Model Output Discussions 12z 03/05/2016

[knocker]

Today

Cloudy with patchy rain this morning in many areas tending to clear during the day with perhaps a chance of a few thundery showers in the E/SE later, Windy and quite cool in the north of Scotland.

The GFS this morning. A depression will traverse the UK tomorrow en route for Scandinavia bringing some patchy rain to most. This leaves the UK in a light NW showery airstream over the weekend into Monday with average temps. Then some brief ridging before the fronts from the next low tracking north east of Scotland arrive on Wednesday bringing some wet and windy weather, particularly in the north and west. Post the passing of the fronts again some brief ridging before the next system arrives on Friday although the far south may hang on the HP as this system tracks NE. Temps quite cool at the beginning of the week but warming as it progresses. After this the run is very much a dogs dinner and best filed under pending.

Edited July 27, 2016 by knocker

[coldcomfort]

19 hours ago, johnholmes said:

The heat wave just receding, for many parts of England and Wales, was not well predicted in my view regardless of which model type one used. I openly admit to seeing no sign of several days of heat, let alone storms, using the 6-10 day anomaly charts. An odd day here and there was certainly to be expected with the flow being predicted but not what happened. Also one poster suggested the probability of anywhere exceeding 30C was beginning to look unlikely.

So to have anyone suggesting that another spell of several days heat is unlikely before we descend into more autumnal weather is short sighted in my view.

Nothing is showing in the anomaly charts so for 14 days or so no more than an odd day here and there, and most likely in the SE 1/4 of the UK but who knows, I certainly do not pretend that I do.

Please don't think this is a dig at anyone it is not, it is just a post to suggest another spell of heat is certainly possible.

Whilst this is obviously correct (and I'm not sure anyone has suggested there will be no more heat this summer) the overnight runs again make pretty grim viewing if like me you are looking for a fine, warm and settled spell, with both the big two suggesting largely unsettled conditions will persist right across the first week of August at least. IF this verifies it will effectively leave us with under 4 weeks of official meteorological summer left, but if you take FI on GFS at face value we are pretty much down to less than 3 weeks...and it must be said the T+384hr hardly screams imminent return to summer thereafter either. 

Really struggling to see a way out of this deteriorating pattern atm, with a few transient ridges offering the best hope of any sunshine and warmth across the south and east in particular, but if I'm honest the outlook is an extremely disappointing one from a personal perspective.

[cheese]

15 minutes ago, coldcomfort said:

Whilst this is obviously correct (and I'm not sure anyone has suggested there will be no more heat this summer) the overnight runs again make pretty grim viewing if like me you are looking for a fine, warm and settled spell, with both the big two suggesting largely unsettled conditions will persist right across the first week of August at least. IF this verifies it will effectively leave us with under 4 weeks of official meteorological summer left, but if you take FI on GFS at face value we are pretty much down to less than 3 weeks...and it must be said the T+384hr hardly screams imminent return to summer thereafter either. 

Really struggling to see a way out of this deteriorating pattern atm, with a few transient ridges offering the best hope of any sunshine and warmth across the south and east in particular, but if I'm honest the outlook is an extremely disappointing one from a personal perspective.

Start of July was poor - thought it would end up cooler than average. Now it looks like July will be warmer than average - I don't think many people were expecting that.

Seriously, things can and do change quickly. 

Anyway, looking at the GFS this morning, looks okay to me - a poor/cool few days coming up though but beyond that, conditions look okay, perhaps very warm on some days.

Edited July 27, 2016 by cheese

[rain_shadow]

23 minutes ago, coldcomfort said:

Whilst this is obviously correct (and I'm not sure anyone has suggested there will be no more heat this summer) the overnight runs again make pretty grim viewing if like me you are looking for a fine, warm and settled spell, with both the big two suggesting largely unsettled conditions will persist right across the first week of August at least. IF this verifies it will effectively leave us with under 4 weeks of official meteorological summer left, but if you take FI on GFS at face value we are pretty much down to less than 3 weeks...and it must be said the T+384hr hardly screams imminent return to summer thereafter either. 

Really struggling to see a way out of this deteriorating pattern atm, with a few transient ridges offering the best hope of any sunshine and warmth across the south and east in particular, but if I'm honest the outlook is an extremely disappointing one from a personal perspective.

Fortunately the end of meteorological Summer is nothing to do with the warmth/heatwaves which can happen during Sept and even Oct, therefore in my opinion no point to bury potential warm and settled spells just yet. It won't be Winter on the 1st of Sept. Things can change whatever the models are showing right now.

Edited July 27, 2016 by rain_shadow

[knocker]

The ecm not dissimilar to the GFS. A cool showery regime over the weekend in the light NW giving way to interludes of sunshine and rain in this mobile pattern until the end of the run. Quite a wet day on Wednesday if anywhere near right. All in all quite perturbing

Edited July 27, 2016 by knocker

[Frosty.]

It looks like normal summer weather to me, some rain, some sunshine and temps varying from cooler / average / slightly above..warmest potential in the s / se and coolest in the n / nw which is par for the course.

[coldcomfort]

10 minutes ago, knocker said:

The ecm not dissimilar to the GFS. A cool showery regime over the weekend in the light NW giving way to interludes of sunshine and rain in this mobile pattern until the end of the run. Quite a wet day on Wednesday if anywhere near right. All in all quite perturbing

Not sure we can take the little feature to the SW completely out of play for the weekend yet either, especially across your neck of the woods and perhaps the S in general. Once into the kind of flow predicted by Fri the models really struggle to handle this kind of thing.....frankly I'm perturbed too!

[Catacol]

For all the negative talk - we havent seen more than a drop of rain here in many weeks. Ground rock hard, everything turning brown.... a bit cloudy perhaps but temperatures not too bad at all. So far a summer to enjoy for those that like summer. Just shows how localised and varied the weather on this tiny little island can be.

[B87]

20 minutes ago, Karl. said:

It looks like normal summer weather to me, some rain, some sunshine and temps varying from cooler / average / slightly above..warmest potential in the s / se and coolest in the n / nw which is par for the course.

June wasn't normal at all, and July has been normal apart from sunshine.

[coldcomfort]

15 minutes ago, Catacol said:

For all the negative talk - we havent seen more than a drop of rain here in many weeks. Ground rock hard, everything turning brown.... a bit cloudy perhaps but temperatures not too bad at all. So far a summer to enjoy for those that like summer. Just shows how localised and varied the weather on this tiny little island can be.

We are not talking about the past though, we are discussing the future. Moreover there is nothing negative about what is being said, we are simply commenting on what the models show going forward which is the purpose of this thread...there are others available in which to discuss past weather.

[stodge]

Morning all

Plenty of people about this morning it seems but the overall sentiment is one with which I have to agree. The morning's 00Z OP output is varied and not without some hope for the south in particular:

Actually not a bad chart at all - settled and warm for the south and not bad away from the far north.

ECM much less inspiring at the same time:

Rain or showers for many.

GEM at the same time:

Elements of splitting the difference here. To be fair, not a bad chart for the south with the weak ridge but not so clever further north.

This morning's 00Z OP outputs show no signal at all for prolonged settled conditions or any import of heat from the south. That will please some and not others but as we head into August, that's how it looks but more runs are needed..

[Frosty.]

The GEFS 00z mean again shows an improvement across the south next week with a n / s split... drier, brighter and warmer weather with temps into the mid 20s c in the south but cooler and more changeable / unsettled further north but looking further into august shows a stronger Azores ridge with increasingly settled and warmer weather with temps widely into the mid 20s c across England and wales, low 20s further north...I'm cautiously optimistic that August will bring a good spell of summery weather.

[weirpig]

4 minutes ago, Karl. said:

The GEFS 00z mean again shows an improvement across the south next week with a n / s split... drier, brighter and warmer weather with temps into the mid 20s c in the south but cooler and more changeable / unsettled further north but looking further into august shows a stronger Azores ridge with increasingly settled and warmer weather with temps widely into the mid 20s c across England and wales, low 20s further north...I'm cautiously optimistic that August will bring a good spell of summery weather.

Yep  Frosty  looks like a typical summer affair in the uk    a few cool days ahead then back to a quite warm theme as we progress through  August  could be worse.

[Frosty.]

1 minute ago, weirpig said:

Yep  Frosty  looks like a typical summer affair in the uk    a few cool days ahead then back to a quite warm theme as we progress through  August  could be worse.

Fully agree

[knocker]

3 minutes ago, weirpig said:

Yep  Frosty  looks like a typical summer affair in the uk    a few cool days ahead then back to a quite warm theme as we progress through  August  could be worse.

Just out of interest what are you basing your "quite warm theme as we progress through  August" on? Although of course taking into account "quite warm" being open to various interpretations.

[Frosty.]

3 minutes ago, knocker said:

Just out of interest what are you basing your "quite warm theme as we progress through  August" on? Although of course taking into account "quite warm" being open to various interpretations.

I will tell you what he's basing it on, he was replying to my GEFS 00z mean charts which show increasing Azores high influence as we go further into August with mid 20s celsius or a tad higher for England and Wales. It's a trend the GEFS has shown for the last few days!

[weirpig]

12 minutes ago, Karl. said:

I will tell you what he's basing it on, he was replying to my GEFS 00z mean charts which show increasing Azores high influence as we go further into August with mid 20s celsius or a tad higher for England and Wales. It's a trend the GEFS has shown for the last few days!

beat me to it.   Yes the mean does show a influence of the azores high as we enter August  although could well change   but based on that one run  its looking ok  however if your after wall to wall sunshine and excessive temps  then at the moment it dosent look to promising 

[carinthian]

4 minutes ago, weirpig said:

beat me to it.   Yes the mean does show a influence of the azores high as we enter August  although could well change   but based on that one run  its looking ok  however if your after wall to wall sunshine and excessive temps  then at the moment it dosent look to promising 

Yes its a struggle this summer. Last year the summer tropical high pressure belt was very strong and stagnant across much of mainland Europe from Iberia with a strong axis through the central regions. This year only temporarily in residency and easily eroded by a active lower latitude jet. There has been low air pressure differences for much of this summer across the Alps ,hence with lots of convection, ripe for a summer of intense electrical storm actively. Good for weather watching .

 C

[Frosty.]

12 minutes ago, weirpig said:

beat me to it.   Yes the mean does show a influence of the azores high as we enter August  although could well change   but based on that one run  its looking ok  however if your after wall to wall sunshine and excessive temps  then at the moment it dosent look to promising 

Agreed, I'm cautiously optimistic about August, there are some very nice gefs perturbations and I find it encouraging that there is support for some decent summer weather next month.

[knocker]

19 minutes ago, weirpig said:

beat me to it.   Yes the mean does show a influence of the azores high as we enter August  although could well change   but based on that one run  its looking ok  however if your after wall to wall sunshine and excessive temps  then at the moment it dosent look to promising 

I was actually seeking clarification of "as we progress through August" and I can see now it means the slightly above average temps on the mean GEFS from the 5th to the 12th. Okay. As a matter of interest the 00z EPS has temps slightly below average from the 6th to the 11th.

Edited July 27, 2016 by knocker

[coldcomfort]

You have to admit though any change is a long way off on the charts you posted, in fact it's the 6th of Aug before we see heights rise to any great degree, even across the S. Given that is a week Saturday a huge amount of caution should be applied to eventual evolution, indeed were the next 10 days looking warm and settled but a change to cooler, unsettled conditions was flagged for the 6th of Aug then......well we all know how that potential change would be viewed at that range. Same rules need to apply imo.

[MP-R]

Just a general comment about the models as I'm on my phone on holiday. It seems, especially the GFS, that summery weather is picked up way in advance, then dropped with more runs, only to return much nearer the time. Such happened with last weeks heatwave which I remember appearing way out in FI on about the 7th July.

I reckon over time the Azores high will be shown to have more presence. The general westerly pattern shown across the board isn't a bad one to be in if it could just happen 100-200 miles further north. It wouldn't take much for an Iberian low to nudge north propping up an Azores break off and bingo! This has been hinted at a few times on the GFS. As ever, watch this space!

[Frosty.]

17 minutes ago, coldcomfort said:

You have to admit though any change is a long way off on the charts you posted, in fact it's the 6th of Aug before we see heights rise to any great degree, even across the S. Given that is a week Saturday a huge amount of caution should be applied to eventual evolution, indeed were the next 10 days looking warm and settled but a change to cooler, unsettled conditions was flagged for the 6th of Aug then......well we all know how that potential change would be viewed at that range. Same rules need to apply imo.

Agreed but there is a positive trend from the GEFS mean which started several days ago for increasing Azores high influence and warmth as we go further into August, yes it's all very Fi but it gives hope at least.

[johnholmes]

3 hours ago, coldcomfort said:

Whilst this is obviously correct (and I'm not sure anyone has suggested there will be no more heat this summer) the overnight runs again make pretty grim viewing if like me you are looking for a fine, warm and settled spell, with both the big two suggesting largely unsettled conditions will persist right across the first week of August at least. IF this verifies it will effectively leave us with under 4 weeks of official meteorological summer left, but if you take FI on GFS at face value we are pretty much down to less than 3 weeks...and it must be said the T+384hr hardly screams imminent return to summer thereafter either. 

Really struggling to see a way out of this deteriorating pattern atm, with a few transient ridges offering the best hope of any sunshine and warmth across the south and east in particular, but if I'm honest the outlook is an extremely disappointing one from a personal perspective.

The anomaly charts show the first SLIGHT signal for 500mb height rises S and SW of the UK. Nothing to indicate yet any major pattern change but who knows? Away now until next Tuesday so be interesting to see if these are increased or dropped!

http://www.cpc.noaa.gov/products/predictions/610day/500mb.php

http://mp1.met.psu.edu/~fxg1/ECMWF_0z/hgtcomp.html

So enjoy the weather whatever turns up in the next few days.

[Frosty.]

9 minutes ago, johnholmes said:

The anomaly charts show the first SLIGHT signal for 500mb height rises S and SW of the UK

That's encouraging news John...I don't think we have seen the last of the summery weather. :- )