The Winter emotions and moaning thread

[Cecil Hogmanay Melchett]

well as my profile suggests i had bad vibes about this winter back in november and nothing has changed that,la nina is a nono for me,id rather have a weak el nino or neutral enso.

I didnt want to write this in the model thread as it will upset people but while i retain some hope for feb my feeling is jan is going to go broadly speaking the way of dec with little or no snowfall for most of the uk.

week 1 id plump for generally wet and windy

week 2 azroes high settles things down to average and mainly dry

week 3 and 4 a return to the unsettled theme as the high gets shunted away into southern europe.

Now,obviously i hope im very very wrong with this but this reflects my thoughts at the moment and if i had gone for cold second half of jan id be having serious doubts.

oh and before i forget,members calling other members and telling them they die by the sword when in fact they had called it spot on havent even bothered to hold their hands up and apologize is very poor form,had to get that off my chest to!!!!

[Costa Del Fal]

Here will easily surpass a year without lying snow on 7th January now. Snow looking like a real struggle to get thus far. Tbh Id laugh if it didnt snow for the rest of the winter as then it would be just 5 minutes snowfall I saw mid December! http://hw.nwstatic.co.uk/forum/public/style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/laugh.png Roll on Summer I say!

[Gord]

I'll continue to approach this winter as I approach every winter. I take it one week at a time. I look at the weekend for the situation for the next 7 days, look at a few weekly forecasts too and then follow how events unfold throughout the week. I do have a peek further ahead but try not to get caught up in it unless something significant appears. One example is right now actually...been having a gander at next Tuesday with some interest over the last couple of days..although strictly that is now well within 7 days so I'm not really looking that far ahead!

Edited December 31, 2011 by Gord

[feb1991blizzard]

well as my profile suggests i had bad vibes about this winter back in november and nothing has changed that,la nina is a nono for me,id rather have a weak el nino or neutral enso.

I didnt want to write this in the model thread as it will upset people but while i retain some hope for feb my feeling is jan is going to go broadly speaking the way of dec with little or no snowfall for most of the uk.

week 1 id plump for generally wet and windy

week 2 azroes high settles things down to average and mainly dry

week 3 and 4 a return to the unsettled theme as the high gets shunted away into southern europe.

Now,obviously i hope im very very wrong with this but this reflects my thoughts at the moment and if i had gone for cold second half of jan id be having serious doubts.

oh and before i forget,members calling other members and telling them they die by the sword when in fact they had called it spot on havent even bothered to hold their hands up and apologize is very poor form,had to get that off my chest to!!!!

I have to say i am properly confused about the winter now, i do have doubts that we will get a potent cold snap and if you look back recently there are not many la nina stonkers, in fact the last strong enso signal was el nino in 2009/2010 and we had a stonker, however, even if the 80s analogues fail to come off, then there have been lots of winters where zonal starts gave way to decent shots in feb/ early march from the North or the east, my biggest fear is that 30 dayer mentioning a mid latt high will be just that and not a prelude to a scandi high for feb although i think we should wait a couple of weeks until we see what the strat is doing.

[Snowy Easterly]

i haven't seen any snow since it melted on the 27th december last year, i'll probably typically get some slushy stuff in march or april though,

[feb1991blizzard]

i haven't seen any snow since it melted on the 27th december last year, i'll probably typically get some slushy stuff in march or april though,

To be fair the last day of snow for me last winter was 7th of jan, so just in case people down south think its all good up North, it wasnt good in jan or feb last year here.

[SnowObsessor90]

To be fair the last day of snow for me last winter was 7th of jan

Even that in itself wasn't very good , it snowed, settled and then was washed away all in one fell swoop. Edited December 31, 2011 by Anonymous21

[Aaron]

To be fair the last day of snow for me last winter was 7th of jan, so just in case people down south think its all good up North, it wasnt good in jan or feb last year here.

East of the Pennines, in West/South Yorkshire we did pretty well with snow compared to virtually everywhere in England with two good snowfalls, one in January (7th) and one in February (19th). Both had around 7cms of snow here with over 10cms in the higher parts of Leeds and Sheffield. Just lucky I guess? Edited December 31, 2011 by Aaron

[leicsnow]

Having seen the large amount of moaning over on the model thread, I thought I'd use this post to put this thread in page 1 to remind others of it and it's purpose! http://hw.nwstatic.co.uk/forum/public/style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/laugh.png

Anyway, the model outputs today has suppressed people's faith including mine, in contrast to yesterday when faith was increased. So far this winter, pattern change has been speculated to occur in mid December, after Christmas, after New Year, now mid January and soon this will be late January followed by our last hope for sustained cold, February.

Edited January 3, 2012 by Tellow

[damianslaw]

Having seen the large amount of moaning over on the model thread, I thought I'd use this post to put this thread in page 1 to remind others of it and it's purpose! http://hw.nwstatic.co.uk/forum/public/style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/laugh.png

Anyway, the model outputs today has suppressed people's faith including mine, in contrast to yesterday when faith was increased. So far this winter, pattern change has been speculated to occur in mid December, after Christmas, after New Year, now mid January and soon this will be late January followed by our last hope for sustained cold, February.

The pattern change is still on course but the models won't pick up on it until the weekend at the earlies - so keep the faith!

[leicsnow]

It seems people just don't know what to think about this winter anyone... including me!

Edited January 4, 2012 by Tellow

[Eugene]

Ths winter is turning into one of the most depressing, i find it quite sad people straw clutching for small signs of a change when there isnt any, its the same flat zonal pattern with HP close enough to the south to stop any exciting weather with cloudy mild conditions prevailing, i really cant see any hope at all for a decent severe cold snap, we havent had proper arctic air yet, this modified PM rubbish just doesnt cut it im afraid, its too breezy for any decent frosts too even when you get PM air, its amazing there is no HP spells on the horizon and we havent had any for ages and ages even the late september heat was HP over france and not here, its beyond a joke and i dont hold out much hope for next winter either as mild winters come in pairs and nowadays that is about 5 pairs in a row

Mild winters are never fun, we get mild weather almost 9 months of the year so why would anyone want it every single month, i find as i get older i hate mild winters even more not the reverse.

Edited January 4, 2012 by Eugene

[sundog]

Only 2 air frosts so far this winter,lowest temp so far -1.3c ,dire sums it up. No sign of anything too interesting in the near future either.

But im trying ,desperatly trying to be hopefull for the second half of the winter.

[Cecil Hogmanay Melchett]

Looks like describing 12z GFS what it is to a T belongs in here now.

+NAO from start to finish!!

[Snowy Easterly]

Who wants to bet that we will have a super strong Greenland high in june with strong north easterly winds. and a deep negative AO and NAO

Edited January 4, 2012 by Snowy Easterly

[sundog]

Who wants to bet that we will have a super strong Greenland high in june with strong north easterly winds. and a deep negative AO and NAO

Would not be surprised if it happened LOL.

I would not be surprised if we will get great charts in march and april all too little too late,if that were to happen i wont know whether to laugh or cry.

[MP-R]

My problem with this winter is how it's been more autumnal than autumn was! Though we seem to have a winter like this every 5-6ish years - 2011/2012, 2006/2007, 1999/2000, 1994/1995 etc. Perhaps it was our turn to have a mild winter this season.

[damianslaw]

My problem with this winter is how it's been more autumnal than autumn was! Though we seem to have a winter like this every 5-6ish years - 2011/2012, 2006/2007, 1999/2000, 1994/1995 etc. Perhaps it was our turn to have a mild winter this season.

Your 5-6 year pattern is quite interesting the next on the list would be 88/89 or 89/90 certainly two very mild winters, and prior to these it would be 82/83 or 83/84 - mmm the pattern doesn't quite hold but both winters contained one notable mild month i.e. Jan 83 and Dec 83, going further back next on the list would be 76/77 or 77/78 pattern firmly broken.

The weather doesn't do patterns though and I think the second half of this winter will be a very different beast.

[Terminal Moraine]

I could easily live with mild winters if every one was as volatile as January has been so far, unfortunately mild too often equates to mediocre and un-interesting weather. Up to now January reminds me of 1990 and if there's to be no significant cold then I hope it continues in the same vein rather than lapsing into a more anticyclonic pattern which is neither mild nor cold and not wet and windy either.

[Aaron]

I could easily live with mild winters if every one was as volatile as January has been so far, unfortunately mild too often equates to mediocre and un-interesting weather. Up to now January reminds me of 1990 and if there's to be no significant cold then I hope it continues in the same vein rather than lapsing into a more anticyclonic pattern which is neither mild nor cold and not wet and windy either.

I'm with you TM, I could live with a mild winter if it's windy and very wet.. like January 2008 and January 2007.. February 1990 was a wild month with 99mph in Leeds city centre

We've gotten 32.2mm of rainfall and severe gales so far this year.. if we can get this for the rest of January then I will not be complaining.

Edited January 5, 2012 by Aaron

[La Bise]

Can't wait for this unbearable weather to calm down a little, it might great fun whilst sitting on your backside looking at a computer screen showing charts but it does not particularly make it entertaining up the hills...

[Aaron]

That's why you do NOT go walking on the hills when it's blowing a gale.. it's actually dangerous!

[Thundery wintry showers]

I didn't mind January 2007 too much in Tyneside either- it was very mild, but also a very eventful month (frequent changes of weather, frequent gales, and much above average sunshine in that area of the country). For similar reasons I didn't mind the mild winters of 1994/95, 1998/99 and 1999/2000 (although of course I would have preferred more in the way of wintry spells in each case). The worst type of mild weather for me is of the cloudy anticyclonic variety, followed by the type with persistent south-westerlies, high pressure to the S/SE and belts of drizzle interspersed with dry weather and broken stratocumulus.

I can, though, appreciate that such a wild and windy pattern is rather more difficult to deal with when going for walks on high ground in western Britain.

[johnholmes]

That's why you do NOT go walking on the hills when it's blowing a gale.. it's actually dangerous!

quite right, I do sometimes wonder how folk can ignore either warnings posted at the valley bottom or ignoring the advice of the local warden responsible for the hills in that area. Next thing is the mountain rescue and probably the RAF are called out.

[La Bise]

If you only go out in the hills in settled weather living in the UK, you won't see much of them...I can recommend it to fans of extreme weather of the sedentary type, being blown off your feet by 70mp gusts when walking a (thankfully wide enough) mountain ridge does certainly bring home the notion of how precarious life can be.