After weeks of dealing with hurricanes, former hurricanes and storms, we’re edging ever closer to winter, the season many of us are longing for. Up until now it’s been all about the Atlantic with no mention of the Arctic. This will inevitably change as we head into November.
So far, our setup has very much resembled this.
Firstly, let’s talk about the October Eurasian snow and how it looking. Of course the greater the October Eurasian snow coverage the better the potential for a -AO/NAO winter.
As stated in the below tweet from Judah Cohen, it got off to a good start but has slowed.
#Siberian #snow cover is still above normal but advance has stalled over the past week and now at low end of recent years. pic.twitter.com/JKNBqbQ99i
— Judah Cohen (@judah47) October 17, 2017
It’s also time to talk stratosphere and polar vortex. Looks like the modelling suggests some perturbation of the polar vortex off the axis and this suggests a slow down of the westerlies and buildup of heights.
GFS predicting that stratospheric #polarvortex will be increasingly perturbed heading into late October and early November pic.twitter.com/meTVRn4Qud
— Judah Cohen (@judah47) October 18, 2017
Both NAO and to a somewhat lesser extent the AO is signalling negative in response.
As per usual, exactly WHERE the ridges develop and position is of course key to mild or cool patterns.
At the very least, the GFS ensemble is hinting at a significant slow down in upper air stream and thus the jet stream flips from zonal to meridional. Although I wouldn’t shout early cold spell, I’d say we catch a break from the storms and perhaps enjoy some cool, crisp and frosty autumn mornings.
Before we get there later next week and on into Halloween, we’ve two gale/severe gale force lows to deal with.
The first being tonight and the second tomorrow night into Saturday. More on why the second system hasn’t been named. Yet anyway!
Wind is getting up here now,we were very lucky in our part of South west Ireland with storm Ophelia it was wild to be sure but we didnt have power loss or structural damage thank goodness,fair sick of wind now though,lol