Winter Weather outlook

[OhYouBadBadKitten]

Disclaimer: I'm only a weather enthusiast, not a professional meterologist. Take anything I say with a good pinch of salt, I do get things wrong sometimes!

In a normal year I wouldn't dream of starting a winter weather outlook thread at the beginning of September. This year there is a great deal of anxiety and interest about what the weather may hold for us.

Outlooks at this point can only ever be rough hand waving exercises, taking into consideration lots of factors and are likely to be inaccurate. I've been doing a lot of thinking and research over the last couple of weeks as to what might happen this winter. At this point the honest answer is: I haven't a scooby! (this might make this thread a bit pointless at this time!)

Looking at various long term models, solutions range from wet, mild and stormy, to cold and blocked or cold and snowy! I have an instinct that we are more likely to end up with a milder, dry scenario, with some colder incursions at times, but that is instinct and not based on anything quantifiable.

For someone who can talk through the various factors at depth, watch Gavin's winter outlook videos on Youtube.

Still drying my washing outside quite well 🤔
Dahlias have died off but everything else is rampaging away in the garden.
I was about to ask about the supposed cold first half of the winter. Any idea of cold predictions?
But, driving to mid wales tomorrow so I am glad that there's no ice.

Oo thanks Cringe.

I for one are glad it's still warm as our boiler broke this morning, and we can't get it replaced until next Wednesday. Luckily our house has good installation so it stays quite warm. Hopefully we won't get too cold before then.

Its a great toy Cringe!

Models teased us last night with snow for the se next week. But then they sobered up this morning and it still looks all very unpredictable and misbehaving.

Ffs 17 degrees on Saturday! In mid November!

London today is glorious. Sunny and pretty mild. Went out in a t shirt and felt fine

It's the same in n Wales got up for the dog at 5am it was balmy. Beautiful warm day today all the windows open here 16c our it's ready

It looks like temperatures will drift down this week and if the ensembles are correct, feel much more seasonal by the end of the week. Quite a lot of rain potential showing over the next couple of weeks and some potentially rather windy weather, particularly for the northern half of the UK.

We've had some pretty windy weather up here on the NE coast of England this week, kitten. Two days of really gusty winds. BBC weather totally ballsed it up by classifying it as a gentle breeze then retrospectively issuing a weather warning for gusts up to 50mph. It seems to be our default weather pattern these days.

We are looking at 2 degrees overnight by the end of next week, so I best dig the grit out from the back of the garage.

Took my jacket off and stuffed it in my bag because I was too warm. Loads of people in T shirts in central London yesterday and the sunlight was as you say, glorious.

Really warm here yesterday and Saturday too. It looks like it’s getting more autumnal this week and into next. It’s daft because financially it’s very helpful to have only had to put the heating on twice so far since the start of November, but also the mildness is pretty disconcerting. And I don’t feel Christmassy yet in the slightest.

It's a bit technical but Netweather have Preliminary thoughts before they do their Winter Forecast here.

Teeshirt in town this morning, muggy and humid. The council workers were blocking the road with a tractor and trailer putting up all the Christmas trees. We didn't even light the fire last night it was so warm.

And I don’t feel Christmassy yet in the slightest

Local council is putting the Xmas lights out and I'm 'wait, what? Christmas, you sure? in this weather??' (which has now changed to grey and foggy but still mildish).

@OhYouBadBadKitten sorry for the daft question, but the model data for the next couple of weeks is a really mixed bag temperature-wise. Does that firm up the closer it gets? There’s a few blocks of green which look to be pretty coherent overnight temps, but after that there’s a sort of patchwork with everything from 5C up to 14-ish. Is that because it’s too far in the future to tell for sure, or because of mad unsettled weather systems (or something else)? Sorry, totally novice but I find this interesting 😊 thank you for your expertise on these threads!

Forgot to attach my picture, doh!

It's still not cold enough for the fire here - there was loads of sun (after lots of cloud all weekend) and I am cooking a roast dinner tonight, so there's a tank of hot water, solar gain heat in rooms and oven heating up downstairs. So despite it being more expensive than usual, we're getting great value from this winter's wood supply so far

@OhYouBadBadKitten
I’ve just seen this image on FB 😱
Obviously it’s 10 days away, and things do change, but should we start panicking? 🤣

This means nothing to me, is this hot or cold??

Ventusky agrees. Cold but dry

Blue is cold. Red is hot.

So it's likely to be freezing cold? Excellent.

It's not a daft question Cringe. It is a long way off yet and solutions always diverge the further out in time you go. However the models are also swinging wildly.

Hints tonight again that things may turn markedly colder next week as shown in the chart *GiantKitten has posted.

hmmm, well it's one run of one model and I'm not convinced that there is much cold air to tap into. But off the back of that one example, it would be chilly.

The ECM ensembles show a range of temperatures of around 2c-10c for the same day and time. Remember that ensembles are the multiple model runs with slightly different perturbations (changes in input) and represent the range of possible solutions.

Still looking like we will turn to more average temperatures by the end of this week and into next week - which will feel cold compared to recent temperatures. It should start to settle down more, especially towards the end of the month and generally become cold, but dry. Fog could be an issue.

First this rain to get through. Perhaps some thunderstorms overnight in the south.