gandy asked me if i see anything wintry in the next 10/15 days and the answer is 'perhaps'. we have some big players now entering the scene. a highly amplified alaskan ridge coupled with some very low heights dropping into the eastern side of n america. you think upstream will be well modelled ? add to that an arctic high which we know from experience will be poorly represented by the output. our scandi ridge (which should have gone days ago according to ncep) is still expanding west. and then the powerful jet streaks courtesy of the large thermal gradient off the eastern seaboard coming into the atlantic and distorting the azores high in differing ways depending on how the depressions enter the ocean area. add to that the general theme of the modelling to want to drop the systems se into the continent (how well have we seen that modelled this month thus far - not really) and you can come up with a myriad of solutions, all feasible. the hip bone is connected to the thigh bone but at the moment, no one knows which is the hip, thigh, knee etc etc.
to just state that it will carry on as it has done thus far is merely playing safe. the zonal flow in the strat is also easing back a lot which takes a westerly driver out of the equation.
oh and finally, that bloody canadian vortex - if the vortex split is persistant (and it could be for a good few days at least) then how well will it survive without any energy coming from siberia to pump it back up. its been a dire winter thus far for those seeking proper wintry conditions. the stack is being shuffled now and there are some jokers being introduced.
should continue to be a fascinating time to watch the nwp and how it deals with all these factors.
for starters, the gfs 00z op is an outlier from day 1 in warsaw and day 2 in berlin according to the ecm ens. if its that wrong at T24, what chance its right at T120 ???