Christmas Eve was a wet and rather stormy affair and now, for some, New Year is too with significant flooding in between. This pattern is so strong, it will take longer than expected to break down but I remain optimistic that we will get out of this as we start to reverse the height field from pole to Azores.

Now that we’re warming things up over the pole and heights are building, so the Atlantic storm train should start to slow down and with a slacker westerly, colder air will be allowed to come south but this will be a slow process.

We need to get through another 24 hours of wind and heavy, flooding rain, then another batch sweeps in Friday but as we continue to get hit by Atlantic lows, things are changing in the grander scale.

Here’s the GFS surface chart for New Year’s Day.

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Here’s the other, potentially deeper system Friday.

Yet another system nears Monday bringing more wind and rain.

By 192 or next Wednesday, low pressure is seen over the Norwegian Sea with a cold northerly flow over the UK.

The thing is we want to see high pressure building to the north, east and even west and here’s why I continue to believe that will happen.

Note the strong warming over Siberia which is weakening and stretching the polar vortex. This will force arctic air into the mid-latitudes.

By 240 hours, the arctic has significantly warmed but this process takes time and likely, this wouldn’t be particularly noticeable here till probably mid to late January.

The CFSv2 remains adamant at sending the blocking south from the pole down over Greenland which focuses the trough and cold pool over the UK.

What cannot be ignored is the fact that the CFSv2 shows the strengthening in the northern block with time. It does show for a week and then disappear, so there’s a firm trend but look at the strat warming combined with this 500mb height anomalies and you cannot say there’s no cold signal.

The CFSv2 700mb chart shows blocking over top with a ribbon for low heights linking North America with Europe.

Check out the latest CFS height anomalies for the month ahead. Another cold look with blocking high linking from Greenland down into Scandinavia and eastern Europe.

Let’s not forget the current SST profile and the now classic tripole which promotes Greenland/N Atlantic blocking.

Even is this doesn’t happen, you have to admit that the evidence is there. I will say this much, I thought our pattern would have turned colder by now or certainly the signs of it showing up, however I didn’t anticipate such a strong storm pattern.

As mentioned in last night’s US video, this appears to be America’s winter with the worst of the cold focusing there but I don’t think we’ll get off too lightly and we should be in for a period of 10-15 days of much colder, more winter-like conditions.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

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