Okay... a bit more cold air to work with down south on the latest runs, which is good, but not much to bring precipitation as things stand unless the air is cold enough to develop disturbances in the flow capable of hanging on all the way down across the UK. Still not ripe for a significant snow event, but better than nothing
What actually catches my eye more are signs that this northerly is just a small part of something bigger. Admittedly there were similar hints being dropped prior to the cold spell we're moving out of now, but these were largely dependent on getting a second trough disruption event that in the end only materialised briefly in the output before vanishing again. We then saw the upstream pattern become mobile sooner than originally predicted, cutting the cold easterly down as well.
Anyway, this time it's largely down to developments in the stratosphere, with the vortex heavily displaced to Siberia right out to day 10, helping to focus the low heights in the troposphere to that region rather than across Canada.
This was brought about by a warming event that's currently focused across Canada. If only the stratosphere and troposphere were strongly connected over there - the Canadian vortex would be going AWOL very soon indeed.
As it is, that lobe does look like weakening gradually over the coming week or so, as that warming event attempts to propagate down toward the troposphere.
Meanwhile, a new warming event looks to emerge over East Asia/the Western Pacific, and this has been looking increasingly strong with each new set of model runs. It looks to be close enough to the displaced vortex to really interfere with it, the results of which are likely to be complicated - and not well handled by the models.
In light of this, any output showing the focus of low heights shifting back to our N or NW in the 10-15 day period, while possible, has a higher than normal chance of being total b*l**ks
Realistically though, there's no ignoring the tendency so far this winter for low heights to find a way to hang on in some guise to our NW in the face of even quite substantial pressure.
Perhaps we will be relying on the primary (Siberian) vortex being displaced and weakened enough to allow some decent height rises across the pole, aligned in the right way to keep the remains of the Canadian vortex away from Greenland for as long as possible.
For this, the ECM 12z op run is a good effort
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T-Max: 30.2°C 9th Sep (...!) | T-Min: -7.1°C 22nd & 23rd Jan | Wettest Day: 25.9mm 2nd Nov | Ice Days: 1 (2nd Dec -1.3°C in freezing fog)
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