An impressively mild FI chart from GFS this morning.  The polar vortex looks strong and the mid latitude highs also muscular.  A flattish stable pattern that could persist for much of the month and beyond, albeit with the Azores high occasionally nosing across us and "Euroing" it a bit for a while before being flattened by a trough surging across the pond to reset the locked-in pattern.  

A  waiting game for Coldies I think.

Indeed Michael. Monday is a good example of this.

That little bit of momentum towards height rises to the NE has faded it seems - for now. The NWP in winter is sometimes like the girl in the office who wears that especially tight blue skirt - happy to waft herself in front of you every day, but that blue is always destined for somewhere else 😘
The next week or so look solidly 'westerly' with a mix of wind, rain, hill snow up North and very mild at times in Fohn areas.

Hoping the skirt will make an appearance again soon.

Hmmm, I struggle to see how that GFS chart above could be worse!

Talk of cold or even seasonal weather is putting a spin on some very poor charts, we expected this El Niño effect of course but it's a terrible start to winter which ever way you look at it.

Deep Icelandic lows and stable Euro Highs don't do it for me, it's all Bartlett Heaven.

Andy

Well a few days before or after on the same run show much more seasonal conditions? Nothing massively cold on the outlook but not an unseasonal picture either. There is a bit of a N/S split this morning, more so on the GFS data with northern parts being a little bit cooler than average and southern parts being a bit milder

http://www.wetterzentrale.de/pics/MT8_Aberdeen_ens.png

http://www.wetterzentrale.de/pics/MT8_London_ens.png

However it is not really noteworthy except for a few sudden swings in temperature which may bring with them some active frontal features or squalls and as Neil suggests a few spikes in temperatures in prone locations. Somewhere like Aboyne could go from warm sunshine to snow within a 24hr period.

Second-mildest run out of the twenty on that particular date according to the London ensemble posted by Doctormog above.

Not really suggesting a "locked-in pattern" overall.

So the ECM was right yesterday then ? Looks like something that will take some shifting.

 Surely the time period in question has to have elapsed before anything can be judged as "right"?

Absolutely Michael. Second-guessing the model output in my opinion is no more wise than doing the same thing with the weather. Mother nature will always be one step ahead of us.

Yes of course, I mean the settled outlook that was shown by the GFS has been dropped.

Quite right Doc, but I would expect the broad theme to be correct, but as you say only time will tell.

In the meantime it feels quite raw today after a very slight frost last night.

It's the reason why I sided with ECM yesterday in my report that until ECM is on board along with its ensemble members I refuse to judge GFS and any other model in isolation as whatever folks say it's verification rates at 10 days plus especially are better than any other model even more so being GFS has 4 runs a day compared to 2 for ECM so has more chance of getting it right.

Right about what ???

Steady on there Jacko

God I had too much to drink last night LOL

A few observations  on December circulation types. Jn his book "The English Climate,the author H.H.Lamb.identified singularities of various weather types.For December he identified the 17-24th  as  December Continental  Anticyclones.He describes the typical circulation development as " anticyclonic development over central and sometimes nor,Europe tends to occur through spread (or movement) of  the Siberian winter towards N Russia (and Scandinavia ) from 9/12 onwards and development of Highs over France- central Europe in former maritime air about 20/12.

So Anticyclonic weather is no stranger to December.If asked which winter month has the highest level of blocking ie NAO-  circulation many of us I suspect would go for February.In fact over the last seventy winters the proportion of winter months having an NAO - circulation are December 49%,January 33% and February 39%.

Hope that puts things in context -but I would still expect December 2015 to be NAO +.

Very interesting roger63. Have always been very interested in Lamb's work and his studies on singularities.

Not sure if it is of any use or of much relevance the UK, but this chart shows the 60 year average (base: 1961-2010) of daily mean sea level pressure here in Ireland (it is based around a number of grib points from around the island)  that I extracted from ERA-15 & ERA -40 reanalysis database.

The chart shows some singularities of sorts regarding daily pressure trends over the winter months over this climate period. Interestingly, it shows that higher than average pressures is more often than not likely to occur during the mid-December period, and again during the early-mid part and late part of January. Regarding February, there is a more defined 'cyclonic' singularity during the first half of the month which then switches to a more anticyclonic 2nd half.

Huge temp contrast

It certainly looks that way ,  its not all about the South