It must be bad if you are throwing in the towel Marcus. 

It does Michael , there is still loads to play IMO

Yellow over Murmansk, green over Greenland ... Anything can happen in the next half-month.

As it stands, even that chart offers UK max. temps of 8C IMBY and 5C over central England.

Bloody hell Steve

Dont you start

Nasty fella there.

The nasty storm on the 8th January is still being modelled.

We still have the problem that heights to our south won't drop away. It is a very frustrating outlook for coldies and a nasty outlook for those affected by flooding.

The weather Gods are playing with us this winter, As flies to wanton boys are we to th' gods. They kill us for their sport. (King Lear).

Sorry guys, but the best we can hope for in our soggy corner is cold rain, when what we really need is a spell of settled weather with some hard frosts.

Marcus, Gusty, don't throw in the towel! I am sure there are lots of occasional posters like me who rely on you guys to keep the flag flying. If you throw in the towel, then Shropshire (cough, Melanie, cough cough, Mr Brown) would be free to spread his modern winter nonsense unopposed.......😉

I agree with Doc, still very uncertain outlook and FI, IMO is circa 3 or 4 days at the moment. So nothing beyond a few days into January can be forecast with any certainty. Heck, even the London ensemble here http://www.theweatheroutlook.com/twodata/chart.aspx?chart=/charts/gefs/gefsens850London0.png shows an almost 10 degree divergence in 850 HPA temps as early as 2nd Jan. Lots of twists and turns to come 😎

I haven't thrown the efffffffing towel in

It's only December

I think that we have to hope that the GFS is overdoing matters with this dartboard low, its the last thing anyone wants 

To be fair, GFS has a long history of overcooking atlantic LP systems. Have seen it more times that I care to remember.

I'll only start to worry if & when ECM and UKMO start showing the same.

I get so muddled by the models at the best of times, but isn't GFS the one with the tendency to overdo these dartboard lows?  edit - Thanks David! 

It's far enough away to be treated with low confidence anyway (the intensity, not the probability of this low affecting the UK, which seems pretty likely). 

On a more confident note, I think we can safely write off December  I still feel the second half of January is all to play for 

Sorry, should not have doubted you, it was only a split second misjudgement!😉😎

An interesting FI, for what it is worth, but at least it keeps the sub-zero 850hPAs over the UK and even brings a north-easterly influence for the south-east. Plenty of interest in this current set up to keep us occupied well into the new year! 😄

Edit - and ends up with a full blown easterly!

Indeed cold air across us, not quite the Atlantic onslaught eh?

12z ECM op was one of the least cold of the ensemble virtually throughout. Nothing severely cold among the runs either though.

http://www.weathercast.co.uk/meteo/eps/ensemble-tt6-london.gif

Very concerning as it is shown on ECM as well. Wonder what they will call it. Gail would be appropriate

Agreed David, the trend today has been to pull the colder air that little bit further east.  We're not there yet but the 1,000 miles east has at least halved.  As others have flagged, FI is a lot closer than usual because of this pattern and it's way too hard to call - the 00z runs could continue the trend of giving more vigour to the westerlies.

I was puzzled by the rapid shift between T+168 and T+192 on ECM. On the ensemble for London it shows up as a largely unsupported mild blip.

http://www.weathercast.co.uk/services/ensemble-forecast.html

The difference is that ECM spins that system north whereas GFS wants to drive it further eastwards.  Given what we have to get through in terms of the potential influence of the Scandi HP and associated battleground I don't think anything beyond the weekend is remotely clear right now.

But I do agree that the last thing those in the west and north want is yet another severe winter storm.

Looks like we're no closer to knowing what the outlook will be this morning - even at T+102 the GEFS offers everything from gale force easterlies to light SW'lies!

That said, the chance of trough disruption at 120 is now quite high IMO, as the majority of GEFS members show it, as does MetO (albeit MetO takes an age to complete the disruption). GEM also shows it quite nicely.

Here's the GFS op, which is pretty representative of the output this morning so far:

That's at 5 days out, which is well into FI territory this morning.