At the moment, we have quite a big area of high pressure to our SW (which of course, is that same Azores High which was posted missing back in the summer when we were looking for that to deliver some decent weather in these parts).
If we could somehow get that high pressure up to Greenland, that could set up some nice northern blocking which might open the door to colder air coming in from the east or north and possibly even hanging around for a while.
However, all of the latest model output is showing that this is unlikely to happen and as long as that high pressure remains to the south of us, we are always going to be at the mercy of mild Atlantic air coming in around the top of it on a very powerful jet stream which is what appears to be happening now.
This doesn't necessarily mean that colder air won't get in at any time, but any colder northerly shots which we do get are never going to be anything other than brief with that, with the next push of milder air never all that far away and of course, that is if that colder air even manages to get in at any time.
In every other season during this year (spring, summer and even the autumn), there was no shortage of northern blocking which of course, was then responsible for that poor summer which we had after the very good start to that back in June.
Now that we are into that time of year though when we could do with some northern blocking to bring us some decent cold and wintry weather, it is now completely absent and that is just typical of the weather in this country.
According to what I can see in the model output, I'm not holding out any hope of any decent cold spell any time soon, and I'm not even convinced that an SSW event in the very near future will save us either.
The north of Edinburgh, usually always missing out on snow events which occur not just within the rest of Scotland or the UK, but also within the rest of Edinburgh.