http://climate.copernicus.eu/s/charts/c3s_seasonal/c3s_seasonal_spatial_lfpw_mslp_3m?time=2017100100,1464,2017120100&type=ensm&area=area08

Interesting forecast data from Meteo France and ECM for the winter period.

Positive height anomalies over Iceland and Greenland. I have to honest I’m surprised - I was led to believe all the data was favouring a low heights over the northern latitudes. Maybe I haven’t been paying attention! 

Thanks to Gavin for posting the link. 

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GLOSEA5 still is or shall I say was at the last update. I’m still far from convinced by any long range model though.

I do fear the charts are up to the same old tricks with regards to FI. Some interesting scenarios developing. But consistently popping up in the last 6-8 slides.

We are always all a bit naive going into the latter stages of Autumn. It happens every year. Its been 5 months since we last saw cold blues interact with the British IIses on the models. We quickly forget the months of turmoil we went through to discount very appealing FI modelling. Im usually December/January before i wise up...... not this year.

I know there's also plenty of chatter about with underlying signals and long term modelling. But they were showing that too last year I'm almost sure of it.

The way i see it, is the models are almost expecting Deep LPs to form. and as they typically explode into life at short notice, with a short term absence of them, the models instead revert back to a default of what we should see. ie blocking.

We need to be really careful at this time of the year of getting excited about what is essentially a figment of a supercomputers imagination.


We had our first Grass frost here on the Wirral today - so i suppose thats some interim consolation....

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It also misses out the biggest snow event of the past 30+ years around here: January 6 2010.

 

It says 6th-9th Jan, SE Scotland, NE England 1-2ft, S. England, SE England 3-4". 

3-4"? It was 10-12" around this part of the country!

 

I also don't recall this for 2010:

2nd Dec, Southern England 10-15" widely

Really? I looked back through my photos and there is nothing from early December. I would certainly have recorded it if there was anything like that amount of snow. The only snow pics I have from Dec 2010 are of a dusting at Winchester Xmas market on Dec 19, and a cm or two on the ground on Xmas Day and Boxing Day.

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IRI has been favouring anomalous winter warmth over Greenland for months. From recollection I noticed it as early as July. To me that suggests positive height anomalies over Greenland. 

http://iri.columbia.edu/climate/forecast/net_asmt_nmme/2017/oct2017/images/NDJ18_Eur_tmp.gif

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There's always going to be some anomalies, given the limited space for writing. It'd be great if there was a coordinated weather-reporting network, which could collate snowfall/depth in each event - perhaps even produce a map.

 

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Certainly missed out on that here (nothing much here in Dec 2010 until 18/12) and presumably so did you

But MetO chart shows you must have been close !

                   

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The people who did best out of that as the chart shows was North East britain, and central southern England.  Us in the Northwest had a typical snowfall delivery.   Though i know just north of Liverpool had lie 10" of snow at one point.  the most we had was probably 4" though i think we had two falls like that over that winter.

 

Point being, 2010 wasnt an exceptional snowfall year for Wirral.  The cold on the other hand - was.  Ive never seen so many low day time values before.... to the point where the forecasters were very non plussed by the fact they were daying daytime maxiumum , again no higher than minus 6 in some places.  

 

Also - one thing that also stood out was the number of upgraded snow events.  With a forecasted light shower for southern england quickly turning into another amber alert for "another 6inches" was almost a daily ocrrance at one point.

 

most of us go years of not seeing any snowfalls of that ilk, to instead have it almost on a daily basis.

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There was only one good snowfall for the south in the 2010/11 winter cold spell. This fell in early dec dumping up to 6 inches of proper powdery snow even here on portsea island. 

 

NE England and E Scotland did fantastically well - it was here that the early news reports were coming from

As you say, us further west looked like we'd miss out on the snow after a few promising charts 24/48 hours out melted away into dryness. That changed as you say - it was on Friday 17th December. I was expecting a brief period of snow (per the forecast), hoping for an inch. Driving home westwards (the front was moving in from the WNW, IIRC) was amazing. Snowed heavily until around 9.30pm, leaving approx. 16cm. We live in south St Helens, and north of the town got it even deeper. On Xmas Eve we went for a meal to a country pub between St Helens & Southport. Even after the typical compaction over a week (very little melt, given the temps!!), the snow depth was comfortably over 20cm.

You're right about upgrades, too. Like I said, I was only expecting a thick dusting but got half a foot. And there was my legendary trip to York on the last Sunday in Nov, after I'd reassured my worrying missus in the morning (with the help of a BBC forecast on News24) that we were fine and at worst we'd get a flurry...

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Hard to tell from that map but the nearest dot to me looks like Odiham, probably, to my south with 10cm. To my north were dots of only 2 or 3cm. I don't think I had more than about 5cm. Must have just missed out on the heavy stuff here - but then I did get close to a foot in the previous January, being right in the sweet spot in that occasion!

 

The equivalent map for January 2010 shows Odiham with the highest total in the south, at 26cm:

 

 

Quite rare for several places in the south to have 20cm+ of snow at both the start and finish of the year!

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Early Dec 2010 was great for snow here, but the second cold spell around Christmas was very disappointing - at most we had a dusting of snow, you can even see it on satellite images with a big area of essentially no snow in the Vale of York.

Very cold though - so cold that the Rive Aire in Leeds city centre froze, and there was a beautiful rime frost for days. One of my neighbours had a pond with a fountain and I remember how all of the water had frozen on one of the trees that overhung it, creating some spectacular icicles. People were stopping and taking pictures. 

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I don't remember it being two cold spells, just one continuous spell.

 

Edit: You're right. Looking back over the temp records, after maxes hovering around between +3c and -4c, from 25th Nov, max temps rocketed to 8c on 9th Dec before falling back to 3c, rising again to 7c by 16th, then plunging once more. In the following 10 days, the temp only maxed positive on 2 days (1c each time).

Even though the rest of the winter was unremarkable, I'd take the 10/11 winter anytime.

 

 

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Opposite to here. However mid December to mid January 2009/10 was far better in the Chilterns.

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I have to say Nov/Dec 2010 was far and away the most impressive cold spell I can recall.

Close second to me would be January 1982.

 

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2013 for me considering i saw falling snow every Friday for a period of about 4-5 weeks. Probably the most falling snow ive ever seen in a winter

The fact it didnt really stick is another discussion point.

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Same here - spectacular in every way. Days of snow on the ground, thundersnow, icicles everywhere, sea frozen over, coldest month ever recorded here.... I'm not sure I'll ever see the like of it here again.

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Around these parts it was impressive more for  depth of cold rather than accumulative snow  ( though 6” is not to be scoffed at 😎 ), that honour belongs to 78/79 and February 96 with 2009/10 also being a fantastic winter for cold and snow around these parts as was January 1984.

Positivly balmy compared to February 1986 the most epic cold spell in my lifetime and a proper siberian express

Yeah, although even the mild spell mid-month was at best average, temps around 7-8C.

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