Winter 2023/24 - Discussions & Forecasts

[blizzard81]

5 minutes ago, northwestsnow said:

EC JAN

That's the mean for Jan to March. Not January alone. It could be better but we've all seen so much worse. 

[CryoraptorA303]

Looks like January and February will be the months to talk about this winter (and maybe March if we get a late surprise). Backended winters tend to be the best, so this is a good start anyhow.

[northwestsnow]

28 minutes ago, blizzard81 said:

That's the mean for Jan to March. Not January alone. It could be better but we've all seen so much worse. 

I get confused with these pages to be honest.

I looked at JAN 2024 in the bottom corner but in the top right corner it says JFM.

No signal for Euro heights which is a big plus

[northwestsnow]

38 minutes ago, CryoraptorA303 said:

Looks like January and February will be the months to talk about this winter (and maybe March if we get a late surprise). Backended winters tend to be the best, so this is a good start anyhow.

Agreed.

We are overdue a cold January surely.

Not keen on the way Nov and Dec look ,especially Dec as wind and rain in Dec is so depressing..

[CryoraptorA303]

4 minutes ago, northwestsnow said:

Agreed.

We are overdue a cold January surely.

Not keen on the way Nov and Dec look ,especially Dec as wind and rain in Dec is so depressing..

The majority of classic winters start off with a mild and autumnal December, so if it means January and February bring something to the table I'm happy to make the sacrifice. It's better than what we had last year, with a nice cold spell in the first half of December, but after that it fell apart and the rest of winter was a waste of time, and at that point you're just waiting for spring to come so you can be put out of your misery. At least from March onward the default is non-winter temps so if nothing cold happens it's not really disappointing. With the inverse situation of starting with a mild December there's always hope that the rest of winter will bring something to look forward to and you're not just sitting there waiting for it to be over, and as I said, the best winters are backended anyway.

[sebastiaan1973]

From Eric Webb

EC of course could be a lot worse, but once  again no Scandihigh, which the Dutch need for their skating. Thanks for sharing. 

[summer blizzard]

1 minute ago, sebastiaan1973 said:

From Eric Webb

He's wrong on the MEI, there's been debate about that elsewhere. 

 

[northwestsnow]

2 minutes ago, sebastiaan1973 said:

From Eric Webb

EC of course could be a lot worse, but once  again no Scandihigh, which the Dutch need for their skating. Thanks for sharing. 

Greenland/ Iceland anticyclone works for the Dutch?

[summer blizzard]

16 hours ago, razorgrain said:

Really seems to be a lot of mixed signals to be honest. Some hinting towards cold, others hinting towards mild. I get the impression it'll meet half way and winter will be largely average.

 

TWO on Twitter did mention the possibility of an Azores high for January and/or February though. Typical really, I joked that we'd get it in the dead of winter rather than July or August when it's useful.

 

Loosely speaking the PDO and QBO are likely to be supportive of -AO. ENSO is too somewhat (not perfect and assuming it says below 2C).

IOD and Solar are generally regarded as more hostile IMO albeit secondary indicators. 

In terms of ENSO although they were much weaker events the placement of the standing waves is apparently closer to the 02/03, 04/05 and 06/07 events which did feature Azores driven spells (though I don't consider them primary analogues personally).

[blizzard81]

1 hour ago, northwestsnow said:

I get confused with these pages to be honest.

I looked at JAN 2024 in the bottom corner but in the top right corner it says JFM.

No signal for Euro heights which is a big plus

I can only see the JFM on those. 

[Mike Poole]

So some kind of consistency emerging now we’ve had CANSIPS, MF and ECM seasonals.  Good confidence of blocking Jan-Mar, with Dec looking +NAO - at best work in progress for the later winter months.  That’s a sound position to be in with a month to go. 

I’d like to see more about where the blocking and lower height anomalies are in the individual months.  The ECM JFM plot, if i was picky, I might have liked the low anomaly to be a little further southeast:

The monthly plots will maybe help here when we get them.  I’d also like to see what the models are saying in the strat, again, that will be available via Copernicus soon.

The +IOD has now peaked:

So any damage from that is now baked in and won’t get worse - I do wonder if this is behind the forecast stuck unsettled pattern for November, but even if so it should wane in December. 

All in all, still plenty of promise from the seasonal models.

[blizzard81]

8 minutes ago, Mike Poole said:

So some kind of consistency emerging now we’ve had CANSIPS, MF and ECM seasonals.  Good confidence of blocking Jan-Mar, with Dec looking +NAO - at best work in progress for the later winter months.  That’s a sound position to be in with a month to go. 

I’d like to see more about where the blocking and lower height anomalies are in the individual months.  The ECM JFM plot, if i was picky, I might have liked the low anomaly to be a little further southeast:

The monthly plots will maybe help here when we get them.  I’d also like to see what the models are saying in the strat, again, that will be available via Copernicus soon.

The +IOD has now peaked:

So any damage from that is now baked in and won’t get worse - I do wonder if this is behind the forecast stuck unsettled pattern for November, but even if so it should wane in December. 

All in all, still plenty of promise from the seasonal models.

Yep Mike. It's hard to be picky after the last few years dross. I do wonder if we are in danger of going into west based NAO territory though. 

[CryoraptorA303]

1 minute ago, Mike Poole said:

So some kind of consistency emerging now we’ve had CANSIPS, MF and ECM seasonals.  Good confidence of blocking Jan-Mar, with Dec looking +NAO - at best work in progress for the later winter months.  That’s a sound position to be in with a month to go. 

I’d like to see more about where the blocking and lower height anomalies are in the individual months.  The ECM JFM plot, if i was picky, I might have liked the low anomaly to be a little further southeast:

The monthly plots will maybe help here when we get them.  I’d also like to see what the models are saying in the strat, again, that will be available via Copernicus soon.

The +IOD has now peaked:

So any damage from that is now baked in and won’t get worse - I do wonder if this is behind the forecast stuck unsettled pattern for November, but even if so it should wane in December. 

All in all, still plenty of promise from the seasonal models.

Agreed, it's all stayed quite consistently hopeful for January onwards since September. As mentioned before a mild autumnal December is tolerable if the later winter produces results. El Nino is much stronger this time than in 2019 and we're also working with eQBO so the PV should be nowhere near as bulletproof as last time. The only real fear now is we get a 2015-16 repeat with the mild December signal translating to the mildest December on record and the remainder of winter being average, but we haven't been following 2015 at all so far and other analogues aren't present so I think we're locked in for something more resembling 2009/10 now. So far we've been running fairly analogously to 2009 (bar being at much higher amplitude of course) so something resembling this is probably more likely than anything else at this stage.

[bluearmy]

Heights j/f/m ec

better than Octobers update but euro heights not as subdued as we’d like to see not greeny heights as robust (these are anoms )

we would want to see the 552 dam line further south towards Iberia in order for the jet to be on enough of a southerly track 

 

Edited November 5, 2023 by bluearmy

[blizzard81]

5 minutes ago, bluearmy said:

Heights j/f/m ec

better than Octobers update but euro heights not as subdued as we’d like to see not greeny heights as robust (these are anoms )

we would want to see the 552 dam line further south towards Iberia in order for the jet to be on enough of a southerly track 

 

It's all relative isn't it? It would be trite to moan about these charts after the last couple of years. 

[Alexis]

8 hours ago, TROY said:

Looking ahead to winter, one thing is for sure with the sea temps being so much above normal, any marginal snow/rain events will bring rain. So we can look forward to mainly mild or warm spells with nil snow and probably little frost in the ground.

I remember this fear last year. Our SSTs plummeted from way above normal to normal within the space of 10 days in the early / mid December cold. And the high SSTs hardly affected the hard frosts at the time anyway.

There wasn't much cold afterwards, but if there had of been, high SSTs in early December would have had no negative impact.

Edited November 5, 2023 by Alexis

[bluearmy]

4 minutes ago, blizzard81 said:

It's all relative isn't it? It would be trite to moan about these charts after the last couple of years. 

You’d be v positve in the Scottish ski resorts 

those with elevation up north too 

for many those charts are more cold rain though - they won’t verify like that so it’s good to appear to have a ticket this year 

[Froze were the Days]

2 hours ago, blizzard81 said:

That's the mean for Jan to March. Not January alone. It could be better but we've all seen so much worse. 

Looks like a continuation of what we have now...cyclonic.

[Uncertainty]

27 minutes ago, bluearmy said:

Heights j/f/m ec

better than Octobers update but euro heights not as subdued as we’d like to see not greeny heights as robust (these are anoms )

we would want to see the 552 dam line further south towards Iberia in order for the jet to be on enough of a southerly track 

 

All true Nick but the movement back to blocking compared to the last update means we now have consistency again across the seasonal modelling for some kind of Greenie heights/S tracking jet. As ever, in that scenario the euro low heights will be key and this is where we have been stung in the recent past.  SEAS5 flipping in October was frustrating and this on the other hand is reassuring for the forecast. But agree it could be even better…
 

Encouraging to be back on track nonetheless.

Edited November 5, 2023 by Uncertainty

[Cheshire Freeze]

Not seeing the negative perspective.

Even under a generally west based -NAO regime there will be times when blocking sits in the right general area for us to go cold.

There’s no point micro analysing features of a mean chart to the tune of 500 miles or so.

[CryoraptorA303]

53 minutes ago, Cheshire Freeze said:

Not seeing the negative perspective.

Even under a generally west based -NAO regime there will be times when blocking sits in the right general area for us to go cold.

There’s no point micro analysing features of a mean chart to the tune of 500 miles or so.

Heavily agree, these are quite hopeful seasonals compared to what we've had over the last few years, especially for the later season. The best winters have their peak in Jan/Feb, not December. Some indication of blocking at that time is a pro in my book.

[CryoraptorA303]

1 hour ago, Alexis said:

I remember this fear last year. Our SSTs plummeted from way above normal to normal within the space of 10 days in the early / mid December cold. And the high SSTs hardly affected the hard frosts at the time anyway.

There wasn't much cold afterwards, but if there had of been, high SSTs in early December would have had no negative impact.

It's not like any marginal events actually verify as snow anymore regardless - Those days are gone. We need an actual cold spell for snow these days. Outside of the highlands and high pennines you might get some verifying as occasional dustings up north, but for the majority here marginal is going to verify as cold rain in the present year. For actual widespread snowfall like last December you need a big enough cold spell that high SSTs wouldn't matter anyway.

[SqueakheartLW]

10 hours ago, TROY said:

Looking ahead to winter, one thing is for sure with the sea temps being so much above normal, any marginal snow/rain events will bring rain. So we can look forward to mainly mild or warm spells with nil snow and probably little frost in the ground.

I'd like to see what you have to say next spring once we've passed winter. Perhaps you may supply us all with the winning lottery numbers for next week

LOL

[Don]

Compared to what could have been, I'm fairly happy with the November long range models so far.

[Catacol]

7 hours ago, Uncertainty said:

Nov EC…

JFM

Boom!

Well that’s a cracker. Particularly pleased to see the Aleutian Low prevalent. I don’t like these smoothed 3 month charts in general because they hide so much variation, but a 3 month average that sees a strong Greeny High signal and a central Euro low signal is a bit of a jaw dropper. Can’t get an average over 14 weeks like that without easterly elements for the U.K.