I was discussing with a friend last night who said the same thing. Wednesday has to be the day of ‘lock in’.

We’re playing deal or no deal. We’re going to win a prize. But let’s hope it’s the 250k jackpot. I’d rather not have a 1p value cold spell. 

All to play for, but caution required. There will be peaks and toys smashed between now and Wednesday I suspect. 

Some models are really do their best to try and avoid a cold spell.

TBH my gut feeling is it'll end up missing us down here, leaving us with scraps at best. I'd be much more excited if I was further north!

However, those numbers from GEFS and the consistency of the suite can't be ignored, especially as the "start date" has been incredibly consistent - the first member hits -10 on the 5th, as it has done over the past six suites.

EPS, meanwhile, has been flip-flopping around (which is unusual) and is currently in one of its milder swings.

As we all know, nothing is ever straightforward with an easterly, plenty of drama to come over the weekend if not beyond.

For the record the GFS 00z ensemble mean is below -5°C here for the next thirteen days and for what it’s worth the ECM op run looks slightly more favourable for easterly muck than the 12z did.

I’m not going to grumble about an ensemble set like this:

Nail on the head.  I have seen most of these scenarios fail over the past 20 years.  For every potential easterly at day 10, Id say one in 4 comes off as could be realistically best hoped for.  There are so many potential spoilers.  So, Id say its about a 25% chance of coming off as a snowy convective easterly for lowlanders. And 75% chance of the type of a lesser outcome, as depicted by last 2 ECMs, coming to fruition in some form.  I remain deeply unconvinced, and am old enough and ugly enough not to be swayed either way by chatter or the odd run.  

Time will tell

It blows up the system to the South of Greenland, we can see how if this is less intense like the GEM then a very different outcome would ensue. The GFS handles everything differently. It's hard to say which way the UKMO would go from T144

One step forward  and one step back again. Models all over the place GEFS look solidly cold though.

The snow depth chart by the end of the parallel run is probably the most impressive countrywide that I have ever seen. I know they are not worth the pixels they are made of but it looks pretty!

http://www.meteociel.fr/modeles/gfse_cartes.php?ech=384&code=code&mode=16&mode3h=0&runpara=1&carte=6&runpara=1

(Well, I say countrywide but no prizes for guessing which well known Scottish city misses out)

About as cold as we've seen all winter.

In winters the UK miss out on which I think is this winter ,a lot of bone dry frosty weather is  likely to be the order of the day.GEM great run but has a March look to it to me rather than a Feb look.

Despite the " lack of ," this has got to go down as a cold winter to run likely from early Dec through to spring and is probably a "one in every ten year affair".

It's just a crying shame the UK has hit new depraved heights in escapology and bad luck in missing any sort of real classic winter weather.

At first sight  the jetstream should be favourable for a cold spell as it continues to run south of the UK, first as a smooth flow and then around Thu 4th as a big loop. However, it tends to swing northwards as it continues across Europe and only briefly is it in a position to promote the development of LP advecting continental air to the UK. On Thu 11th it's back on a northerly tack, well to the N of Scotland, at which point chances of mild weather suddenly increase.

GEFS to some extent backs this up with the south of the UK after a rather wet and mild week joining Scotland in temps well below norm until Thu 11th when quite a number of runs relax their grip. Weather warnings for snow and ice from the MetO out for a large area from Oxford to Scottish border Mon 1st to Wed 3rd though looking at GEFS, a couple of days later and further into Scotland seems more likely for snow. 

BBC going public to a large audience last night with very cold air all the way to the Channel by Fri 5th

GFS stays with the theme of S-ly tracking lows well in place by Sat 6th but with the source of air traced back to the SE so not super-cold; disrupted anyway by HP settling over UK Thu 11th, but an interesting tease at the end Mon 15th as the HP moves to Baltic and brings in a much colder-looking SE-ly.

ECM after an interesting trough moving N controlled by LP off Ireland Wed 3rd rather wimps out; slack pressure at first but weak hp enough on Tue 9th for a direst S-ly flow.

Interesting times - lots of outcomes to play with and certainly not zonal!

Woke up wondering if models are clearer and have sorted themselves but they clearly haven't. More chaos and confusion. the ECM look confused as hell. Its doing my head in. At least the ENS looks colder and the para and GEM give us hope! 🤞the ENS mean is still -7c on 8th and even into fi we still have many sub -10c uppers. 

I’m with All6 Pally, GEFS 0z has some great bunching of runs for a significant cold spell from next weekend for quite some time. The snow row for London’s also impressive.

ECM is 🥴 but thats not going as far ahead.

Nice support for the cold from bbc too, they’re focrecasting our resident dip in the jet stream to move south over Biscay  encouraging a scandi high to form.

GFS op keeps on consistently showing a fairly light weight cold snap and giving way after 2-4 days -but look at the average - not seen such prolonged cold, so far south, since 2010 and before that 1991. ECM is very snowy  but there are so may eye candy runs now - and the GFS control is a peach. Look back to the run up to 2018 BftE and you would see the same perturbations, same rollercoaster ride, but now I do think the gentle ramp is justified. We are in for something winter dreams are truly about. 

Was this caused by the 1st or 2nd SSW? That is the question. It’s 4 weeks after the 1st and SSWs are supposed to be 3-4 weeks before affecting the troposphere’s weather factory. If the 1st, then are we in for a longer ride as the two combined deliver the dream Feb- dreams, nostalgic memories of the 60s, and legendary cold periods are all made of? Is this going to be the new 1947, but starting 2 weeks later? Hope so, because for decades after, we shall say - ‘winter is never over until after Feb 5th’, remember 2021. Might not be Lorna Doone but one to remember....

Hmmm

GFS ens good, Op reasonable and when you look at the later part it's a cold run it just doesn't look like it - cold low level feed for here so despite warmer uppers by then we stay on the cold side. (Not unusual for easterly patterns).

GEM op is good this morning too, which is nice to see after the last couple of op runs. 

ECM op is a bit meh with a brief waft of colder uppers down here before we're back at square one. I'd expect the current pattern to continue post T240 so weak northern blocking helping to keep those further North colder with alternating milder/colder periods down here and regular amounts of rain.  ECM ens look like there's a lot of uncertainty to me:

ECMWF 14-day ensemble weather forecast for Tunbridge Wells District | Meteologix.com

The mean in the longer range hasn't changed much from last night but the amount of colder runs has improved suggesting there's a lot of runs that go mild balanced by a lot of colder runs too. 

All in all still uncertain as to whether we'll get a cold spell of at least a few days down here - if I was just going by GFS I'd have nudged my odds to 70/30 cold based on the latest GFS ens but given ECM I'm still on the fence as there's clearly a good possibility that whatever pattern we end up with it's not one that brings more than brief colder incursion/s down here. 

I wonder what joys the 12z runs will bring

But UKMO is rubbish too. We always need cross model agreement for this type of setup

Sadly you would always back the euros over the north american models

UKMO looks ok to me! It only goes out to 144 hours but has a nicely positioned high at that point. 

Lots of hype and ramping way too far out today.
As usual if things can go wrong they will and there’s too much emphasis on ‘cold vs mild airmass’ and words like battleground and Atlantic influence still in the long term forecasts (BBC’s included).

Yes mainland Europe you can confidently say will be going into the freezer, but we’re an island in a warm bath away from the ice dessert continent which should be present in about 10 days time.