Yes it's like groundhog day at the moment. Revolting weather, and gone are the lovely misty sunrises we were getting before the real dank set in 

I'll happily welcome a pre-Christmas storm to blow this muck away 

 Had I known you were lurking JB, I'd have chosen my words more carefully!  

 

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That reminded me that someone on here mentioned the lingering twilight around the summer solstice, when it never quite gets dark.   At the moment we seem to have a lingering dawn, when it never seems to get light.   

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I once had a lingering dawn....she just wouldn't take no for an answer! 

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Dull again, give me a clear, dry frosty spell any day!

If it's going to be Dull I'd rather a stormy dull however I wouldn't wish that on people over Christmas as we know the issues that could cause.

* taps fingers and waits patiently

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Today is actually lovely here - the sun has been shining since around 9:30, the wind is light, and the temperature is 10C.

The forecast was going for cloud all day, so I'm pleasantly surprised.

If most days in winter were like this, I'd be very content. 

(not a moan, I know - but there's no happy equivalent. )

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Yes. It actually got light here this afternoon. A dark gloomy morning but we had a couple of hours of daylight later.  

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Lifts hungover head off the pillow, looks out the window and oh look......mist and fog again...roll on Halloween 

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Looks like another Christmas with boring mild(ish) weather is on the cards. No frost or snow. Not even a decent storm either side.

And yet several FB friends in America are moaning about the snow they have at the moment. Looks like no one is ever satisfied where ever they live!  

Morning, it's actually bright with winter sunshine at this end, seems that them thar hills to the north of the town is having the effect of filtering out the murky stuff trying to come in from there.

Also a somewhat chilly 6.9 C.

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Still can't believe that people on here still defending yet another abysmal LRF from the experts in the publicly subsidised BBC and Met office?

Whilst we watch the weather and the computer models for some kind of warped "fun" and wish for the weather of our choice, they are paid professionals and they often get the probabilities so badly wrong and that in turn proves costly for so many who rely on them getting it vaguely correct.

Should we not just now accept anything beyond 4 or 5 days is costly and pointless and not waste money on it. It doesn't mean that us weather voyeurs can't spend hours after hours trying to give it our best guess.

On the positive side And I know this is the morning thread, but I wonder how many of our loved, frail and elderly friends and family get to see another year or two, based on this so very mild winter yet again?

How do you get a probability wrong?

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The probabilities are fine but the actual presentation was much more vocal for a front loaded winter doc, that is what many are complaining at. For me now I'll revert back to binning all LRF as we still can't forecasts beyond ten days with any degree of accuracy. Now where's my seaweed and pine cones. 😜

I don't blame the MetO or any other organisation as that is ridiculous, clearly the models and background signals pointed to a front loaded winter so that's what they indicated would happen, it didn't and chances are they are now trying to understand why. Amazingly Glosea5 and EC models are still predicting the same thing (northern/MLB and below average European Temperatures) the problem is a computer can't just look out of the window!

Whats more important is the implication that even with good signals Europe can't get a decent cold winter, for whatever reason this is of real concern moving forward as it could be our new climate state where a cold winter only occurs every decade or so because of some underlying atmospheric forcing.

This has to be a possibility as the pattern of cold US winters and warm European ones just keeps on repeating itself no matter what the background signals are.

All very depressing, welcome to the New World of Bexit, Trump and Bartlett Winters.

Andy

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The BBC forecasts nowadays are just an embarrassing joke. Was really sad to hear of the death of Ian McCaskill this week as, with meteorologists like Ian, John Kettley, Bill Giles and Michael Fish presenting, the BBC forecasts of the 80s and 90s were of a far higher standard than the woeful, unintelligible mess they have become over the last decade.

For the fourth weekend in a row, I believe they have forecast sunshine and what have I woken up to? The same grey, damp, depressing **** I've had to endure for the past three weekends as well as pretty much the entirety of the weeks in between 

Just when the hell is this gloom ever going to give up? It's just the same tedious pattern repeated ad nauseum. Sky clears overnight only for the grey crap to reappear by dawn like a stinking unwelcome smell. Do the overnight clear skies ever result in anything cold? Like hell they do.

This has to rank as the most prolonged period of dismal, depressing and unphotogenic dross since I got my first digital camera at the start of 2003.  About the only acceptable day over the past few weeks was Monday 5th Dec and there was also the afternoon of Thursday 8th. After that I'm struggling to think of anything. It is just absolutely dire. Unremittingly grey, damp, dull and horrible. The most unhealthy, good for nothing, winter weather imaginable.

The last period as bad as this was at the end of 2002 and even that relented to give a pleasant crisp and few frosty days around this time. The first third of January this year was easily the most revolting spell of weather in my memory but that was followed by a vastly improved second half of the month with frost and even some snow. I see no end in sight to the garbage at the moment

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^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Brilliant. 😂😂😂😂

It's just crap here regardless. Last winter was very mild in North America with temperatures reaching 25C in Baltimore on Christmas Eve and 17C as far north as Ottawa.

In 2015 Buffalo, NY, had it's latest first winter snow since 1899 while we got ridiculously mild, grey crap. Fast forward a year and they are being plastered in snow while we endure more ridiculously mild, grey, crap 

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Yes achieving a -NAO seems to be incredibly difficult in winter these days whatever the indicators from teleconnections or the supposedly best computers in the World. We could be looking at another year when the modern era has defied what 'should' happen and just produced the same familiar set-up again.

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...except for the fact that there has been a negative NAO every day of the winter so far? 

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Lovely sunshine again today! Low of 1C with a slight frost, currently 4C.

Next few days don't look too bad either. 

Definitely don't envy northern parts of the US with their silly -30C temps. They are welcome to it.

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I remember in the 90's every year in October in Europe usually start in the low 20's then switch to near 0C by the end of the month then stay below freezing most of November to Feb so any time we get an easterly we get easily subzero maxes.  I used to observe the temps reading of Europe on German Channel teletext because we didn't have internet that time or good resource of weather information in here so I rely on German channels to find out the forecast for here.  I remember they forecasted around below -10C in Germany and the cold air reach to London with forecast of -2C temps.  It now very hard to get a subzero temps with Europe mostly west side are mild as us and more colder frequencies in E Med and Middle East.  Nicosia, Cyprus rarely get snow and was told it only happen once or nothing a decade now getting almost every year and they had one last year, the year before too and this year on 1st Jan with 1cm of snow cover shown on the picture outside Nicosia.

 

I think you know what I mean Michael - a negative NAO that can bring northerlies, or HLB in general that can give an extended cold spell.

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The Met Office forecast was for blocking, which would give a greater chance of a colder-than-average spell toward the beginning of winter - and blocking is generally what's happened. That the positioning & alignment of the block is not what delivers cold to the UK doesn't make the period not-blocked.

I don't understand how knowledgeable & experienced amateur weather enthusiasts can fail to realise that the sort of LRF'ing the Met Office does (still in an experimental phase, too, it has to be said) can only really pick up broad signals and talk of probabilities in terms of specific weather conditions for a given place. It cannot pinpoint the exact positioning & alignment of, say, blocks. Let's remember that if the block had been positioned just 500 miles further north & west (a tiny distance in a global meteorological sense), then the UK would have had a much different December so far, and perhaps there'd be less whingeing (although perhaps that'd be asking too much...)

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I hate to tell you, I have just checked the Berlin temperatures for every winter in the 90s and what you say is simply not true. A couple of years might just about fit the picture you describe but the vast majority certainly do not.

 Max temperatures Dec 1998-Feb 1999 http://www.weatheronline.co.uk/cgi-app/klibild?WMO=10384&ZEITRAUM=12&ZEIT=28021999&ART=MAX&LANG=en&1481973359&ZUGRIFF=NORMAL&MD5=

1991-1992 http://www.weatheronline.co.uk/cgi-app/klibild?WMO=10384&ZEITRAUM=12&ZEIT=29021992&ART=MAX&LANG=en&1481973526&ZUGRIFF=NORMAL&MD5= 

 

I could post several other years. The only really prolonged cold in Germany was during the winters 95-96 and to a lesser extent 96-97.

Ian, re. the NAO, I was simply correcting what you claimed. If you actually meant to write something extra or different but didn't, it's hardly up to me to try and guess what that was.

Edit: Very well put Saint but it seems much easier for people to take their frustration out on the Met Office.

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Winter temperatures in Europe have been on an upward trend for the past 3 decades. The 1961-1990 climatic period was abnormally cool in many places.

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