Just noticed this from CMA in 5/6 days... a good effort but ends up with a frosty Euro high everntually:

Even until next week - the winds turn south-easterly not south westerly!

Those people banging the drum about mild zonality may need to be more cautious.

18z GFS shows overnight frosts here (and for much of England and Wales) pretty much the whole of next week. 

Quite right Joe. By using the wording suggests or may in their analysis rather than is, sure this would not grate so much.

Blocks are notoriously hard to work out sometimes. It does appear the Atlantic may push through, but with the first of those more active systems still well over a week away its very easy they may be modelled away north, even southwards with HP exerting its influence even more from the continent.

Very true about the premature calls of zonality but whether certain posters will take heed is debatable.  You would hope that people woul learn from the last two weeks that anything more than 4-5 days ahead is liable to change; even the long wave pattern a week ahead is being altered subtly.

As Brian mentioned recently, there seems not to be much oomph in the Atlantic this winter, so far.  

Ensemble mean chart for T+168 (next Wednesday):

The spread chart shows good agreement on the position and strength of the HP cell, with only ca 5 dam spread (i.e. 2.5 either side of the mean).

Stay on topic. It's proving more difficult to find posts to leave than delete. 

That is the story of the winter so far - boring, calm and occassionally frosty. I am afraid those looking favourably at FI charts showing rampant zonality are going to be disappointed yet again, as the zonality is constantly downgraded in each run :-)

If you remove any more there'd be none left 😉

Another morning of rather non-descript synoptics and I'm left wondering whether we'll see any classic Atlantic-driven weather before the end of the month now.

Your post seems familiar....

Deep into FI - Still no sign of much if any precipitation for the south and south east:

Significant Strat warming now at day 9 who knows what it will lead to but gives us more of a chance. 

http://www.meteociel.fr/modeles/gfse_cartes.php?&ech=216&mode=10&carte=1

Looks interesting. Hopefully it may have some positive effect on our weather at a later stage as happened in the early part of 2013.

It does look very good we just need the luck which we had in 2013. We've been very unlucky this winter most of Europe has had at least one or 2 proper cold spells is our luck about to change. Early mid February  could be very interesting. 

Shades of late January 1991 at the moment 

Feb 91 was the best here since 87. Always remember Bill Giles having palpitations over the forecast showing temps in London of -4c during the day.

Those lows are starting to be plotted more to the south now. Patience!

Concerning charts for the Alps again. They've had some snow in the past week or so but the outlook is now dry dry dry again...

You know, that thought had crossed my mind also

Im thinking more along the lines of 2008.. That winter though the euro block and it's cold feed over southern & southeastern UK started much earlier. It ended with the beast finally showing itself in February 2009 dumping over a foot of snow for some lucky folk!

I admire your eternal optimism.

I think a zonal period is now nailed on inspite of some encouraging charts at 144. Only very few GEFS actually stop the zonal train so we have to assume its coming and hope it doesn't last for more than 2 weeks

Everyone keeps going on about Zonal.  Im not sure it really is.  It looks like we might get some mild Southwesterlies, but even then not at any significant strength to dislodge cold surface temps.  To me the weather is looking increasingly high pressure dominated.  Might be zonal to the very fringes of the UK, but with every run now the weather systems are either being pushed back to the atlantic, or veering to more of a direct southerly to Iceland.

I cant see any Mild zone followed by Cold Zone or Mild zone, even in the GEFS... it kinda goes up and down, but its too weak and actually just reflects our position next to a wedge of High pressure.