Yes, the models are firming up on a northerly of sorts next week ahead of a toppler. Some sunshine and frost would be welcomed. 

From the ensembles it all appears clear cut. February will either be very mild or very cold 

On average, February will be average 

The trouble is that we cannot get any sustained pressure rise over Greenland. Even on the 6z it's here today and gone tomorrow.

The models may flip flop over the next few days, but history tells us that this is looking like a day or 2 of cold Northerlies followed by a toppler, and then back to our default Azores high

I would say so far that 12z gfs run looks better.  Better reach northwards, and more of a scandi high about it.  More runs needed, but at least im not seeing immediate sinkage into a Euro high....

So far so good.

Europe finally steps into the chiller.....2 months later than scheduled.

The GFS trend over the last day or two seems to have been for HP to set up further and further north next week, to the extent that on the 12Z we're almost getting a proper Scandi high-based easterly. Pressure is still high over the Azores and low over Greenland, though, so it doesn't look like a long-lasting or stable cold pattern at all.

Widespread snow fall on this run too on the 10th as fronts collide into an established cold block.

Probably the best run of the winter so far by a long shot.

Looking at strength of zonal winds @ 10hap - a few days ago all 4 CFS models were going for a reversal of zonal winds and now all 4 are going for a weakening before strengthening again:

Looking like the ensembles - The operational is a cold outlier from +192: I expect the ensembles to trend milder in the next 18z run and operational to follow ensembles. Also it looks like the potential for a SSW has diminished.

This is the mean at 180hr

agree and absolutely no surprise. That fat AZ won’t leave things alone- where have we seen that before? 😀

LOOKS pretty dire really. Fingers crossed for a SSW. Although the 12z run seems to show the SSW backing off a little at end of run. Both ICON and GEM are far from keen on a northerly as someone else mentioned. So all eyes on the 18z run and ECMWF? GFS 12Z operational run was a cold outlier looking at the ensembles ...so let's hope that when the 18z run comes out that the operational doesn't follow it's ensembles and other models like GEM/ICON etc and that the GEM and ICON follows the GFS operational and ECMWF etc. The northerly for 4th 5th and 6th Feb is hanging by a thread! 

All eyes on ECM and 18z.