Winter 2023/24 - Discussions & Forecasts

[SqueakheartLW]

19 minutes ago, RainAllNight said:

These were (and for us public still are) the latest EC46 anomalies for the week 6-13 Nov at the time they wrote that forecast (with the range of that MetO forecast having been out to 15 Nov when it was first published yesterday; the wording has been kept today) - you can see how they might have got the impression that there could be easterlies:

The most important one for me for our SSW chances is all those indications of above average heights over Scandi and the Urals region. May they stick around there for a while even if we pay the price ourselves with troughs getting stuck around the UK and several weeks of wet weather.

[Ricardo23]

[Relativistic]

 

50 minutes ago, Ricardo23 said:

This is essentially just the 'warm September means a mild winter' idea being peddled again.

[Weather-history]

13 hours ago, Ricardo23 said:

I wouldn't call winter 1961-62,  mild overall.  With a CET of 3.6°C? 

December 1961 was  cold 

Edited October 20, 2023 by Weather-history

[Jacob]

CFS is on drugs

[reef]

7 hours ago, Weather-history said:

I wouldn't call winter 1961-62,  mild overall.  With a CET of 3.6°C? 

December 1961 was  cold 

None of the winters on that list have a CET average of more than 5.4C. That's only 0.6C above the current 1991-2020 average.

As you say, some of those are in the 3-4C range aswell.

Basically it tells us nothing.

[Ricardo23]

11 hours ago, Weather-history said:

I wouldn't call winter 1961-62,  mild overall.  With a CET of 3.6°C? 

December 1961 was  cold 

December was cold but taken from this site history of Winters its Average   1961-62: The year proceeding the 'big' one. Snow in the Christmas week, widespread with London and the South East seeing 6 inches (very similar to last year). Early January in the Midlands saw 14 inches of snow. Snow in March also, especially Scotland, but 10 inches recorded in Jersey! A(verage.)

[Ricardo23]

3 hours ago, reef said:

None of the winters on that list have a CET average of more than 5.4C. That's only 0.6C above the current 1991-2020 average.

As you say, some of those are in the 3-4C range aswell.

Basically it tells us nothing.

Im actually looking for trends thats a large timescale 173 years , Believe me i like cold Winters but thats just a little experiment i looked into dont take it as gospel , and looked on the history of Winters on this site .

[sebastiaan1973]

https://nitter.net/WorldClimateSvc/status/1715084594356093041#m

Paul Rondy   

It has indeed been shifting westward, but some recent and ongoing wind stress signals might start to move it farther east again. The Central Pacific Westerly windburst could cool the Central Pacific, but then over the next several weeks warm the East Pacific.

[Don]

10 hours ago, reef said:

None of the winters on that list have a CET average of more than 5.4C. That's only 0.6C above the current 1991-2020 average.

I would still class that as mild.

[Beanz]

15 hours ago, Ricardo23 said:

Im actually looking for trends thats a large timescale 173 years , Believe me i like cold Winters but thats just a little experiment i looked into dont take it as gospel , and looked on the history of Winters on this site .

I don’t suppose anybody will take it as gospel.  Pattern matching is pretty useless. 

[John S2]

41 minutes ago, Beanz said:

  Pattern matching is pretty useless. 

Pattern matching is definitely not 'useless'. For example, Septembers that can broadly be described as Anticyclonic Southwesterly - typically calm with temperatures either above average or close to average - are usually followed my mild winters. There have been a small number of exceptions, but they are rare.

Sept 2023 was definitely not in the above category as it was stormy with widely above average rainfall. 

[Mike Poole]

3 minutes ago, John S2 said:

Pattern matching is definitely not 'useless'. For example, Septembers that can broadly be described as Anticyclonic Southwesterly - typically calm with temperatures either above average or close to average - are usually followed my mild winters. There have been a small number of exceptions, but they are rare.

Sept 2023 was definitely not in the above category as it was stormy with widely above average rainfall. 

Pattern matching can give insights in ‘normal times’, for sure.  (Not necessarily the September thing!)

I think it is pretty useless this year, though, simply because the current state of the world, particularly SSTs, is way out of the range of past precedence.   

The way things are shaping up this winter, in terms of the troposphere pattern right now, is interesting, and in my view gives the potential to spring some surprises when we get to winter (unless all the blocking patterns vanish - which can happen of course).  But I don’t think past patterns will give much away about what those surprises might be.  

[John S2]

34 minutes ago, Mike Poole said:

Pattern matching can give insights in ‘normal times’, for sure.  I think it is pretty useless this year, though, simply because the current state of the world, particularly SSTs, is way out of the range of past precedence.   

 

Despite my previous post, I do agree with the quote from MP above. Pattern matching is only one indicator, and the current combination of 'drivers' is indeed unprecedented.

[Summer8906]

Does the current spell of exceptionally wet weather and southerly tracking lows (which has caught many of us out!) have any bearing on ideas for the winter?

Does it change things? Does it make the suggestion of an "El Nino" zonal winter less or more likely?

I do note some years in which extremely wet weather and a jetstream far to the south in the second half of autumn led to a winter with some periods of cold easterly setups as the jetstream sank even more south - 2000/1 and 2009/10 being particular examples. A counter-example is of course 13/14 when it was also very wet at this point in the year, if less wet than now.

Edited October 21, 2023 by Summer8906

[Summer8906]

2 hours ago, John S2 said:

Pattern matching is definitely not 'useless'. For example, Septembers that can broadly be described as Anticyclonic Southwesterly - typically calm with temperatures either above average or close to average - are usually followed my mild winters. There have been a small number of exceptions, but they are rare.

Sept 2023 was definitely not in the above category as it was stormy with widely above average rainfall. 

There are Septembers which were anticyclonic and on the warm side - certainly - which were followed by cold winters: 1985 and 2009 being two obvious examples. But perhaps these were not southwesterly overall.

[Jacob]

9 hours ago, Summer8906 said:

Does the current spell of exceptionally wet weather and southerly tracking lows (which has caught many of us out!) have any bearing on ideas for the winter?

Does it change things? Does it make the suggestion of an "El Nino" zonal winter less or more likely?

I do note some years in which extremely wet weather and a jetstream far to the south in the second half of autumn led to a winter with some periods of cold easterly setups as the jetstream sank even more south - 2000/1 and 2009/10 being particular examples. A counter-example is of course 13/14 when it was also very wet at this point in the year, if less wet than now.

When it’s October and I’m already getting my hopes up for snow in the SE 

[Don]

10 hours ago, Summer8906 said:

Does the current spell of exceptionally wet weather and southerly tracking lows (which has caught many of us out!) have any bearing on ideas for the winter?

This current spell of weather is reminding me a little of November 2009.  However, I personally do not expect a 2009/10 repeat and think the best we can expect (for those wanting a cold winter) is something akin to 2000/01.  Just my opinion though.

Edited October 21, 2023 by Don

[damianslaw]

2 hours ago, Don said:

This current spell of weather is reminding me a little of November 2009.  However, I personally do not expect a 2009/10 repeat and think the best we can expect (for those wanting a cold winter) is something akin to 2000/01.  Just my opinion though.

Yes current synoptics very reminiscent of the exceptionally wet Autumn 2000. I also see semblance with Nov 09.

Edited October 21, 2023 by damianslaw

[BruenSryan]

8 hours ago, Don said:

This current spell of weather is reminding me a little of November 2009.  However, I personally do not expect a 2009/10 repeat and think the best we can expect (for those wanting a cold winter) is something akin to 2000/01.  Just my opinion though.

Given I had two very decent snow events that winter and a lovely frosty January, I will more than take it! 7cm fell on 28th Dec and 10cm on 27th Feb. Though the same patterns now would no doubt bring cold rain pffff

Edited October 22, 2023 by BruenSryan

[Summer8906]

9 hours ago, damianslaw said:

Yes current synoptics very reminiscent of the exceptionally wet Autumn 2000. I also see semblance with Nov 09.

Which does make you wonder whether, eventually, the jetstream will go so far south that it leaves us in a dry easterly, as happened in both the above examples.

[CoventryWeather]

12 hours ago, Don said:

This current spell of weather is reminding me a little of November 2009.  However, I personally do not expect a 2009/10 repeat and think the best we can expect (for those wanting a cold winter) is something akin to 2000/01.  Just my opinion though.

Was 09/10 winter one of constant cold spells? Questioned on model thread too. 

[Ruzzi]

30 minutes ago, CoventryWeather said:

Was 09/10 winter one of constant cold spells? Questioned on model thread too. 

If you're under 35 years old, then the winter 09/10 would have probably been the most severe of your lifetime. 

From my personal point of view, we had 6 weeks of continuous lying snow/ice from mid December til the end of January, ridiculous snow depths and ice that was like concrete on the road outside our house, so much so, we had to use a sledge hammer to try and break it up, it was at least 2 inches thick!!  Not to mention the absolute best white Christmas in Central Scotland with many inches of snow on the ground on Xmas morning. 

I'll leave this image here for you:

probably the most iconic winter weather photo of the UK in modern times and also, if you really want a good read about it, I recommend buying this book: 

Edited October 22, 2023 by Ruzzi

[summer blizzard]

1 hour ago, Summer8906 said:

Which does make you wonder whether, eventually, the jetstream will go so far south that it leaves us in a dry easterly, as happened in both the above examples.

09 did not really have the same setup. November was dominated by a Sceuro block and south westerlies which was replaced by an Atlantic High before retrogression brought the great cold spell. 

While less stormy, this is more like 2000 or 2019 which basically saw a cyclonic stream on a fairly southerly track. 
 

26 minutes ago, CoventryWeather said:

Was 09/10 winter one of constant cold spells? Questioned on model thread too. 

Yes. The first half of December was cool and anticyclonic. The second half of Dec to Mid January was sub zero CET and snowy. The second half of Feb was also snowy. 

[Arctic Hare]

Surely the severe spell was in November and December 2010, therefore winter 10/11 rather than 09/10. Though there was significant snow in Jan 2010 too, which was 09/10, it was the late 2010 spell that was really exceptional.