In the interests of my support for accuracy and fair play, as of exactly 3pm today there has been 4.03% of the meteorological winter gone, so as near as dammit 96% left.  (31+31+28 =90 x24 =2160 hrs of winter.   72+15 =87 hrs gone at 3pm. 87/2160 *100 = 4.03%)

Could be idea to set up some sort of HTML countdown clock in terms of percentage of time remaining. 

These are the classic top 4 Euro-Atlantic regimes that ECMWF is using: NAO+ and NAO- (as you said) and then Scandinavian (or European) Blocking and Atlantic Ridge.

Snowy slider in the GFS 12 at 141h Stunner  perfect hit!

Yes looks just right (IMBY)

ukmo looks to have the slider in a similar position not quite perfect but not bad.

UKMO is also sliding but looks to make a bit more headway so probably snow risk a bit further north? 850 chart not available yet.

GEM has the first trough crossing the country but sets up a second slider three days later:

Anothe gfs snowy slider at 168!

Chilly night once that first slider rolls through on GFS!

The second one looks like bringing in some rather milder air though.

And the GFS is really quite similar to the GEM out to 180.

Very briefly to the extreme south. It's a snowfest though Bank!

GFS 12z:

Slider 1, Thursday night:

http://www.wetterzentrale.de/maps/GFSOPEU12_144_1.png

Slider 2, Monday daytime:

http://www.wetterzentrale.de/maps/GFSOPEU12_168_1.png

The "polar" vortex seems to be smashed to pieces here.

UKMO t144 850's

That shows the mild air making much more progress across the country, not so good for down here, but plenty of time for change one way or the other...

Happy with the GFS - a series of sliding lows each making slightly more progress up the country but then a northeasterly setting in at the end!

GEM is what we want to see. UKMO would bring a snowy breakdown, hard to say where it would go from there. we need that jet to dig south more

T384 on the GFS. Scorchio in the Shetlands, ice day in the Midlands :)