Quite an interesting piece.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-11-03/europe-s-mildest-year-since-1964-to-linger-before-winter-freeze.html

I have had a thought about the past few winters for a while now and wondered what more experienced weather types thought?

Over the past 8 years or so have we simply seen the jet realign itself. Initially from 2008 to 2011 the polar front moved a long way south. Since 2011 it has started to move north again, which gave us slider lows and snow in 2012/13 winter and then it moved further north in 2013/14 winter which gave us wind and rain......

This year, will we see a further northwards movement of the jet/polar front to closer to its 2006/07 winter position of sliding up from SW to NE over Scotland? A depressing thought I know, but what do people think? 

This is the first Autumn/Winter that I'm not actually searching for snow in FI and biting my nails waiting for good vibes in the MO thread...

All I'm looking for this year is dry and calm conditions..anything else would be a bonus.

6 weeks till Winter Solstice, usually once the clocks change its doom and gloom but I've really not battered an eyelid to it this year, the time is flying and apart from some wet days it's been very mild indeed, even Sunday still managed an hour in the pub garden with a thin jumper on

P.S I've removed my Jonesy/Heart/Snow Avatar .....Don't want to Jinx this winter 

Lets not forget the Met Office are running the high top GLOSEA model which received quite a lot of publicity a couple of years ago:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-19584302

This correctly hindcast winter 2009/10. This year it is apparently favouring a milder than average outcome.

The same model that presumably failed to pick the signal for last winter -  their 3 month outlook for contingency planners for DJF 2013/14  was ...

"The current outlook for December-January-February says the chance of the coldest scenario happening is between 20 and 25% and the chances that the period will fall into the warmest scenario is between 10 and 15%.

So while uncertainty is quite large, below average temperatures are more likely than above average (for note, average maximum temperatures for the UK in winter are about 6.6C and average minimum temps are about 0.9C)...

Currently it says that after today, we’ll see settled weather and fairly normal temperatures into the first week of December before the chance of some colder, more changeable weather towards the end of next week. This may last a few days before giving way to milder and unsettled weather.

For the mid to latter part of December, there are indications that temperatures are likely to remain near or slightly below average for the time of year, but otherwise fairly normal conditions for early winter are most likely."

Now it appears that the early silly season in regards to the charts are subsiding I'm looking forward to settling down to months of checking how many pages have been created into the MO thread in a day. My theory goes

0-1 pages Mild southwesterlys little rain almost bartlett like conditions
1-2 Raging Zonal conditions flooding and talk of the Arc or some far distance blocking up at T240
3-5 Colder conditions are being progged excitement levels on the up
5-10 Hyperbole mixed with experienced posters ramping it as -5 uppers clear the south coast....enter Steve Murr
10 + Blizzard type conditions or a complete u-turn leading to universal winter is over posts and general wrist slashing.

Looks like a combination of 0-2 pages for the time being then.


p.s can only imagine what this would be like over on NW (I think it would include personal insults somewhere)

No - that's your interpretation, where as  in the Met Offices own words "So while uncertainty is quite large, below average temperatures are more likely than above average".

They did not say a little below or near average!

This winter will be an excellent test again of the Met office models - made so much more exciting by the OPI. Should be interesting.

The MetO are correct as am I.   There was indeed a greater probability of colder than of warmer temps.  But there was still only a 30-40% probability of either scenario playing out.

great post and so true...had a dip into the other place the other day...astonished to see about 10 pages of stuff forecasting a winter Armageddon! Just one look at the met office extended outlook or Gibby's excellent synopsis tells a completely different story!

I agree with solar cycles

As much as i admire the Met in other departments.  One has to wonder what all the millions actually goes into towards improving matters.  Though i do enjoy their High res models.  Did that come out of the £97Mill upgrade a few years ago?

If THAT much money gets spent on imrpovements, and yet we dont see any improvement, then its fair game to as questions., with a end game aim of improving processes until they do.

Consequently i really cant wait til spring and see how the OPI verifies.  

I admit i haven't.  However, I do have alot of experience in the production of and ongoing support of  implementing complex software systems in large global organisations.  Crunching large data sets and subsequent calculations in over night batches.  I understand how much large IT projects cost.  If the general public new how much banks for example spend on relatively small amounts of change - there would be uproar.  As it happens, the changes are in private companies. So its shareholders that take the brunt.

For the Metoffice - its publicly funded and open to scrutiny.  £97Mill might sound alot, but alot of that would be soaked up by private contractors and off the shelf software products, plus ongoing support.  

Like i said - it will be interesting to see if the OPI verifies on a yearly basis (lets get 2014 out of the way first though 🙂 ) and if it does, big questions will need to be asked of Metoffice as to why there isnt such a large bang for the buck.

Obviously this is all without hindsight.  Meto could be spot on this year - in which case - thumbs up - well done.