Not even one air frost here yet this autumn. Late even by recent standards and things really are now getting pretty desperate! Hopefully this winter will hit the reset button and initiate another cluster of cold ones. Frankly it is looking increasingly unlikely but never say never.  

We won’t know until winter is over Brian - and it hasn’t started yet has it? 😄☺️

I think we had winter here yesterday.  Sadly we seemed to have missed out the next two seasons and gone straight to autumn again...

I watch the birds fly south across the autumn sky
And one by one they disappear,
I wish that I was flying with them...

Seriously though, as you say, it is early days. The very start of winter is still essentially in FI in the model output.

As suggested the other day, the METO have dropped their settled outlook for the turn of the month into the first week of December. 

With teleconnections very poor, could we just see relentless zonality through all the winter months ? 

You were right a decade ago about the "modern winter". Everything possible conspires against the UK getting a decent winter these days.

I never take any notice of the MO any more, especially when we all know that any suggestion of decent weather in FI is never going to materialise - they just put out eye candy at t+192 to get us excited until the guaranteed downgrades return us to grey, damp, mild gunk as usual. How I wish we could turn off the Atlantic jet or shove it down over Morocco! Here is the question - why does the PV so love Greenland and the north Atlantic - why can't it shove off to Siberia where it belongs?

I once wrote a full, weather-related parody of that on here 

Hopefully lost in the ether eternally (like those Carling pub runs showing snowmageddon at +384)

Yes I think they were lagging a day or so in this instance, although it could have been because as usual ECM was blocking away happily.

Quite frankly I think I'd rather move to Morocco and enjoy the sunshine rather than endure another winter of wind and rain. However, I'd be even more concerned if we'd just had a cold November like last year. 

I obviously can't speak for anywhere other than my own neck of the woods, but aside from the final few days of the month I don't recall last November being especially cold at any point, at least not consistently. The last few days & nights were very frosty though with the frost not lifting much if at all here for two or three days at the very end of the month.

I've started making reanalysis charts available on TWO. Direct link is:

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

Reanalysis charts are now available on TWO covering 1979 to 2019. More decades will be added in the next few days. The link is https://t.co/13YoOTWArx You can also go direct, for example https://t.co/n7gfCpfIDY There was never another day quite like that one! pic.twitter.com/IZb395ZNXn

— TheWeatherOutlook (@TWOweather) November 20, 2020

ECM is teasing us again tonight. I won't believe any of it until and unless it gets to t+96.

The chart for 30th November does not promise cold weather for the UK at that point, but there is some possibility there:

http://www.meteociel.fr/modeles/ecmwf.php?ech=240&mode=1&map=0&type=0&archive=0

But we all know that it will disappear again in tomorrow's output.

For the Wirral (and we are renowned at being not very cold), Nov last year wasnt anything special compared to any other November. 

However - compared to this year - it was alot colder.  We had several frosts, and the last few days were sub5*c and frosty

Average temp was 6.3*c 

Lowest temp was -2.8*c

Highest 14*c

This year

Average temp  9.8*c

Lowest temp 2.1*c

Highest 17.2*c

Its like we're getting octobers results in November.  

As much as the charts provide entertainment, the reality for a couple of weeks now is High pressure to our south

If you are Ian Brown then kudos to you. Over 10 years ago you were talking about the new modern winter regime that lay ahead and you stuck to your guns despite some very hostile posting and ridiculing from members over on netweather and on here I would imagine as well. 

Heaven forbid they could both still be wrong

The problem I had with what Ian said a decade or more ago on here is that for much of the time he was adamant that long-lasting spells of notable cold in this country such as those that we saw fairly commonly until the late 1980s simply could not happen again under any circumstances. That has not proved to be the case.

If one is being diplomatic about it, then for the most part he has been right. However, no-one can have forgotten that we had a month-long spell of severe cold in two successive winters a decade ago, some notable cold in early 2013 which culminated in an unusually cold March that year and then the Beast from the East at the end of Feb/start of March 2018, and other brief spells of cold earlier that winter (at least in my part of the world).

If one was to say that "modern era" factors have made the likelihood of cold weather happening somewhat less than in the past, then they would have a point. However, it is quite another for one to dismiss cold completely and try to say that it simply can't happen again in this country no matter what. The few aforementioned instances from the past decade most certainly prove that it can, even if it doesn't happen as often as it did a few decades back.

Apologies for being off-topic btw.

I am not going to start writing winter off now (contrary to previous years), but as I've said many times in the past, relentless zonality is a tough beast to shift, and could be a long path to signficant cold.

That said, there are some tentative signs of some sort of blocking on ECM and (occasionally on and off) GFS. Truth is, no-one knows how winter is going to pan out but you can never go far wrong by saying largely Zonal and mild.

Between 1991 and 2008, winters contained no notable cold & snowy spells (and not that many cold & snowy snaps)

It was toward the end of this period that Ian started with his 'modern winter' stuff.

Then we had 2009, 2010 and 2013. And indeed 2018. 

That period was pretty much comparable to any other since the LIA, barring perhaps a couple.

And it's not like we didn't have barren periods of winters lacking good cold & snowy spells in times past, as records show (indeed the demise of proper winter weather has been proclaimed many times through recorded history)

Ian's fully entitled to his view, and the impact of AGW will continue to be felt, but let's not lionise him for not only preaching that the form horse would continue to win, but ignoring that the horse then fell flat on its face a number of times in the next several races. 

I did say in my earlier post "If one is being diplomatic about it, then for the most part he has been right."

He may not have ever said as much in so many words, but that was the impression that I got from many of Ian's comments here pre-2009. For instance, whenever cold was shown in any model runs, Ian would be on here like a shot trying to tell is that it simply would not happen and that it would all be gone again in the next set of runs. That, to me anyway, was effectively tatamount to suggesting that notable cold couldn't happen again.

Agree with you there. What I would add though is that, to take a relatively recent example, we had a very wet and mild November in 2009 and I imagine that to many people back then, any chances of notable cold must have seemed miles off. I for one don't recall there being much if any suggestion of a change in pattern until the early days of December 2009.

For the avoidance of doubt, I'm not suggesting for a second that what happened 11 years ago will happen again this time, but in my experience, even patterns which seem to have been in place for what seems like a eternity can change pretty quickly and without much warning in advance. Just looked at how the zonal pattern that lasted virtually all of last winter came to a sudden end just after mid-March this year and was replaced by a much more blocked & settled pattern, just as the nationwide Covid-19 lockdown was beginning.

Personally I find that VERY difficult to believe. The period between 1979 and 87 was IMO far more notable and I've read people say the 60s were even better for cold and snow. 

Feb 1991 was very cold and snowy Martin 

February 1991 the TEMPERATURE over a wide area did not rise above freezing between the 5th and 10th; the lowest temperature reached during the month was (minus) 16.0 degC at Cawood (N. Yorkshire) on the 14th. Temperatures failed to exceed freezing point in a few parts of central northern England on the 3rd, and, as cold air intensified, there was always some part of England and Wales where day maximum temperatures remained below freezing point every day from the 3rd to the 14th inclusive. Over much of the south-east of England, temperatures only achieved a maximum between (minus) 5 and (minus) 6 degC on the 7th, believed to be the COLDEST FEBRUARY DAY of the century in some places (e.g. at Whipsnade, Bedfordshire, and Brighton, Sussex, the MAXIMUM on the 7th was (minus) 5.2degC.) On the 8th, the MAXIMUM at Princeton, on Dartmoor was just (minus) 6C. The MINIMUM TEMPERATURE at Guernsey airport (CI) on the 7th was (minus) 7.2 degC, the equal low for February at this location.
> Minima below (minus) 10 degC were reported each morning from at least one place in widely differing parts of the UK from the 7th to 14th inclusive.
> SNOW fell extensively and often heavily between the 7th and 9th, leaving a covering exceeding 10 cm over large areas of England, Wales and eastern and southern Scotland, with 51 cm of level snow observed at Bingley, near Bradford, Yorkshire at 09z on the 9th. (Possibly the greatest snow-depth for central London since the start of the 'Big Freeze' snowfall in December, 1962.) There were many injuries from falls on ice and sledging accidents, and a woman in Dartford received severe head injuries from falling icicles. In central London, some places had somewhere around 15cm of SNOW - thought to have been the greatest depth since the infamous snowfalls of December, 1962. (This was the infamous "wrong type of snow" for British Rail; dry & powdery and driven by winds with low dew-points into delicate parts of the running machinery and points etc.)

from time to time we may be right, many times we all get it wrong. Ian has his own views and agendas like every other person on this thread. Though IMO, and for a lack of better terminology, the “modern winter” statement is correct. Something has changed in modern times, of that there can be no doubt. Why that is remains for others to debate, but Autumn days of frost and fog  together with the complete lack of winter snowfall for many lowland areas of England and Wales is blatantly evident for all to see. Of that there can be no doubt. 

We used to get a lot more fog pre 62 in fact many weather folk quote Dec 1962 “last old style” London smog.