I think they're anomaly figures, Russ  

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It looks quite plausible with a mixture of Euro high for November and something like a Bartlett for December. January shows a complete switch around to an easterly-dominated month: not sure what signals there are for that but you'd bet against it....

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As all the October indices are now in, here’s an early look at how things could pan out for the early part of the coming Winter season.

I’ve determined that the current analogues for this stage of Autumn 2017 are:

1962 (ENSO, QBO and Solar cycle match)
1967 (ENSO, QBO and Solar cycle match)
1984 (ENSO, Solar Cycle and September Synoptic match)
2015 (N. Atlantic SST profile, Arctic Ice Extent and Sept Synoptic match)

1985 is a weaker analogue (ENSO, Solar Cycle), but did match quite well with August 2017 synoptic patterns.

So, for October, I still see an anticyclonic signal (as I mentioned in the Autumn thread), perhaps more so for the south/SE Britain now, with a dominant W/SW flow over much of the country especially in the north. The current long-range models are not showing this more Anticyclonic theme at the moment, but I think come the second half it will turn generally drier and more settled overall. Likely to be a rather mild month, and on the dry side especially in the south.

November is an interesting one this year. The Novembers of 1962 and 1985 were both cold and wintry with frequent N & E winds. Nov 1984 was mild and wet, and of course Nov 2015 was extremely mild and zonal. Very contrasting Novembers there! However I think there are clues to determine which direction November 2017 will take. Nov 2015 can probably be discounted because of the extreme El Nino development that occurred, and it does look like October 2017 is more or less running closer to October 1984 (synoptically) than the other years. So my prognosis would be a November this year more akin to Nov 1984, that is fairly mild and unsettled overall, with some spells of SE and E winds, maybe bringing a little wintriness to some locations briefly.

Like November, there is another split in the matches showing for December 2017, so it’s hard to tell which direction it could go at the moment!  If we go with 1984 again for the time being, then that suggests a mildish and fairly unsettled December with a Russian High dominating, bringing SE winds at times.

So at the moment, I would say “no” to an early Winter, although if we really see a strong Anticyclonic dominance in the second half of October, I think it could be game on for a wintry November!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Thanks, Andy J. Shows how difficult it is to get a pattern match. There's always some crucial factor which doesn't fit! But an interesting read.

I liked Retron's graphs for Manston winters. It's funny - I looked at those plots, and my first thought was how little variation there actually has been in terms of weather over the last 70 years. Despite the obvious cycle of the AMO in the bottom line, the only real standouts for me were just how abnormally cold 1963 was, and how unyielding was the ice down there in 1985. Other than that, if you weren't actually living there and getting frustrated by the absence of the specific, Siberian easterly you crave, then you'd glance at those lines and say, what's the big deal? They just go up and down from start to finish. (Admittedly it doesn't help that the CET had the same value 70 years ago at the start of the graph as it did last year! Coincidence, I know.)

Going back to the figures on the previous page, for Manston winter temperatures, again I was surprised at how little the mean has actually varied from start to finish. Especially if you were to strip out the extremes of 1963, 1985, Dec. 2010 and Dec. 2015.

On the other hand, I suppose the latter actually supports your point in a way: of the four events which really do stand out from the norm, the three cold ones were in the past, while the mild one was in the present.

But extraordinary events aside, I'm still sceptical about whether the overall, year-in, year-out, 70-year data actually do illustrate any fundamental change.

I think the best summary was the one in your last post - that memorable cold events are so marginal in a maritime climate, that any deviation from the norm renders them suddenly impossible to achieve. So what on the ground, to someone living in Leysdown-on Sea, manifests itself as frustratingly boring weather and a real change in the winter experience, might equally appear utterly unremarkable to me, who's never lived there and still can't get over the once-in-several-lifetimes glory of the December we experienced here in 2010.

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Looking like it will stay mild and pleasantly warm for most of the eastern USA: - at least for the next two weeks!

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The point was that we don't get midwinter easterlies any more, for whatever reason. Some parts of the UK, such as where I am, rely on them for severe cold.

I would like nothing more than to see the 21-year drought ended, but as ever it's impossible to predict when it'll end. What I will say, though, is going back 100 years there's never been such a prolonged absense of them.

Of course, if you live somewhere that can get similar conditions without requiring an easterly, you'd not have noticed!

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But the snow is spreading in Siberia

http://www.natice.noaa.gov/pub/ims/ims_gif/DATA/cursnow_asiaeurope.gif

 

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I just feel that the perfect, midwinter easterly you need down there is no more than another marginal event. Elsewhere in the country  the timing, source and angle of attack doesn't have to be as precise as needed in coastal Essex. As you mentioned, such an event did pop up in Feb. 2005, but was just too late in the month to be fully effective. At a higher latitude or altitude the timing may not have mattered. Similarly a blast may not have to originate from so far away and track as precisely westwards, if you live elsewhere. 

That's why I'm not entirely convinced that there's been any kind of fundamental change; just the same mixture of possible set-ups occurring, but without the very precise one you need. The weather could come repeatedly from the east from October to March, for years on end, without necessarily delivering exactly the right set-up in that relatively small window of opportunity you have down there.

(You often mention, with regard to Feb. 1985, that your grandmother(?) warned you at the time that this sort of thing was rare.)

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I don't think it is all that marginal

I think Retron is right about this. You need a blocking High Pressure over Scandinavia or Northern Russia (maybe Iceland)  to feed cold air with a long continental track and then across the North Sea to pick up moisture (as in Lake Effect).

In recent years we have had some near misses but one of 3 events seems to just mess up the scenario (1) It only lasts a couple of days before collapsing (2) It regresses back east to let the Atlantic back in as far as the UK or (3) It slips south and feeds in South-Easterlies which can be cold but don't pick up Lake Effect mositure

It's not just the Essex Coast - it is the main snow bringer all the way down the Eastern UK from Newcastle to Kent and including London on some occasions

I see no reason why we can't get lucky in the future though - even this winter

 

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We've had frigid and snow-bearing easterlies in recent years, though.

In Jan 2010 we had one from around the 8th/9th lasting several days (we had snow lying on the ground for about 3/4 weeks)

The late Nov/Dec 2010 brilliant spell had a mix of synoptics, but the early days of the big freeze had several consecutive days of an easterly flow.

In Jan 2013 and, more especially, March 2013 we had spells of easterlies that brought widespread snow.

The difference was that in all of the above cases, the easterly feed was coldest further north, with the blocking high located either over Iceland or more northern Scandinavia.

The March 13 easterly was particularly notable for me because easterlies normally bring zilch in terms of snow, as the Pennines act as a block (even Jan 87 brought a sum total of a 10 minute flurry). However, the specific direction of that event delivered several inches of snow IMBY - and relatively deep drifts where we don't usually get drifts!

I can also remember a few events in the last 10 or so years where an easterly flow has delivered serious falls of snow in the SE - the famous Thames Streamer, and that dumping in Leatherhead where Bren posted pics of snow around 30cm deep in HBY.

I guess the point is that the easterlies have been there but, as SFB explains, the cold and snow that they have brought just hasn't been hitting Darren's part of Kent, which needs a specific set-up, which he was lucky to get a few times during his childhood.

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Pfft Easterlies. Bring on the Greenland High. 😁

The daily CET stats are interesting in that respect

If you just look at the winter months and the Maximum Daily CET ( better than the Mean or Min for judging the likelihood of prolonged snow) you can get a list of every one of the 91 possible date records for December (31) January (31) and February (29) going back to 1878

If you then plot the date records for highest and lowest CET Maxima on that date you get :

The increase in date records nearer the current date and decrease in cold date records is very clear

In fact there have only been 3 years ince 1987 with cold date records (2010, 1995, 1987) contributing 9 date records out of 91 possibles. On the other hand there have been 17 years with warm date records in that 30 years consisting of 52 of the possible 91 dates

 

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That was a pathetic one, Saint. Brought nowhere near the snow amounts first predicted and infact initiated a very slow thaw.

 

Late January 1996

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As 'nippy' as the winter of 2009/2010 & the period Nov/Dec 2010 were, I don't recall any 'true' easterly occurring. Perhaps in the UK they did, but they failed to reach here.

The last authentic easterly I can recall occurred for a couple of days back in Jan 2008.

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I'd still put Jan 2010 as the best winter episode here, based on the depth of snow received (17cm) and longevity of it lying (3-4 weeks).

I'm sure there've been many much better easterlies, but I was just using the event as an example of easterlies that I could remember.

Late Jan 96 didn't deliver anything memorable here... else I'd have remembered it  I'm not that concerned with weather stats for the sake of them, just what it was like 'on the ground'. And cold without snow always seems like a waste to me (and doubly-annoying as cold easterlies generally bring snow to parts that are a long way from MBY)

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What a lovely chart - and of course, 1996 wasn't even an especially cold easterly episode in the scheme of things. As mentioned several times, it's the depth of cold air aloft that we've been lacking.

In that late January case, 850s didn't even reach -10C down here, yet the wodge of cold air aloft was very thick, having been sourced east of the Urals a few days earlier. The whole frigid mass moved across us like a lump of ice and although the North Sea did warm it significantly (note the -7C over the Netherlands), there was such a depth of cold air and it was moving so fast that it simply couldn't be mixed out in time. Result? Powder snow, icicles, a penetrating ice day and so forth.

It's not just midwinter easterlies which have been severely lacking since 1997 - whenever we've had an easterly waft, it's been just that: a waft, not the screaming "lazy wind" sort of easterly.

When we do get a sniff of an easterly (see the very end of November 2010 down here), the block seems invariably to collapse before it's managed to whizz that deep upper cold air over us, allowing it time to mix out (as in the very begining of December 2010 here). Or it's simply too late, such as that February 2005 example (which saw -14C at 850 here and a decent "reloading" pattern).

 

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Thanks Lanky, astonishing statistics, I just wonder what sort of numbers we will be looking at in 10 years time.

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Those 1996 charts show the classic double block: high pressure near Greenland and over Scandinavia.  It has often been highlighted that you need that pattern to prevent the block coming under too much pressure and either retreating or being squeezed south/south-east.

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That really is a remarkable bit of data. I know many of us on here will have had a "gut feeling" that things have swung in favour of mild versus cold in the last couple of decades, but as that graph shows it goes back all the way to the 80s.

 

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Yup, for a sustained spell a Scandi/Greenland block, extending over Iceland, is pretty much required. 2010 was the last time we came close to it, but that was more biased towards Greenland than Scandi. Before that? Feb 2005 again - that one went on for a couple of weeks.

(It'd be interesting to see how the jet pattern has changed since the 90s, too. My gut feeling is that given a "will the energy go north or south  when it splits" scenario, it'd be more biased to "go north and collapse the high" rather than "go south and prolong the block". Not sure how to quantify that one though!)

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