http://www.wetterzentrale.de/pics/Rtavn15018.gif

Pretty worrying for NW Wales by the end of the weekend if this much rain falls I'd have thought 

Very different outcome from the pub run lol

Yes Sc but id always side with Steve a great poster and his right a forum has to be fun sometimes ones wisdom and experience over the years like Steves is worth much more than a thousands words only for it to go 8ITS UP ANYWAY.

Massive outlier though K , as you'd expect

Indeed Patrick

Have to say I'm not, looks pretty windy mild and wet for the forseeable with maybe 1 or 2 dry days in between systems.

If there is no room for optimism, what is left?

Seeing some promising scenarios in FI keeps the interest going at least.

ECM seems to have picked up the quieter spell for the south with HP close by from 192h -240h.

0H GEFS Ens have 50 % cold members out at 384h mostly north westerlies but with the odd Greenland HP eg Ens 13

http://www.meteociel.fr/modeles/gefs_cartes.php?code=13&ech=384&mode=0&carte=0

Civil War seems to have broken out over on the other side and its only the first day of winter!

Meanwhile well done Roger for the chart of the day. There is still a chance of a cold spell around mid month but odds are against this morning.

Not much to get excited about with this mornings models, a drier 2-3 day slot may well come to fruition around mid month more so for southern areas and the jet looks like tracking southwards, which is of more interest if it's colder weather you're  looking for.

I posted in haste..  I meant the cold into eastern europe reminded me of what the charts were pointing to a week ago, with a small ridge of HP moving over the north of the UK - forcing the colder Europe air over the UK.... on this run - that ended up being shunted off east into Russia, rather west towards us

My point was - that kind of build up hadnt been present on the GFS for a few days now.  

The boundary between the exceptionally 'warm' and seasonably chilly air on Thursday has been trending a little south over the past 48 hours, the result being that the heaviest rain looks to start off across southern parts of Wales and extending NE from there, but drift down across southern England over the following 9 hours. This limits the extremity of the rain totals for the former region, but locations within still look to be hit hardest. Meanwhile the far south may see temps as high as 15*C for a time ahead of the rain.

The frontal boundary may stall and develop a second wave across the far south on Friday, though the rain doesn't look anywhere near as heavy as it does wrt the first wave.

Further ahead in time, Saturday continues to look rough for the northern half of the country in an unwelcome repeat of last weekend. Soon after, the south will need to watch out for a shortwave low coming in from the WSW which looks like it may peak in intensity close to or over the middle of the UK, the strongest winds affecting the southern half.

It looked nasty on the ECM 00z op run and the GFS 06z op run has managed to mimic that outcome closely enough to give some sense of what wind gusts are possible. Below is early Saturday on the left, and the (noon Sunday) peak of the shortwave low's impacts on the right:

Plenty of rain around too, hitting the west hardest - though I suspect GFS is tapering off the totals too quickly when looking east from there. We can also see the area hit hardest by Thursday's rain:

Bear in mind that's the 5 day total so doesn't include Sunday's event for the south, for example. 

 

Until we get to that, it's looking set to be on the rough side over the weekend with more gales. Of course, that's me getting ahead of myself again.

it does look pretty mild at times- I could easily see some places recording 14 or 15c should any brightness occur. 

Sadly it also seems to be quite wet at times and flooding could be an issue for some 

'Tis now!

 18 flood warnings out, the majority for mid and north Wales http://www.shoothill.com/floodmap/ - and if the map below verifies they'll be upped to severe flood warning. Don't expect to go for a casual drive along the A483 Newtown - Oswestry this weekend!

Some output shows any cold air staying a long way off

http://www.wxmaps.org/pix/temp4.html

and even if things switched round and we got an easterly, it wouldn't be that cold - scroll down to see the anomalies which make Russia look absolutely toasty!

Looking further afield beyond the weekend, it does look as though we are building towards a peak in Atlantic activity around the early to mid part of next week with a peak +NAO and crashing heights around Iceland:

http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/precip/CWlink/pna/nao.sprd2.gif

ECM says it looks something like this:

http://mp1.met.psu.edu/~fxg1/ECMWF_0z/test8.gif

It would be my call that we will probably see some of the fiercest storms of the season during this period next week.

Further beyond that, there is a general for the Atlantic quietening down towards the mid part of the month. Nothing in the -NAO territory though.