OT, but I think that I misinterpreted your original post - as Bertwhistle also pointed out!

18z ensembles for London - a lot of scatter come end of January:

Jetstream meandering this week, forming a cut-off low over Iberia by Tue. Branch to the N of UK resumes fairly soon, then briefly splitting next weekend before roaring strongly directly across the UK the following week. Hints of more cut-offs after that i.e from Mon 3rd.

In line with above, GFS has changed its outlook and only keeps the anticyclone around for this week (yesterday's forecast was for two weeks) and the HP's just about gone by Fri 24th. For the following week, strong zonal flow with occasional brief but deep embedded disturbances bringing some quite cold air from the NW (Mon 27th, 945mb, Rockall; Thu 30th, 945 mb, Shetland; Sat 1st, 990mb, Irish Sea). End of run, it can't decide - Mon 3rd high pressure but Tue 4th large low pressure heading down from Iceland.

ECM agrees, but the disturbances are less deep and further north.

GEFS less certain than yesterday. In the S, cool for a couple of days, then 1-2C above normal to Sat 25th after which a wide scatter but the mean is around the seasonal norm, and more indication than yesterday of rain from Mon 27th. In the N the mildness and the scatter are more pronounced and the far N (Inverness) has a lot of rain/snow in week 2 with daily snow row figures in the teens every day from 26th Jan. 

For  followers of the 'three weeks after the East Coast of N America' model, Newfoundland has just had a record snowfall of 30".

And the earth is flat and David Icke is running for Prime Minister.

(good summary by the way).

Not if its inaccessible and out of resort. Now look at the snow conditions box on the right. "Good piste: zero. Powder: zero." Slushy, sticky muck. 

Really, not good for skiing. 

Back to models, and the GFS suite continues to lack excitement outside of the pressure pattern. The fax charts offer 1050mb right over us here. In my recording history I don't think I've exceeded 1048 ever- started recording in '81 so perhaps someone could correct me for CS England?

This year yes , last year emphatically no it was farcically bad. It was constantly predicting blocked cold weather in its 2 to 4 week forecast which never occurred. It's obviously much easier predicting mild westerlies. 

We have to be on for the least snowy European winter on record surely?

 Met O are having a good winter, for sure.  Agree re extended outlooks.

GFS 6z a cooler run by some margin than the 0z

Yup there's a frustrating lack of consistency in the longer range at present - one ens set goes milder, next cooler, etc. The current spikes and dips suggests an unsettled pattern with enough amplification to allow cold air to be dragged down at times but not more than that imo.

We could get lucky with timing and see some transient snow I guess but I imagine if the unsettled signal ticks up we'll again be looking at flooding down here rather than cold. Locally Tonbridge park was under water again after the recent rainfall (not unusual but it's been like it a lot lately which is less normal) and a number of the local rivers have been consistently at the higher end of their ranges.

High pressure ebbs away by Friday with an atlantic return by next Sunday. Temperatures climbing. Winter remains absent.

There is still a signal for a blip circa 29/1..no doubt this brief amplication is noise that will get flattened by the roaring jet as we approach a more reliable time frame.

...and still only 12 hours. Unsurprisingly as the time drew near the -5C line remained absent.

http://www.meteociel.fr/cartes_obs/gens_display.php?x=306&y=141&run=6&ville=Londres&runpara=0&ext=1&type=6

(There is of course nothing special about it, merely that it makes a nice benchmark to use to compare winters. It's also one of the first things I look for regarding cold spells!)

What a poor performance by the ensembles there! I'm surprised to see so many members just showing 1 or 2C as a high today, when even the op was way off... (London City airport was reporting 8C at 3:20 PM today).

That must be a resolution issue, surely? The ensembles are totally flat with no diurnal range. 

Not sure what the official max here was but the frost is still thick on the grass and shaded roofs. 

I think they've been decent but if anything have underbaked temperatures. January CET is currently more than 3.5C above average and I can't recall that many mentions of mild weather in southern and central counties. 

I don't think that is correct. The TWO plot shows max and min forecast 2m temps from all of the runs. During the first couple of days they are very tightly clustered and the diurnal range showing is approx 0C to 6C for the London plot. 

Doesn't take a lot for the Atlantic to wake up again and act like the jerk it normally is at this time of the year but hopefully high pressure will never be too far away as we go into February. Might even end up with an early heatwave like last February.   

But the graph posted above seems to only show a big diurnal range for the op and one or two other runs, is what I meant. The others show very little range.

12Z tries to build a Scandi high in the second half of the run but it gets blown away pretty quickly.

I've annotated. What you think is the op and one or two other runs is actually the tmax 2m from all 23 runs stepped at 6 hour intervals. The lower cluster shows the tmin 2m from all 23 runs. It is this variable which is showing little diurnal variation because at this time of year the days are short (i.e. similar min values can be found in the 4 steps which are 00:00 GMT to 06:00 GMT, 06:00 GMT to 12:00 GMT, 12:00 GMT to 18:00 GMT and 18:00 GMT to 00:00 GMT)   

Ah, got it. Me being stupid and misreading the chart. Maybe I could get a job on the Express...

yes quite, at this rate we will be looking for the first Spanish plumes than anything more akin to winter. The borefest continues unabated, truly remarkable lack of winter proper throughout Europe, possibly record breaking it so 

I'll lock at 18:18 and start a new thread.