After a cold central and southern Europe January, it’s turned considerably milder during February.
As you can see from the below January temp anomaly map, the core of coldest was on the Balkan Peninsula where Serbia and Hungary witnessed their coldest Jan in some 50 years, the coldest in 20 years for France. For the UK, it was very much a north-south split with the South being coldest.
Credit: Michael Ventrice
Areas which saw coldest in January, enjoyed a milder than normal February. What a flip!
Credit: Michael Ventrice
So what about March? I’m sure your well aware of the fickle nature of meteorological spring’s opening month. While we’re seeing a bipolar February with cold, snow then spring-like warmth and now back to cold, snowy and stormy as ‘Storm Doris’ moves in tonight, there is once again interesting rumbles up within the stratosphere which suggests, don’t put to heavy coats away just yet!
I understand that we’ve been here so many times and it’s not happened. A cold pattern following a stratospheric warming event that is… Following the unusually weak polar vortex split in late October which brought a cold November, the other two stratospheric warming episodes this winter have benefited mainland Europe, not so much the UK but the GFS has one last strat warming event and if we’re still going to see winter, now is the time…
Look at the difference between the initial and 168 hour 10mb temps below. That’s a nice warming over the pole and down over Greenland. Getting this is one thing, actually having the reaction from stratosphere down to troposphere and correct 500mb reflection is entirely another.
The big question is this, do we continue with the up and down mild and cool with a few storms thrown in for good measure or do we finally have winter in spring.
A late Feb strat warming could deliver a rather bookend style winter this year with cold November and possibly cold March.
CFSv2 weeklies does see the return to a negative AO/NAO.
Credit: Tropical Tidbits
Credit: Tropical Tidbits
Credit: Tropical Tidbits
Credit: Tropical Tidbits
Credit: Tropical Tidbits
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