The UK just to the east of a jet diving NW->SE with blocking to our N and/or NE would be nice.

I don't have an understanding of how the wider (NH) developments impact, but I do remember some great posters like Darren,  Stormchaser, Gaving P in mid/late-Nov 2010 as the big freeze approached, doing a few posts describing how the wider picture heavily suggested a resilient blocked pattern that should take us into December.

I'm sceptical of good-looking set-ups being anything more than a flash in the pan, swept away by Atlantic dross within a few days or a week at best. 

Cliche but hints of 2010 about the output at the moment. Long long way to go yet though.

Ends on an interesting note 

One of the keys is to look for WAA pushing north or west of north, i.e. against the prevailing W-E flow.  Another key, mentioned here before, is that if blocking over Scandinavia is to be sustained then ideally you want to see some blocking over Greenland as well, so the northern arm of the jet doesn't just collapse the Scandi block.

Of course there's also the jet stream profile, which ideally needs to be putting energy into the southern arm or to be exhibiting a meridional flow - with NW Europe on the cold side.

I remember clearly Darren flagging before the late November/December 2010 freeze that there were two successive pulses of strong WAA in mid-Atlantic, which shunted enough warmth into the northern latitudes to promote the very strong block that triggered the spilling out of the Arctic air over us.

Control has a nice look also

Indeed. A better run for sure, but it's a case of feet firmly on the ground at the moment, IMHO.

We are a very long way from a cold spell, the NOAA charts don't support a change going into late November and neither do the US forecasters.

December 2010 was telegraphed from a long way out, the confidence in it was unheralded in the modern era. I think most of would take a mid-latitude block and IMO that's the best we will get for the turn of the month.

Are we still in the modern era or post-modern?

I’ll have to check the heather for some clues 😄

IIRC, there was also a good deal of solid run-to-run consistency within the model output we can access here in the lead-up to the freeze that came just before Xmas 2009. I can vividly remember following the models at the start of that December and even at that stage, it was starting to become fairly clear that a big change was likely to come along sometime not long after mid-month.

The difference I recall between the lead-up to that spell and what happened a year later was that the Met Office in 2009 were somewhat slower in first mentioning the possibility of notable cold in their extended outlooks compared to just under a year later.

Apparently, whatever era we might be in it's the US forecasters that have the best view.  Which is slightly different to my recollection.

😉

His sweeping statement style European forecasts made for novel reading at least.

Why do you keep going on about US forecasters ? They have zero experience about the UK in fact there isn't many models or professional's that can actually get it right after 5 days and even then I have seen them go wrong. 

Cold spells don't have to be telegraphed from a long way to materialise , its the UK expect the unexpected .

One thing you can be sure of, when things start looking interesting Ian shows up like a vagrant outside weatherspoons.
Met office still plugging for a cold December by the way... anyone know when the next contingency planners update is?

Just a break from the Atlantic invasion would do me fine and the last two GFS & runs & current ECM run were pleasing to my eyes. Whether that translate into the here & now is another matter altogether. 

ECM consistent with gfs 12z at 144hrs

edit: and again at 168 with the Atlantic ridge.

Wise words at this stage of the late autumn.A few near misses and 

Pattern reloads (accustomed to most bitter winters )would float my boat at present. Some good signs that this winter is taking a different course to previous ones...my fence hasnt blown down yet !!!!

Yes, that was quite a weird attempt by Ian to dismiss the current model output, wasn't it.

All we can really say at the moment is that the much more extensive information available to the professionals clearly either doesn't show any signal for Northern blocking or it's not sufficiently well supported for them to reflect it in their forecasts.  That doesn't mean it will or won't happen; it just means the usual caveats apply.

The 12z GFS ensemble shows there is a growing number of members showing cold weather developing and the postage stamps at Day 10 show none with the Atlantic breaking through but obviously not all show the block getting well to the north.

Snow rows starting to tick up.

Indeed. In Feb 2018, from what I recall the models didn't see the "Beast from the East" coming along with any certainty until a week or so before it arrived. For a while, the whole thing was on a knife-edge between the Beast arriving or the atlantic returning.

hell of a block that

Quote of the day.