The Atlantic remains king of the Western Europe pattern these days. I’m sure you’ve seen the images of severe flooding down in southern France into Italy. Unfortunately that setup remains into next week with more low pressure and increased flood potential.
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As for us here in the UK and Ireland, well both GFS, ECM and other models continue to show the Atlantic dominating our pattern. Sure, we’ve got a degree of blocking further north but the flow is westerly underneath. Through the next 10-15 days, we have a setup where a mean low is positioned to our NW and lows will form on the south and east flank, driving frequent spells of wind and rain in from the southwest. As stated, it’s England and Wales which takes the brunt of this wet pattern later in the autumn season.
Recent days I’ve talked a lot about the stratosphere. If you watched the video and read yesterday’s post I’ve covered the reason’s why winter is not knocking on our door yet while others are enduring mid-winter conditions already. This pattern takes time to go through the motions and until the atmosphere adjusts to a more wintertime state, I don’t see winter here. END of November/early December I think is a period worth watching because we should begin to see warming down through the stratosphere and therefore a more negative NAO signal with cold beginning to shift westward out of Siberia/Eurasia.
Until then, have those wellies handy!
Here’s the GFS surface through 192 hours. Our frost or cold will come in between lows but this doesn’t look like a cool pattern through mid month.
Credit: AccuWeather Pro
Credit: AccuWeather Pro
Credit: AccuWeather Pro
Credit: AccuWeather Pro
The CFSv2 weekly shows the northern blocking but still Atlantic flow driving Western Europe’s weather underneath. We need to see strat warming which builds heights DOWN over Greenland into the Atlantic, otherwise the westerlies are still allowed to flow across the Atlantic into the UK. As the season progresses, so too should this start warming event taking place!
ECMWF 500mb height anomalies day 3-10
Notice in the above chart that despite the positive hooking Greenland with Scand, there’s a westerly orientation to the isobars. We want to see more blocking extend south from Greenland into the Atlantic to shut down the westerlies.
Yep, AO is firmly negative but notice the NAO.
See video…
Next post will be Sunday!
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There are some very interesting prospects regarding vortex split at the moment! And it’s “just” 8-10 days out. And some quite interesting prospects regarding strat warming, too. Very exciting times ahead I think! If the models are seeing a tendency here there could be a very cold winter ahead of us. I can’t help thinking, though, that this warmup, if you can say that about cold, is rather similar to the warmup back in 2009 where the buildup was seen weeks before, too. It’s quite ironic if it comes true again this year, as Accuweather has just issued their winter forecast with prospects of a mild winter North- and Western Europe. But we will have to wait and see what’s in store further down the road. Quite exciting to watch the models these days I dare say, though! 🙂