenie Highs. You can't have it both ways, when we get an Arctic blast it's because the cold is being booted out somewhere else. When the Jet (or the bigger synoptic picture) says shift, the cold shifts. It may take 24 or 48 hours longer than computers say, but don't create false hopes. Len

Indeed GFS was showing an Atlantic attack yesterday,....which brought the usual derision, because ECM showed no such thing. But today, lo & behold, ECM has moved towards this idea of GFS's. I've a feeling I've been here before. My personal memory is that in these situations GFS is first to pick up the idea & ECM follows suit. But GFS seems to be the model people love to hate? But I've seen nothing from GP, Brickfielder, Chionomaniac,et al. in recent days? Are they out sledging? I would love to hear what their views are on GFS's idea??? Len

Question for anyone more technical. There is a quarant of the UK, SE of a line from The Wash to Leicester to Southampton which the precipitation seems unable to cross without dying. Anyone know why? And, as I live just East of this "snowshield" , is it going to change? Len

Craigers said on last page of locked thread............. "GEM is my dream of a chart! which would be amazing for Yorkshire full stop! and with Europe being so cold already, it will deliver with more of a punch than of past years!!!" Trouble is the deep cold has been shunted out of most of Europe.... http://www.uni-koeln.de/math-nat-fak/geomet/meteo/winfos/euisoTTPPWW.gif 6:00 am shows most of Europe marginal with barely a frost. Any dry cold to help snow Tues/Wed has to come from the North or from Scandi Len

Arn't you confusing "dew points" with "wet bulbs". Snow requires a wet bulb of zero not a dew point of zero. With higher humidities in warm sectors wet bulbs are higher...hence more marginal for snow Len

Seems totally reasonable to me? Why the jibe? It certainly looks the best event (on the models at least & if it pans out) in the post '87 period of warmer winters. Can't remember when I saw such High latitude blocking, Jet undercutting, Heights over Greenland ...IN DECEMBER except for 62 of course. And I've been watching the weather since 1958. Don't tell me there's no "christmas pudding" of warmer winters. It is my direct experience. You can convince anybody to anything if it is remote from there experience, but it is a shame that so many can be so often convinced of what is contrary to their experience. Not me though! And if we experience a cooling off, or even an Ice Age, let's see who will be first to acknowledge it (It is definitely not here yet) instead of prejudging peoples reactions to hypothetical scenarios. What is the motive for that? Len

Paul I don't have Win98, I have Win98SE which was only first released in May 1999. Microsoft ended support less than 7 years from first intro in July 2006. If you think that is reasonable I would have to disagree. ME is only Win98SE messed-up and does not count. I daresay any ME users may be experiencing the difficulties I am. The premature ending of support of Win98SE, and the botch of ME, was part of the arm-twisting to buy XP. There are 3 XP pro machine in this house, and two more of my employers, all of which I maintain.....and I don't like it at all. I much prefer 98SE. Now it is theoretically possible some new Web Applications might require XP (or IE7), but should this site require it? That is the question. I suspect that many such new applications just require XP because it's there and that's what the software -designers use. How many such applications would be impossible without XP were it not there? Not many I would guess myself? Anyway Paul, you did answer the question I had posed above about whether pre-XP-OS-system users were knowingly excluded. Apparently not. I wonder, if you had realised, would you have gone back to the software vendors and asked them if the site could be more inclusive? But in fact I did raise this on the thread discussing these changes before the event and I was informed that only minor bells and whistles would be beyond the capacity of users such as myself. Now I find I cannot post from my machine, page navigation is slow and sticky, and it freezes IE(6)regularly. Perhaps the vendors should be contacted as this is not operating as intended??? Len

Definitely not ignoring you Paul! When I replied that I "maintained my PC meticulously" I meant that I did those clean-outs (and much more) regularly. I understand your point about the (seeming) inevitability of technological change. But it's a question of pace. What is reasonable? What is its purpose? Who gains? I think the digital switchover analogy poor because it can be remedied by a very cheap box. (I still think it's a fraud in quality....bandwidth sacrificed from resolution to more shopping channels) The advance of PC hardware seems to be driven by gaming enthusiasts, but, like many PC users, PC games leave me cold. The frequency of new OS's from MS seems to be a cynical abuse by a quasi-monopoly to extort. My PC is not yet nine years old. It was bought with win98SE which many experts still claim to be in a sense "the best OS from MS". (Even the vendors warned me off the ME system then extant). I personally think it a bad thing to send my PC to landfill because of microsoft's need to maximise profits with monopoly abuse. But for the complicity of third-party Websites with MS, I and many other simple-surfers, could use their PCs for many years. But I know I may be in a minority feeling this way. That does not make me wrong. I will be forced to buy a new PC. I have 4 here and parts from several others. I could make them work perfectly adequately but for the OS issue. But I will not buy Vista, with Windows 7 imminent. I dont know if your 0.29% figure for Win98 users includes Win98SE & ME users. But even if we made up one per cent I guess that's pretty unimportant compared to the new features? Len (Posted from wife's XP machine)

Look, take this as an example……………. I couldn’t view John Holmes’s video forecast, because, as the site boasts, “It uses the latest technology”. This means it requires the latest Adobe Flash Player, which in turn demands XP/Vista. However the player opens and I can watch the Bank-of-Santander ad that runs before John Holmes!!! Now obviously commercial users don’t want to exclude pre-XP web-surfers, even though they have huge resources to use afford the “latest technology”. It would be foolish of any advertiser to exclude viewers. What I can’t work out is why Netweather needed to add “functions” that that excludes viewers? Why doesn’t Netweather want as wide a public as a commercial Website? I would love to know if those choosing the new Website system consciously knew in advance that the new website would be restrictive/exclusive in this way? Or did they not ask the right questions of the Vendors? If it was deliberate, what marvelous “functions” were worth losing viewers/contributors. I never missed any such functions before. I am a weather-geek perhaps. That does not also make me a Computer-geek. We shouldn’t have to be both to use the site fully. I understand that those with XP/Vista just arn't bothered by this. But if MS stop support for XP/Vista next year, will you feel like giving MS a fortune to buy Windows 3 or whatever it will be? We shouldn't be supporting this scam. Len (Posted from my wife's XP machine)

Hi I have had no other probs with other sites and my PC is meticulously maintained. But I think I may have found the cause. IT WOULD APPEAR THIS SITE NOW DEMANDS XP/Vista!!!!!! I am posting this from my wife's PC, as indeed I had to post the starter post (She has an XP PC). From my Win98SE machine I can only navigate the new site (stickily), but not post. I think this is really poor. I even queried this on the new-site discussion thread and was told that only certain new bells and whistles would be exclusive to XP/Vista users. It's a real shame; I have to virtually give up this site, or give Microsoft a small fortune to buy a newer buggy system? No other website I have encountered requires XP just to navigate and post. Why reserve this site for those who can afford new operating systems? Len