God, this is just dreadful model watching.
We haven't had a totally dud winter for years and maybe 2013/14 is payback, the run of good winters couldn't last for ever.
Andy
Originally Posted by: David M Porter
As one of two others have commented recently, some parts of the country didn't see any wintry stuff last winter until around the 3rd week of January or later, and we went through a zonal spell not too dissimilar to this one (in terms of excessive rainfall although without the very stormy winds like we saw last week) over last Xmas and New Year. If by the time we reach mid-late February there hasn't been any change, then yes I would agree with your view above. But that's a long, long way off right now.
Originally Posted by: Maunder Minimum
As I have pointed out several times in the past couple of weeks, a cruddy, zonal winter like this one usually (though not invariably) lasts throughout January. It is towards the second half of February that we have to look for the hope of a decent spell of proper winter.
In the meantime, look at all the precipitation going to waste! Makes one feel fairly demented to look at all that potential snowfall going down the plug hole ;-)
Originally Posted by: David M Porter
Point taken, Maunder, but I'm not sure I agree that we're stuck in this rut for sure for the whole of January and it won't be until later in February that things will change. I mentioned the zonal spell that dominated last Xmas and New Year; look at how quickly that blew itself out once we were past the first week of January. February at the moment is more than 4 weeks away, and even if the first half of January continues this current unsettled theme, at the moment none of us can say for sure whether by the time we are past mid-January, the models will still be indicating a continuation of this unsettled spell, orwhether they'll be showing something more promising.
I think some of us are making too many assumptions about the following few weeks. Yes, the models look far from great right now, but they can only give us a guide to what will happen and how amny times before have we seen big changes in the model output occure fairly quickly.
Originally Posted by: Andy Woodcock