Any amplification we can get while this mid-latitude block is in place will be handy for driving warm air into the Arctic and at least worrying the developing polar vortex.
We'd need some negatively tilted trough action (area of low pressure orientated - ideally stretched out - NW to SE) in the middle of N. Atlantic to achieve significant impacts, though (warm air meeting the high terrain of Greenland = wave breaking into the stratosphere = unhappy vortex).
As it is, the best that seems to be on offer based on recent model guidance is enough amplification and jet meridionality to allow the mid-latitude block to become more of a mid to high latitude hybrid, which could help interfere with the polar vortex at the tropospheric level but I'm not seeing a lot of reason to expect much other than the usual well defined vortex developing through November as supported by the El Nino (and westerly QBO for those in the know) background.
Unless, that is, sea ice deficits in some parts of the Arctic prove sufficient to upset the balance - but the ice has grown exceptionally fast in recent times following the low September minimum, so the likelihood of that appears fairly slim now.
Signals for late Nov and Dec from the very much dominant El Nino background are indistinct for the UK, though a low pressure signal is noted near Iceland... standard fayre being the favoured option, which doesn't tell us much really.
So what we really have is a bit of a 'holding pattern' for the foreseeable with not much to help drive changes. Interesting, though, how the long-range model projections of a very stormy November are starting to look incredibly wide of the mark. More interesting still, the configuration of strong HP over Europe that's on the way for the end of this month and some way into the next is exactly the sort of thing that El Nino events tend to promote during the winter months... but with an emphasis on Jan-Feb, not Nov-Dec! It's as if we're a long way ahead of schedule, perhaps relating to the fact that the current El Nino began to manifest unusually early and then hit record levels for June. Only for months since then have the two other strongest events (82-83 and 97-98) been able to match 2015's intensity.
Interest hits a peak for the time being when factoring in the idea from some recent long range models of an earlier than usual cooling of the East Pacific while the Central Pacific remains as anomalously warm as ever. It's to do with the NAO but I'll leave it alone for now as we can't be at all sure whether this idea is going to be along the right lines or not.
I realise I've drifted into a bit of a winter discussion here, not setting the best of examples, but it's not as if the thread is flying
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