chrisbell-nottheweatherman

Still not seeing anything other than cooler temperatures for lowland England.

Do we really do that well from north-westerliers. though?

I think the good part is that it may well be drier for a time, which is obviously needed in the north and north-west, but I doubt there'll be any lowland snow next week.

MOD thread hilarious - once again ludicrous ramping yesterday evening has proven inaccurate.

What we really need now is someone with access to the Glosea model and Met Office forecast thinking...

Not saying that at all, merely that some are, IMO, getting a touch carried-away. I'd love to see it verify, though.

MOD thread has gone OTT based on one ECM operational!

Well, this is the ramps thread!

CFS Birmingham temperatures suggesting a possible prolonged (i.e. more than 24 hours!) colder spell in early February, according to Weatherweb: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=js23RPwxuMQ

Personally feel you won't be too far away with that forecast for January - I'm going to do my calculations for December in a minute and soon will post it. Cheers and Happy New Year everyone! I'm not dissiilar - I quite enjoy daylight storms but am a bit twitchy at night. Summer 2015 didn't help - we had a storm around midnight with a bolt striking no more than 300 yards away, and we had the back door open at that time (trying to get the cat to come in) which only made it seem louder!

Eminently acheivable, IMO.

Isn't Shannon Entropy higher when there is more variability and uncertainty, thereby reducing the period during which we have confidence and bringing FI closer to the present?

I fear I didn't help matters by misunderstanding Ian's earlier post and therefore unintentionally misrepresenting it, but I did apologise and attempt to redress matters by explaining that my views on the next couple of months are unscientific and not to be taken as seriously as the more reasoned posts supported by model evidence from others. Just to add that, until recently, I very rarely posted in the Model thread as I felt I didn't understand the models well-enough. I have commented on the trend in the models recently as I found the metaphorical fog thinning a bit, at least to the point that I could see the broad patterns if not the finer details, but I'm going to cease that as of now. I'll read that thread, but not post in it.

Can we at least agree not to let GP be the next one driven-away from posting here?

Indeed, thanks Ian for presenting the Met Office's view.

I was just quoting Ian Fergusson, so I'd suggest that if you don't want to hear what the Glosea has to say you might want to add him to your ignore list as well as me. I don't have access to it other than reading Ian's posts, and wouldn't understand them even if I did.

Thing is, though, if we agree that our winters are less marked by cold and snowy conditions, we must surely ask what types of synoptics are replacing them? Let's face it, in winter, the UK tends to have one of the following set-ups at any one time: 1. Settled, anticyclonic weather (variable cloud amounts from full gloom to sunny and crisp) 2. Atlantic-driven mild, wet and windy 3. Cold, snowy weather from the quadrant between due north and due east What I'm arguing is that (3) is reducing in frequency, and is being more replaced by (2) than by anticyclonic, settled weather.

Indeed, as someone who trained in science (albeit another field entirely) I agree that Ian's posts are based on contemporary thinking, research evidence and full analysis, whereas mine are based on recollections of previous events, hunches and inference; there's no comparison in terms of trustworthiness. I just thought I'd (not entirely seriously) point-out that my combination of hunches and inference that lowland England would see no snow to speak of this winter has yet to be proven wrong, while a few much more learned member's predictions of easterlies and snow for much of eastern Britain had proven incorrect. Regarding Ian's comments, I was overstating a bit to say that he'd killed this winter, but when he inferred that an SSW event in February seemed the only realistic path to cold, it seemed not that far remote to me. Since then, he's posted again in the model thread, which has demonstrated to me that my initial understanding of the Glosea5 was inaccurate, so I'll happily retract that part of my post and apologise for any confusion or angst I might have caused.

Thanks for the warning Ian, and Happy New Year. I evidently misunderstood your earlier post, in which you said: I think a few of us thought that meant a return to the Euro high in much the same manner as December.

Indeed, and, as I've tried to make clear, I'm not an expert - it's more hunch and instinct than anything.

"Slightly duller"? I must live in a very unusual part of the region, then! We went days on end, over a weekl at least once, with no sun at all. Regarding your seasonal forecast, Matt, I don't think anyone could have predicted how mild December turned-out to be.

As I've said before, they were correct in terms of the prediction; their mistake was in how soon it would transpire.

I'm most disappointed in him, TBH - I used to think he was a damn good poster and I respected his views, but that was a ridiculous prediction.

He just killed the rest of winter; mind you, I did that a couple of weeks ago, got slated for it, and have yet to see any evidence that I was wrong...

That's why I trust your judgement!