I was on the road most of yesterday so this morning I am catching up with the models and what our weather may have in store from now through New Year. Unfortunately there is plenty more unwelcome rain to come and with an active Atlantic storm track and +NAO, the fronts will continue to sweep across, bringing 2-3 more batches of rain along with strong to gale-force winds with severe gales potentially along the coast.

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As for cold, while there was no white Christmas which I didn’t expect anyway and I declared that early on, I however see a turn to ‘colder’ later Christmas into Boxing Day which could be somewhat interesting but modelling wasn’t all that cold, so anything wintry wouldn’t amount to very much. We did in fact see snowfall in Glasgow last night and as I drove up from Manchester last night, heavy rain turned increasingly to sleet as we entered Scotland as the air masses grew cooler. As we continued north the sleet turned more to snow and while it didn’t come to anything here in Lennoxtown, the Campsie Hills, just north of the house does have a covering of snow this morning and the snow line is pretty low. I did think the colder air would return around Christmas and into Boxing Day. That did in a way happen but it was relative and restricted to the north.

Any cold air will not last, the current pattern does not support it.

Now, here is the latest charts off the GFS for precipitation between this morning and Monday. Notice one wave of precip after the other. This will cause more flooding problems i’m affraid.

This morning

Fri 28

Sat 29

Mon 31

Now, we know that more rain is coming with more flooding imminent but what about the upper pattern and 850 temps looking into next week and for the first days of 2013?

With the NAO holding positive and an active storm track, there is still very little indication through the first 10 days of January of any real cold. You’ll notice the ECMWF shows a very west to east flow across Europe, gone is the cold air over the east but what is worth pointing out is that with large and complex Atlantic storms come a wavy jet orientation, in other words we could well see a very up and down temperature regime from now through January 10th in which we get mild surges ahead of fronts but distinctly colder backlashes with a chance of hill snow, maybe even to lower levels periodically. It’s a very active and unsettled pattern we are in but at the end of the ECMWF deterministic 10-day run, it shows colder air trying to return to eastern parts of Europe. The Azores ridge periodically lifts north and not just over the UK but to our west.

Wouldn’t it be good to see a trend which shows the pulsing of the Azores high back more and more west to become a North Atlantic, perhaps even a Greenland high as colder air returns to eastern and northern Europe around the end of the first into the 2nd week of January?

While I, along with you are dissapointed to see not anything particularly cold over the next 2 weeks, I remain optimistic and even with these next 2 weeks, it won’t be particularely warm, there is likely to be some rather raw days, especially AFTER fronts and lows push through and winds veer more NW, N.

Remember what I called for. A cold start and mid point to December but a milder period from mid-month on which could bring little or no chance of a white Christmas. I called for a return to colder prior to New Year and that appears to be on hold, despite any snow in the North.

Right now the NAO ensemble shows a 50-50 chance of + or – into early and mid-January but with the ECMWF at least showing the cold trying to build back over eastern Europe and Scandinavia with the trough deepening in the east, this suggests a ridges further west but, if this happens, the question is, where does that ridge position itself, over the UK and Ireland or can it drift further west and allow us to see some decent winter weather.

like i’ve said all autumn and early winter, the trend during 2012 has been for negative and the positive should flip again eventually and probably sooner rather than later.

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