Quick heads up.. Arpege 06z and 18z (in addition to 00z and 12z) are now available on TWO.

https://www.theweatheroutlook.com/twodata/arpege.aspx

thanks Brian, I’ve always rated the Arpege especially for winter precipitation 

Met office seasonal prob model has been updated. This looks like a very warm Hemisphere. With Dec, Jan & Feb going average or milder than average everywhere in the N. Hemisphere with perhaps only Nepal/Himalaya and western China forecast to have below average temps. 

https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/research/climate/seasonal-to-decadal/gpc-outlooks/glob-seas-prob

They could not have been more wrong in their Autumn  temp forecast 60% probability of above average temps. Then during their mid Autumn update they increase the likelyhood of a above normal Autumn temp wise to 60 - 80%. almost unheard of to have such a high quesstimate and then for it to turn out so embarassingly wrong for them. 

Nothing cold on offer in the foreseeable. The ecm doing its usual tease which means zilch at day 10.

September did see some notably warm weather, especially the third week of the month. However, October did not deliver any particularly warm or even especially mild days in my neck of the woods, unlike a number of recent Octobers.

November so far has been anything but mild here.

Great news if it’s a cold winter you’re after. These experimental long range models have been woefully bad for years 

I think in 2009 (and possibly 10) the Met Office 30 dayer started picking up the cold signal at about this point. I remember it was very impressive at the time. This year their output has been trending less cold or even milder in recent days with temperatures expected to be close to or a little above the average through the first half of December. Today's ECM monthly maintains that theme, although by Week 4 the signal for above average temperatures is restricted to the southern half of the UK. Notably most of continental Europe is relatively mild.

https://www.met.hu/img/meTz/meTz20191114_0000+76800.png

Ideally, I would like to see a cold winter with plenty of snow just like quite a number of people on this forum (although, I'm sure that others such as Bolty would rather see it being that much milder).

However and although we were lucky enough during the summer to have got a lot of thunderstorms here, there has been virtually nothing in the way of interesting weather which has happened in this part of the world ever since then.

Other parts of the UK have had a lot of flooding rains just recently but although we have had a wetter than average autumn here as well, we have had nothing like the sort of rainfall events which have been witnessed further south.

The result of this is the number of official rain days is actually lagging behind the long-term average here and given what the last week or so has been like here, there is also a chance that this month might even end up being not any wetter than average here in terms of the actual rainfall amounts.

Yet, we have had very little in the way of sunshine during this month and when you add all of that up, this surely has to have been our most boring and uninteresting autumn on record, especially in comparison with what the rest of the UK has been like.

As a result of that, I would probably go as far now as to say I would actually take a mild and wet spell just now if that was offered to me since that would at least be a changed from the constant grey skies and nothing ever happening sort of scenario which we have just now.

Yes, that isn't the sort of scenario which I want to be going into the winter with but if that is what it is going to take to get us out of this constant borefest which we are under just now, I am happy enough to go with that (maybe, that might actually give us some interesting weather for once) and it looks as though both the JMA and the CFS seem to be heading in that direction just now.

And I can't argue with that. It all suggests milder than average conditions at least for the first half of the winter. But that's all subject to change. Just as nobody forecast the cold spell of December 10 until mid November,  nobody can really predict what weather we will see come late December. 

I am fairly sure that in 2010, the MetO had started mentioning the likelihood of a cold spell commening towards the end of that November by this point in the month. Not sure about 2009 though; IIRC they were going for a milder and wetter winter in 2009/10 than had been the case in the 2008/09 season. What I especially recall about 2009 was that they rather went against your own call for a cold winter in 09/10 and in the event were proved to be well wide of the mark.

You're right about 2009 - the colder talk only started in early December IIRC, and then it was forecast to become incrementally colder with lows dragging increasingly cold air down over us. Think it was the second weekend when the first possibilities of snow falling more widespread began to be forecast (Scotland/NW England/N Wales), but it was mostly just rain away from high ground. The first snow turned up the following weekend on a mostly NW'ly flow and showery. We then had snow showers for about a week leading towards Xmas, with freezes in between, leaving around 8-10cm.

In 2010, the signals were very much there by this time of the month, and increasingly so. But that spell kicked in ridiculously early.

Be it mild or cold, I'm struggling to see any break from this wet phase. I only need another 30 mm to reach the magic 200 mm mark for this November.  

Jetstream more fragmented for a while, but still mostly to the S of the UK, even at times next week diving down as far as the Med. GFS shows LP off the Atlantic following that line, though some old slack LP stays around the N Sea. Then a few days of HP (ca 24th) over the UK bridging the Azores and continental highs, before a major depression develops in the N Atlantic  around the 27th (Wed) and moves over Norway with N/NE winds for us until the end of the run.

That's GFS; ECM doesn't pick up the HP around the 24th - instead the brief period of S winds is driven not by the Azores high but by yet another LP moving on a SE'ly track (yesterday's LP to the north which ECM was promoting has vanished)

Ens runs show temps scattered around the seasonal average despite the NE-ly spell referred to above, dry-ish until 21st-23rd when more general rainfall, particularly S and W; thereafter some rain distributed anywhere. Not much in he way of snow rows except for Inverness and that only as expected for late Nov.

Confused? So are the models.

Not sure why but I seem to recall first hints at more significant/ prolonged cold on either 14th or 21st November 2010. That day itself saw NE winds over us-  it was a Sunday and we were shivering pushing the little ones on swings in the local playground, but the temperature here actually reached 7°C. That set up solidified the pattern from earlier in the month. Can't be sure which of those two Sundays it was though.

Edit: just checked; it was 21st.

I recall speaking to the press 10 to 14 days before that cold spell and being unusually confident about it. So the GEFS ensembles must have offered solid support for several days. TBH I'm not really sure whether the Met Office had already flagged it up by that point. 

The model equivalent of a Hung Parliament?!

I really am passed the old age threshold now, as I want dry and mild to prevail, and I seem to feel the cold these days. Thanks to this govt there are so many homeless and destitute, that a cold winter would kill many. 

Models now converging on a switch to a more conventionally zonal pattern as we head towards December in keeping with the seasonal modelling for the winter as a whole. Continental Europe looking very mild with the colder air bottled up well to the North.

We could well see a warmer December than November.

If you believe the machines there is a high likelihood this winter will be one of the mildest of all time. However, I get the impression some people (perhaps even in the Met) are a little twitchy because a number of the background signals suggest otherwise.

We can always hope but you appear to be suffering from premature extrapolation again. The only main model that goes as far as December is the GFS which reaches the 2nd at +384hrs. 

Before then a mix of stuff and a complex picture.

Don't you consider the ECM32 (or whatever they call it now) a main model? The Met seem to rely on it heavily.

Where do I view it? If Ian was referring to the ECM 32 it wasn’t obvious, it was a suggestion of a consensus from a range of evidence.  

I look at the data which are readily publicly available, the vast body of which doesn’t not show December. 

I’m sure Ian will come along and state the various sources he has used for his forecast. “Converging” suggest a range of evidence. I have not had a chance to look at a range of model output for December so would be grateful to see what it was, that’s all. If it shows a mild December, so be it and I for one would be happy for a range of reasons.

Data from ECM32 is freely available in several places. Here is one. 

https://www.met.hu/en/idojaras/elorejelzes/europai_elorejelzes/