GFS chooses to cook up a storm this morning in the opening days of December.  A mobile, windy, westerly run.

Im sorry but I don't follow that chain of thought. Surely if it over amplified the pattern it would reflect in these stats or am I missing something.

Very good advice, Neil.

The end of the GFS 00z this morning looks potentially very interesting, but as it is so far off in terms of time we shouldn't put much if any faith in that at the moment. That said, if there is to be a change at any point away from the zonal pattern we have seen this month, it will have to start from somewhere.

Weatherweb / Chinese ideas for Christmas.

The Beijing Climate Centre 40-day forecast is certainly in line with our thinking for late December.

"Our ideas of turning cooler from around 21st onwards (or perhaps a little earlier) are gathering a following from the various climate forecasts.

We still don;t think it's a major hit of wintry weather, but there could be snow showers in Scotland and perhaps northern England and Northern Ireland too, a few making it to lower levels. <br.
A ridge build over the northeastern Statesand Canada strengthening the trough in the Atlantic. Big question is where will the trough be? West of us it's milder, further east and thing are cooler"

IMO, predicting January's weather just now is even more futile than trying to say with any certainty what December will be like as a whole.

Best not to go making any wild predictions at this time either way. By taking that approach, no-one can shoot you down in flames afterwards in the event of your predictions not going according to plan. Why not just wait and see?

Europe back into the Chiller towards the end of FI

http://max.nwstatic.co.uk/gfsimages/gfs.20151125/12/372/h850t850eu.png

Maybe, but that sequence of major wintry spells coinciding with you being out of the UK can (and likely will one day) come to an end y'know.

GFS teasing us again with a Scandi High in deep FI. Is it leading us up the garden path, or could it be picking up a few subtle hints of a change later in December? That is the $64million question just now.

it may just be a coincidence or my mind playing tricks but we  do often seem to get a pattern change towards much colder conditions around Boxing Day.

The 12h GEFS Ens have cold anticyclonic with strong Scandi HP on only 2 of the 20 ENS.Much as I would like to see a cold December out break evidence at present is thin.Await with interest the METO 3  month  forecast which should be out this week.

They do but six or so have significant HLB to the E or NE from +300 this evening.
Not buying into it in any way mind, but it might be more than the usual noise.

Your advice is sound  Roger. 

Some are reading too much in to the usual background noise in the ensembles.

The Met O are pretty confident of an average -mild and mobile December.

However since its last update ( to my beady eye ) it does over amplify the upstream pattern in a way it never use to.

But I would hope that you would accept the facts, and that if it has the best verification stats then it can be trusted just that little bit more than the other models? 

Nothing to freeze the cockles of a coldies heart in the anywhere remotely reliable timeframe I see, but still some hints of a possible interruption to the zonal flow popping up. Given the amount of ridges that GFS has been throwing up over Scandi it's not a surprise to see it toying with one of these helping to develop a decent HP block.

I also don't actually mind the ECM run because it does develop a shallow HP cell North West of Scandi:-

Coupled with the hints GFS has been dropping and at least there's a few signs that December won't be all zonal imo 

In the more nailed in timeframe it's wet at times, wintry at times for the Northern hills and occasionally pretty windy too. Given the mobile flow night time temps are unlikely to be that low so whilst day time temps don't look too mild, overall it looks like an above average CET period coming up.