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 LLTNP 105m asl 

Well, looking at the EC15, nothing really that much on offer with cool, mediocre type stuff right up to day 15. Certainly for the winter storm lovers amongst us (I pretend that there might be some kindred spirits on here) it is looking increasingly likely that this will be yet another winter that is going rapidly down the pan. 

I use to be really negative and given last years output  - with models flip flopping and persistent downgrades I had little faith and we have reason to feel a little let down by the models - but that being said we are only a few days into the winter ....so we can't write it off just yet. Let's hope this materialises - i mean at least we have an Arctic blocking in December as well as a negative NAO, Easterly QBO and La Nina ! - This combination with the fact that it's only beginning of December we can't complain can we!? If things are still the same by mid January then we have every right to rant but until then it's too early to tell. The CFS v2 forecast a blowtorch winter especially for December to be above average in terms of temps with HP to the south and now this has recently flipped - it's all explained on Gav's winter forecast videos if you check.

Remember back in the summer we were forecast to go into a weak El Nino or Moderate one - now look how that flipped to La Nina!?

We could see a mid winter easterly this year because we have the ingredients this time around and last year we were very unlucky with the block - this time we have so much more in favour of colder weather. Most importantly, is establishing and building the Arctic HP/NORTHERN block at an early stage of the winter - which is what we have done so that's a tick! To get a northern blocking so early on in the season is a big positive if you want cold wintry weather! Once you have the block over the pole  it's hard to shift and it splits the Polar Vortex and pushes cold air out of the Arctic region into the mid latitudes as seen below. - Looks like we also have a southerly track jet too and if you were to run this below sequence of the ensembles it looks like the LP will slip southwards thanks to the block and the block will retrogress westwards and join the Greenland HP and then we are talking proper cold like bitterly cold easterly/north easterly winds ! A long way off but something to watch out for.

That would be because minor disturbances aren't shown until quite close to the event (sometimes inside 24 hours).

This issue arose only because someone called the low res GFS 18z a snowfest when the charts showed no such thing.  I take your point but if we're discussing the charts then.......   Apart from which it needs to be an approach of 'feet firmly on the ground'; getting carried away over some charts showing favourable synoptics for cold weather fans is frequently just setting up for disappointment.

That may be a contender for the Guinness Book of records for the most premature call of a variant of 'winter is over'.

By my reckoning we're 3 days into the 90 days of winter, so about 3.33% gone.  It does seem a tad weird to be writing off the remaining 96.67%

ECM 12z ensemble suite for London

The change from mild to very cold on Thursday looks assured.   However, a bit of a hiatus has developed for Sunday/Monday with a majority of members predicting the milder interlude as the slider LP works through: the precipitation chart shows quite a wet period during Sunday with a few runs delivering a soaking. Beyond that rather more scatter has appeared and the mean has ticked up a little as a consequence.

Depends on what way you look at it of course. I would actually say that there are probably some similarities in terms of what is happening here, between the general setup with we are seeing just now and the type of setup which dominated last winter. If we go back to last winter, we were in a sort of north to south set up with the jet stream with high pressure close by. That gave us a dry winter, but the problem which we had then was that we were generally on the western side of that block.

If this was the middle of summer just now, that would be exactly the sort of setup which we would be looking for because that would then result in hot southerly winds coming all the way up from North Africa resulting in temperatures getting well above 30°C down south and into the high 20s even in parts of Scotland.

Because we had that setup at this time of year though, this just resulted in mild southerlies which then just ended up ruining our winter. To make matters worse, such a setup was never really anywhere to be seen once we got to the summer and for those of here in Scotland in particular, it ended up being a poor summer. Now, we have a north to south orientation of the jet stream again but this time, the blocking high is to the west of us instead of to the east. That then puts us on the colder side of the jet which means that it has generally been a lot colder overall recently due to those resulting frequent northerlies.

However, the fact we have had high pressure close by this time has meant that so far, it has been dry on this occasion as well. If you want cold weather and get a lot of snow from those northerlies, this setup is just perfect. For me in Edinburgh, the setup is better than what we have been used to for a while since we have been getting more in the way of frost than what we have been used to in recent years.

My problem with that though is that here in Edinburgh, northerlies at this time of year are just dry winds and yet, I am someone who likes to see some snow at some point in time. In order to get that here though, we need to be getting a proper easterly rather than those dry northerlies so that these snow showers are then blown further in towards the Edinburgh area from off the North Sea. For that to happen, we would need that blocking high to be just to the north of us somewhere between Scandinavia and Greenland. That would then be feeding in an easterly wind from Siberia and forcing the jet onto a southerly track. However, I don't see any signs of that happening on the latest output. Having said that though, I would imagine that this current scenario would probably be even worse for someone who wants to see wet and stormy weather because then, it would more likely to be a mild, zonal and westerly setup which you would be looking for and I'm not seeing any signs of that on the horizon either.