What will be interesting for me is what happens once the AMO returns to a negative phase, which I believe it is predicted to do sometime later this decade; it has been in a positive phase since the mid-late 1990s as I understand it.

What I recall about the winters of the period between say 1989 and 1998 was that even the notably mild ones such as 88/89 and 89/90 saw some snowfall here at some point, and sometimes quite a lot of it despite the mostly mild pattern. Since the late 90s/early 00s though, snow from so-called cold zonal patterns has become rarer than it was even during the 90s, although we did get some snow here from this kind of set-up at times during the 2017/18 winter.

what I find worrying is that this could become some kind of the norm. Large differences between the pole and mid latitudes temperature wise will only invigorate the jet, keeping cold temperatures bottled up further north and our patch firmly in a battle between wind and rain and euroslug territory. Only conjecture of course, but this winter has been excruciating for all the wrong reasons. 

Well i think the arctic could do with a break from the mild.

I quite agree, but IMO it’s the elevated mid latitude temperatures driving the process, the cold being bottled up due to a powerful jet. 

To my non-expert eyes, there seem to be signs of the beginning of a change in the pattern  towards the end of the 12Z GFS operational run, with pressure tending to rise in high latitudes and also the Atlantic Lows being a lot less intense than previously. 

Come spring I'm sure it will come spilling out 🙂 but in the  mean time regardless of our doomed winter a cold arctic winter is a positive thing for the region. 

Gosh, you don't it's climate change do you?

Wow, that’s a wonderful, science and evidence-based, contribution.

i cannot answer any of the scientific questions, but I have just arrived back from a regular ski trip to Austria and it was raining to very high elevations, the temps were above freezing night and day, in fact 12c yesterday and the forecast was another 1-2 days of rain night and day and I cannot ever recall such warm weather night or day, that coupled with the warmth in Scandinavia and much of Europe suggests an exceptionally mild winter, if not climate change. 

Jet stream looping around a bit this week but still generally westerly over the UK then a really powerful and broad streak around Sun 9th after which it breaks up a bit and by the end of the week no longer penetrating so far into Europe as previously this winter.

GFS consistent with earlier forecasts to start with but diverging later;  rridge of high pressure midweek, stormy from Sun 9th (this a bit earlier than yesterday's GFS though ECM had it) but not persisting with depressions standing off in the Atlantic  (yesterday's forecast showed LP running past the UK) and strong SW-ly through to the following weekend

ECM, having been keen on storms from Sun 9th now has a strong broad W-ly run at that time but no close center of LP; then contrary to itself yesterday and to GFS today has a vicious dartboard low centred on Rockall 950mb on Wed 12th

Not much certainty into the second week, then, except that it will still be Atlantic weather. In week 2 some very cold air building in NE Europe which wasn't there yesterday http://www.wxmaps.org/pix/temp4

GEFS agrees with above except that (a) there's not much rain in the east while the storms are blowing it in to the west (b) the 'strong SW'ly' isn't raising temps above normal

For the bold stuff, it was better for coldies. Why? We at least had some cold days! (The 23rd Jan 2007, for example, had -8 850s down here... which gave a spell of days of 4 or 5C as highs.) The -10C 850 brushed northern Scotland in the same period too.

We've yet to see any highs below 5C this winter down here, FWIW. Awful!

This year the coldest 850 for London, as measured on the Meteociel GEFS charts, has been -5C. Time and again this winter we've seen -5 or -6 forecast, but invariably it's become milder at the last minute. We still have only had 12 hours of -5C 850s since winter begun... and we're ahead of even 1988/9 at the moment.

Going back to the points made earlier about happenings in the arctic this winter, it seems to me from reading the thread discussing this topic that this may well have had at least some influence on the weather pattern experienced in both this country and much of Europe over the past couple of months. From what I can gather, it has been considerably colder over parts of the arctic this winter than it has been during a number of recent northern hemisphere winters and this may well have been a factor in why the jet stream has been as strong as it has been.

Feels very springlike now and trees starting to bud. Lots of spider webs as well. Should get some high temps in the south this week if the sun comes out and hopefully the rain will stay to the north late in the week

Roll on a record breaking winter!

Climate change - good for the SE of England!

Yes I noticed the bugs appearing on the trees as well

’Hello darkness, my old friend. I’ve come to talk with you again’ 😂

Our long lost friend the Siberian High comes to play in the crazy world known as GFS virtual space. On a scale of 1-100 of verifying, this scores around a 3 lol

as much as 3 😂😂 ?

very mild conditions at times this week, this is really setting up to be a record breaking winter for all the wrong reasons. 

There was heavy snow in parts of the Alps last week but it turned back to rain below about 2000m I think. Conditions the 3 Valleys look pretty miserable at the moment. Overcast and damp at lower levels. Yuck.

Back to the MO output and I still see no significant change. I continue to think this winter will be one of the 10 mildest recorded in the UK.  

The good old FI snow rows just keep growing for the post 180 hours period

https://www.theweatheroutlook.com/twodata/datmdlout.aspx

Martin

Steve Murr effectively called winter over on another forum today. The powerful zonal synoptics and bottled cold at the pole need to change radically for anything worthwhile. Brief pm incursions just don't cut it.