Point taken and understood.

Indeed. 20% chance of light snow IMBY late on 16th...  GEFS are confident of SWrly winds from 24th.  That is 8-9 days away so still a chance of a change, I will eye tomorrow's 12z runs to see if this trend is maintained, or not... the writing appears to be on the wall...but the council are quick to wash it off...(roughly translated = more runs needed).

Sorry but is my calendar broken? I only see output out to January 25 on the ECM run. I'm not sure where your additional 20 days of output are to take us to mid Feb?

If (and its a very big if) the ECM verified there's the potential for the Atlantic and Canadian Arctic highs to join and drift east causing a major cold outbreak!  Will it happen like that? High unlikely, but there's more evidence of that evolution currently in the model output (I.e. It's consistent with the ECM op) than 4 weeks of zonality taking us to mid-Feb.

This evening's De Bilt ens. Some fairly stark differences in the ensemble consensus between ECM and GFS in the short and medium term...

Well into FI and still a cold feel for many

Well there are certainly plenty of "Spin Docs" on this forum on both sides of the argument 🙂 Lucky Alastair Campbell isn't posting! But it has been an uncertain winter. The next week is cold and dry for the S.E and milder elsewhere. Then, initially it looks like a burst of Atlantic stuff but after that it is back into the unknown. To be honest we've all been clueless recently and I reserve the right to be clueless about February and the start of March! Anyway I am old enough to have seen raging westerly gales turn into blizzards within 36 hours so although it is a much rarer occurrence these days and the form horse is not severe cold, I wouldn't be giving up on this winter just yet.

I go straight to the GEFS line graph now such is the 'unentertaining' nature of the NWP via a vis winter prospects.
And with only a couple of runs dipping below the -5 line it tells me all I need to know.

One ray of hope is the significant warming in the strat forecast quite consistently at the end of the month:
http://www.meteociel.fr/modeles/gfse_cartes.php?&ech=240&mode=10&carte=1

(move the time on to the last few frames)

While the GEFS show a spell of westerlies in the main, the ECM op has a slider low and a build of pressure behind it limiting westerlies to three or four days.

That ray of hope shines as brightly as an old 1970s torch running on a nearly dead AA battery. (We saw the same thing last year and it delivered diddly squat).

The only bright thing about having such shocklingly low stratospheric temperatures over the UK (other than the UV graphs, as we'll get a mini ozone hole again!) is that we have a chance of seeing nacreous clouds. I missed out last year, so another shot at seeing them would be quite nice!

There has been quite a lot of discussion on Twitter in the last few days about the possibility of an SSW bringing a pattern change in February. The problem is we have been hearing this every winter since the SSW concept gained traction and became fashionable.  

My take on the current output is that a transition back to more unsettled weather continues to look likely later this month. However, I wouldn't be surprised to see high pressure muting it to an extent in the south.

Doc, your GFS chart link is not correct. No space between "gif" and "the".

Yes, that caught my eye too. Would have been fascinating to see how a T+264 chart panned out.

Agreed SC. I have very little confidence in SSWs producing changes in the troposphere that are necessarily going to promote cold weather here. There's a world of difference beteeen 'does happen' and 'will happen'.

The nicest label for the overnight output is 'interesting'. To be honest anything would be better than several days of gloom in the current nomansland here beteeen the cold to the east and mild to the west.