GEFS mean suggests to me there may be a fair few Scandi high options. Haven't gone through the perts though.

Edit - had a quick flick through and yes there are plenty of Scandi highs in there. Looks like a decent set of GEFS there.

Nice for my area if that happen again.

Agreed. No sooner than posting my increasing concern we weren’t going to get the sort of reaction I’d been expecting there’s a sudden uptick in substantial blocking to our North and NE this evening. Come on ECM - you know it makes sense!

P1 is my pick of the evening, from a southern perspective.

ECM still going for that disruptive snow event thursday morning

Meh! I knew the Op was a cold outlier but anyway - usually is the case if it looks too good to be true...?

However on a positive there are plenty of snow events for the south - just not BFTE and mostly transient snowfall events.

12z ENS - so far: - Also good to see a colder cluster of ENS from 3rd until 6th February - and on the 4th, 5th & 6th Feb - none of the ENS members go above 0'c or the above the 30 year mean. - Is this a sign of things to come? Or too early to see that this is a trend? - Certainly keeps us interested that's for sure.

The 12z gfs and para both on the same theme with northern blocking in the mid to long term. The 12z gfs is a cracker of a run from t240 onwards and fits the expectations and strat profile that was showing up a couple of weeks back at 10mb. This would roughly give a downward trop response of about 4 weeks some two weeks or so longer than some (including myself hoped/expected). That is now irrelevant now though and should synoptics similar to that shown by the 12z gfs materialize we would be looking at a prolonged spell of deep cold similar if not colder than that of Feb91. This is what a fair few of us have been chasing since the SSW and seeing what the downwelling troposhere response could very well look like or even colder. 

Beautiful chart and very normal for UK to get this sometimes each winter month.

Interesting ECM later this week.

Should not be a dry one as it look unsettled with NE flow and hope to give more SE areas some snow at last while here do very well from the wash streamers.

More cold rain (possibly sleet) https://weather.us/model-charts/euro/united-kingdom/significant-weather/20210130-1200z.html 

General easterly muck seems to be the theme. Good for some more central and northern inland areas with a bit of altitude.

12z PARA, GEM, ICON, UKMO, ECM and NAVGEM are in agreement in some ways around +t120z:

Many have southerly tracking lows bringing in north easterly winds - the Operational seems like it is the milder outlier here:

PARA @ 120z:

GEM @ 120z

ICON @ 120z:

UKMO @ 120Z:

ECM @120z

NAVGEM @120z:

GFS Op and Control run seem to have a mind of it's own at that timeframe:

Op @ 120z

Control @ 120z:

ECM cant build the heights to our north enough so ends up rubbish. 

The 12z ENS for Aberdeen look cold throughout the entire run as well as continued precipitation spikes - a recipe for snow maybe?

Some definite interest for southerners this weekend. (I’m actually a northerner who lives down south!) 

And I’m sure this morning  I heard Carol Kirkwood mention a chance of snow in the south this weekend.

No, rain. It’s cool rather than cold.

Looking at some long range data - EC goes for above average heights to our north from Scandinavia to Iceland to Greenland = a perfect recipe for an easterly if this came about even better than it is forecast to be colder than average for Scandinavia:

Yes, been like a broken record for the South East this winter. Or in fact most of the last 10 !

Have you got the height anomalies? Those charts are ppn and temp.

Agreed Rob but it could just be playing slow catch-up.

Which is the most reliable model would you say? - The ECM is only updated every 12 hours so surely it's less reliable than GFS?

That’s not how it works. If the GFS changes its scenarios every 6 hours and the ECM is more consistent (and consistently accurate) but with half the frequency of runs then the latter is more reliable.

I believe validation has shown the ECM generally to have a slight edge on the GFS if you compare runs with the same starting time. I suppose an open question is whether the extra 6 hours data that the GFS 06Z and 18Z have over the ECM 0Z and 12Z makes them more accurate if you compare them.

Right so for now this weekend there is good agreement in mods for colder weather to return.