Winter 2023

[GloriaSmud]

As we’re a few weeks away from the start of meteorological Winter (1st December), some weather websites have some thoughts on what the weather might have in store for us over the next few months.

The Weather Outlook started very early, in September but October's thoughts are here ~ The Weather Outlook.
And Netweather’s thoughts are here.

Just been looking at the flooding in the SE I'm just hoping the dry spell is long lasting. It's been beautiful here today the sun has got his hat on.

Picture postcard in north Hudson 💙

Near Shanghai 💙. I'd love a TARDIS to zip around

We have a rain warning for tonight but dry thereafter. Just as well since the local water meadows are doing their job and are currently full of river water.

Fingers crossed for cold and dry, perfect for working outdoors and there much to be done.

Did anyone see a programme about the winter of 1947 recently? Absolutely gobsmacking!

I too would like a , and would love to pay a (brief!) visit to some of the villages in Wear Valley back then.

Mine are in the bath. We always shower so it seemed a wasted space

DS has been ice swimming this evening at a sauna near his home. Needless to say he's not in the UK. It's -26 feels like -35. Apparently his hair was freezing between the lake and the sauna.

There's ridiculous road flooding in our town centre (North Hampshire). It gets worse every few years. Some of the footpaths are impassable, luckily I wore wellies.
I'm going to be sending the photos to the council, councillors and green team to flag up how bad it is and maybe they'd like to do take action before homes are flooded. (They won't).

DS had a wonderful holiday in Finland doing the tar trail in a kayak. He loved the saunas on the river bank at night, swimming in cold water then sweating.

Your son's very lucky

He has such an outdoorsy lifestyle there. Skiing and paddle boarding 15 minutes from home. Skating virtually outside the apartment block. Summer hiking in forests minutes away. I envy him except for the long nights at this time of year. That and the price of booze.

Meanwhile I'm sitting on my sofa listening to it pissing down yet again.

The only downside for my DS was the insects. He didn't mention beer. 😂

Was - 24c in Moscow today if that helps 🥶🥶

Weather twitter is getting quite excited by some models for the next few weeks. (Prays for snow watch)

Cold continues to be on the cards from late this weekend with models showing that it will probably (but I guess not definitely) last into February. While at first it starts as cold and dry, the risk of some snowy events looks like it will increase further into the period.

Sadly not always a sunny, bright sort of cold for everyone, especially to start with. The best chance of sunshine being in western and particularly north western areas. Hopefully that will improve by midweek. There will be a risk of ice and freezing fog.

It's uncertain as to how quickly flooded areas will clear. Ground is fully saturated. Where wind is low (everywhere) and skies clouded, it will take a long time for ground to desaturate. If deep cold develops I think there's a risk of cracked underground pipes due to this factor.

However, at least the relentless rain will stop.

Yes Klingfilm, metoffice are still going for a few weeks of cold. And no/little in the way of rain, thank goodness.

We'll be skating on the fields if it freezes. 2.2c this morning 🥶

I think weather twitter will have been provoked into excitement by a full on beast from the east appearing in one of the GFS model runs yesterday with a big old high pressure sat over Greenland. I expect a few of them will have been weeping into their cornflakes this morning after it backed off some from the extreme scenario. Emotional roller coaster.

So glad to hear the rain is going to stop for a bit! I can put up with a bit of cold.

A snapshot of the GFS ensembles for a randomly chosen english county - oxfordshire.

You can see unusually tight agreement for temperatures up to around the 15th Jan, showing high confidence in cold for the next 10 days. Then while the majority of members stay clustered around a pretty cold scenario, one plummets into ridiculous cold and a small number of others tend back to mild.

Do you favour any of them, Kitten?

Well at least it’s all getting a bit more interesting!

Would love some snow but here in S.Bucks I know not to get my hopes up. I’m very low too - often the chillterns get some snow but nothing down here.

They are all the same model, run with slightly different conditions. But I think we are in for a reasonable period of blocking now. If anything, because it seems that recent weather patterns seem to get stuck for ages once they embed in. It seems to be all wet and windy, or all dry and not a lot in between. Cold in NE Europe is really deep and is going to be hard to shift. It looks like we are going for a minor SSW. So I'm reasonably optimistic at the moment.

I glance over the Netweather messageboard when I'm bored have a few minutes to spare and the posters there are all over the place ~ getting excited at good model runs and then declaring the bad ones, 'a disaster.' And then they argue over why you shouldn't get excited over good or bad ones and it's early days etc etc. Then the next model run comes out and they say the same things all over again!

thats an excellent summary Gloria.