Yes, it looks that way.  Its a case of ride out the storm (or gale force winds) for as long as it takes.  Think of the positives - cheaper heating bills and great for generating CO2 free wind energy on all those offshore turbines.  Classic rain shadow weather and the charts remind me of January 1974 when the west of Scotland managed 10 inches of orographic and frontal rainfall in a 24 hour period

Edit - I don't expect the pattern to necessarily be "locked in " for the whole month, it is simply impossible to be certain of that, there is a fair chance but no more.

When you see reds and purple-blacks in close proximity, you know its bad. Abandon all hope.

Barrow!

As for the model output this evening, it's about as bad as it gets if you like cold, settled weather (or cold, snowy weather for that matter). The risk of damaging winds doesn't exactly endear me to the outlook either!

I bet you were very tempted to say 'into February'?

And thanks for reminding me you had correctly forecast the current set-up. I had quite forgotten.

The current output looks at complete odds with the OPI and Cohen's winter forecast as I understand it. One incorrect call doesn't invalidate a methodology anymore than making one correct call would validate it. Nonetheless, if the GFS/GEFS is picking the pattern correctly for the first half of Jan it does look to have crashed and burned in fairly spectacular style this winter. GloSea 5 would on the other hand would have done well. 

I don't know if the CFS models the strat, if it does then perhaps some signals on this are due to it.

Visible weakening of the tropospheric vortex by about the 13th January

By the 19th January AO has gone very strongly negative 

Cold to UK by 23rd.

Any chance the models are experiencing the New Years day data loss myth ala 'boxing day commercial airliner pilots staying at home syndrome'? PMSL

Tell me something I don't know... the first half of January has been looking very zonal for many days now.

We can usually rely on GFS having a bias to take the jet too far north and lows too far NE beyond 4-5 days range, so as long as the other models keep the jet further south I'm seeing enough reason to stick with a gradual lowering of temperatures during this zonal period with the jet starting to invade Europe at times.

This coincides with a gradual reduction in mobility across the U.S. and Atlantic which allows a rise in mean pressure to our west and northwest. Whether that allows for a more marked ridge in the third week of January is anyone's guess.

Up in the stratosphere a SSW continues to remain just out of reach. In an update about a week ago Cohen adjusted the likely SSW time to the second half of January, and it's quite ironic that since then we've had the models showing good potential for the first week of the month. As it is, the revised outlook could still come through thanks to wave breaking being shown to continue for the foreseeable - but the level of success will be a mere shadow of what it would have been had the original November outlook been close to the mark.

Meanwhile the snow cover feed backs required for the October Pattern Index forecast appear to have gone AWOL this year. I have seen little in the way of explanation for this, though some have suggested that it was at least partly down to the arrangement of Arctic Sea Ice.

GEM breaks the pattern a bit earlier than GFS

http://modeles.meteociel.fr/modeles/gem/runs/2015010112/gem-0-234.png?12

For the umpteenth time, it's not a myth. There are fewer flights in general over the Christmas period and there is less data going in as a result. Coincidentally there's been a marked drop in model accuracy recently.

http://www.emc.ncep.noaa.gov/gmb/STATS/html/new_acz5.html

http://www.emc.ncep.noaa.gov/gmb/STATS/html/new_acz6.html

As it happens, I've been keeping a tally of data counts. Note that throughout the week it's been lower than normal.

Time  Aircraft  Ship/Synop obs
23/06 113141 73720
23/12 112318 65868
23/18 192319 73024
24/00 193542 63402
24/06 115009 73299
24/12 101293 65816
24/18 177831 72963
25/00 155527 63069
25/06   62505 72938
25/12   49240 65391
25/18 151856 72553
26/00 154841 62917
26/06   63829 72803
26/12   88755 65206
26/18 172599 72806
27/00 173547 63224
27/06   88318 73457
27/12   81907 65504
27/18 168041 72546
28/00 169470 62879
28/06   78497 72891
28/12   74638 65365
28/18 168161 72014
29/00 173376 63159
29/06   76426 73456
29/12   76627 65714
29/18 171563 73226
30/00 168395 63013
30/06 106486 73513
30/12 104496 65991
30/18 183446 73130
31/00 183384 62940
31/06 108275 73420
31/12   92388 65407
31/18 172494 72354
 1/00  162675 61902
 1/06    63539 72287

I think I am the only one who is liking the current output.....

Ask Jacko

Yes

Waiting for pics Mike

Back to your igloo Mike 

Today http://www.meteociel.fr/modeles/ecmwf/runs/2015010112/ECH1-0.GIF?01-0

8th of Jan http://www.meteociel.fr/modeles/ecmwf/runs/2015010112/ECH1-168.GIF?01-0

Definite weakening of the vortex visible now at the 200hpa level on the JMA (which has some of the best disruption at the 10hpa level)

The vortex has been entirely displaced, although unfortunately it now sits to the west of greenland. However it very clearly has been disrupted here, there is even a weak easterly flow in the barents sea. This image actually resembles the strat vortex now implying a 192hr lag for 10mb->200mb. 

i think the OPI and SIA winter indicators are dead in the water, crashed and burned is the correct term.

Maybe winter weather in the NH is so chaotic it can never be forecasted with any degree of worthwhile accuracy and I am fed up of reading (mostly on NW) all the waffle about MJO's, SSW's PDO,s etc and how they all point to cold.

Clearly all these so called 'background signals' are not worth a nickel and to be honest LRF's are not much better than they were in the 1970's.

What parameters does the GloSea 5 use anyway? Clearly it was much closer to the mark. 

Andy

Very true Andy

And too be fair to Matthew he has beat this drum forever

And waffle is exactly what it is

Dire is the word.Next Mondays HP ridge is rapidly pushed aside leaving nearly 2 weeks of flat  strong jet with little sign as yet of any relief.When does the impact of the much vaunted SSW come into effect.?

I don't think the OPI theory is "dead in the water" in that an early build-up of snow cover across Eurasia during October (which is essentially what the OPI is attempting to measure) is one of the factors that can point to more blocking and cold weather in Europe during winter.

However, there are/were other factors that were apparent when I was going through my winter updates. Atlantic SST's weren't/aren't well set up for a negative NAO. This point of the solar cycle (coming down from solar maximum) tends to be the worst part of the cycle for getting cold winters and as we know, Europe seem's to be particularly prone to being effected by the solar cycle.

What I noticed when I was doing my winter updates is that all those "Big OPI/cold winter years" were around solar minimum. There wasn't a recorded example of a rapid build up in Siberian snow cover around solar maximum.

Hopefully some of that early Siberian snow cover will feedback to a colder/blocked pattern for February.

Agree Andy. Once upon a time I used to look at the models and that was it. This thread discussed the charts as shown. Nowadays, it is pretty much beyond me, in part owing to my age (and the subsequent 'can't be bothered to learn it all') and the other part being that it is just fancy stuff which essentially adds very little to forecasting beyond day 5, day 10, day 14 or month 1, 2 or 3. Generally speaking, most LRFs are wrong but alarmingly, the author could be led to believe that their theory/putting together of info is the magic formula if they actually do well with a given LRF. The fact is this: every LRF has a 25% chance of being correct. Cold/wet, cold/dry, mild/wet or mild and dry. Not bad odds tbh. The magic formula sadly doesn't work year after year.... which means, by definition, it was a faux magic formula....

It likely won't be until the second half of January Roger, that is if it has any effect at all on our weather patterns.