The Snow Lovers Appreciation Society Winter 2014/15 #MOD NOTE #1

maquiladora wrote: »

For what it's worth, virtually all of the long range weather models are currently forecasting a mild winter.

Just as a matter of interest Maq, what were the long range weather models showing for winter 2009/2010 and 2010/2011?

maquiladora wrote: »

I can't really remember to be honest , I don't pay that much attention to them but I do remember the UK Met Office expected a mild winter in 2009.

Woohoo!! :-P let's hope that's a good omen for this year! ;-)

gilly2308 wrote: »

Cheers MT, every Winter without snow is a good one as far as I'm concerned, so I'm reasonably happy with that forecast.

Boooo, Down with this sort of thing.

First signs of the Nov 2010 cold and snow were probably spotted around here in early November and there was quite a build up to that outbreak by about the 15th. The winter of 2009-10 was forecast to be cold by a few people including some clown on NW (me under another name), and that was based on pattern matching vaguely similar to this OPI concept.

Could remind people that 1-5 Nov 2010 was quite a mild period too, and the mean temperature for the month was sitting at about 8 C as late as the 12th or 13th before trailing off quite steadily.

So all of this current very mild weather means nothing much when considering the prospects for the coming winter. I'm not saying "no snow" anywhere, just snow that comes and goes. On a subjective scale I am looking for outbreaks about half as severe as Nov 2010 - Dec 2010 or even Jan 2010, but there's no way of fitting individual events to those trends even if accurate, one storm could turn out to be quite memorable even if its snow does not last on the ground for weeks afterwards as with (I think it was) 1-2 Feb 2009.

The "S" word was mentioned in MT's forecast today. It begins

First interesting charts appearing.

Potential height rises over Greenland. One to keep a close eye on especially with this OPI figure.

Blizzard 2010 wrote: »

The British Met Office has suggested that the first half of the winter will have a +ve NAO but the second half there are unsure of (Low Confidence) I certainly wouldnt like to be Met Eireanns shoes come next month. OPI negative is now a dead cert. Interesting how the winter particulary the first half pans out, My money is on snowfall before or at the end of November. I dont think it will last though

Ah you would really! It's dead exciting stuff;)

Does anyone know the current state of play with regard to stratospheric warming? Always a potential factor this time of year.

A very positive ECM for coldies tonight in the medium term. Good potential for something a bit colder from the north or northeast but a lot of uncertainty as well.

That is yet another aspect to this I can't quite get my head around. Watching the models, every time you get northern high pressure it gets moved along by the next low pressure system - presumably because of the jet stream. However, the concept of a block is that the high pressure forces the jet stream to change course, not vice versa.

So what has to happen in order for the high pressure system to "beat" the jet stream, as opposed to the jet stream simply moving the system along?

http://www.beat102103.com/news-and-sport/experts-issue-warning-about-the-worst-winter-in-a-century


Worst winter in a century just around the corned. 'Experts' in the UK have said so.