Yes and April 83 was disappointing and we know where that led; and April 87 was great and the summer poor. But then again Aprils 95 and 03 were good and the summers are history, but 93 had a warm April and the summer was not good. As you say there is no link overall, but the best recent Aprils have given pretty dire summers.

On topic please.

A deep FI chart.  Look at the extraordinary cold just in the NE of the USA and the SE of Canada -28 850s over quite a large swathe.

Could promote cyclogenesis and a stormy wet February is entirely possible. Some extraordinary heat edging into the Middle east too.

http://modeles.meteociel.fr/modeles/gem/runs/2016013012/gem-0-240.png?12

There is a small window at day 10 of building a proper ridge. Maybe our only shot at getting a cold spell before its too late

ive seen a raging blizzard with +4 inches of snow in a couple of hours fall in April and it was all gone by 12pm 😏

The April sun is as powerful as it is in August.. So away from high ground in exceptional circumstances snow lasting even a day in April away from Scotland would be something special.

March sun is like September. 

Out at the edge of the GFS we are just starting to see some interesting deep FI charts evolve.  I expect this trend to pick up during the next week as the atmosphere adjusts, and the models factor things in.  It may come to nothing, I'm open minded about the outcome, and will find discussion of the possibilities of interest.

Here's a couple of pertubations from the 12z GEFS that show something different:

Here's another  possibility:

and another:

So have I and I have also seen it sit around for sometime under cloud

Of course you are talking S Coast aren't you?

I have seen snow sit for a lot longer than one day IMBY

I'm like you , there are plenty of possibilities , we after all still in January

April snow last longer then a day in the Midlands? 

Ive seen the April sun destroy snow cover through cloud in Newcastle area as well as here in the south.

We last had April snow in 2012 - on the 3rd. Nothing much - maybe 3cm. It all melted by around midday. Certainly very hard to retain snow at that time of year - but it's happened before, and can happen again. Not likely to mind you.

http://www.meteociel.fr/modeles/ecmwf/runs/2016013012/ECH1-216.GIF?30-0

Boom. Lets hope this is nothing like how it turns out

frozen harbours & sea ice of the south coast of England have happened before too 😉 Like you say these things can always happen again 😊

Nice arctic high there too 😏

But there usually is an SSW in March - it is a seasonal occurrence as the suns rays reach the Polar Strat. An SSW in early Feb is what we want to see.

I'm very happy to move on and forget winter for another year. Game over...for the south 

I'm a cold ramper when it's justified..this year is not our year. Roll on Spring.

I feel the same, Steve. But still a month to go until winter is over and if 2005 taught us anything, it's that you can't write a month off at this kind of distance. This may turn into another 88/89 or 89/90 but it's too early to call that, IMO.

For down here, you might as well forget about snow past the end of Feb. Though there are posts from time to time which suggest an atmospheric event may cause a cold outbreak further down the line, 99/100 these never seem to materialise into anything.

The clock is ticking with nothing on the horizon.

Far too early to give up with charts like this around

More recently, some people were virtually writing January off a month or so ago on the basis of some of the poor model runs we had during December. We were teased with a major height rise over Greenland for a time in the first week of Jan, and although that didn't come off quite as shown, we did at least get something of a lull in the strong zonality that has dominated the winter to date.

From IF

Yes. Some rather odd model assessments this evening. I'd have thought the colder weather aficionados would be quite content (and ditto the deep cyclonicity fans) with 12z EC output that exhibits just two T+240 clusters embracing both camps of favouritism... 

That's interesting - the T+240 mean chart showed pretty decent agreement on low pressure just to our NE with limited scatter.

It doesn't mean a protracted cold spell but with this pattern the word 'mild' won't feature - except perhaps in the odd contribution in MOD... 

Going through the ENS some interesting options starting to show up, it might just be a " keep em interested " gesture from 18z , but worth watching

The ECM isn't a cold run with -5c uppers never reaching the UK which with Atlantic sourced air is what we need.

I admire those on here that are still optimistic but even in the north the chances of snow have been reduced in tonight's output, the UK through just doesn't clear eastwards quick enough and persistant heights to the south scupper any southward movement of polar air.

The outlook is one of more wind and rain, just colder rain than what we have had recently.

Andy