Ducks, Slush and MuckAdded : Sunday at 9:41 Sounds a bit like the Sunday roast dinner which we have planned later, but in fact for this discussion we will look at the current linking of some weather lore against the weather which we have seen so far in November and December this year.
Many of the UK weather lores suggest that a cold November (one which creates ice which can support the weight of a duck, although we don't know how big this duck is?!) is usually followed by a winter of warmth and rain (the muck).
We have delved through the archives here at Metcheck and since 1925 there have been 17 very mild winters, of which one November was very mild, three were cold and thirteen were average. So, the ducks can rest easy for the time being.
One of the things which we do tend to look at around this time of the year though is the polar vortex. This is the chart at the moment :-
You can see a pretty well defined vortex just to the North of Norway. Some height rises across Alaska, but no signs at the moment of any sudden stratospheric warming or even any decent coupling of the surface patterns with the upper air patterns.
If we take a look at the medium to longer range of the GFS ► into January and this is the latest thinking :-
Yep, the GFS ► brings back the Atlantic towards the end of the year with the potential for unsettled weather to welcome in 2018.
But this is an important evolution in the pattern. Many of you who follow the polar vortex and the Arctic Oscillation will know that a warming effect in January is rather common. In a nutshell, wet and windy weather returns to the UK to start the year, but then as these potent weather systems decay and rattle North, so this disturbs the vortex and we tend to see a disruption towards the end of January with colder weather coming in during February.
Of course, that's not a forecast, but a general pattern which tends to occur at our latitude during the middle of winter.
One thing of interest this year though is the distinct lack of coupling between the polar vortex and lower level patterns. A great example of this was the cold snap which we saw during the early part of this month. There was no Sudden Stratospheric Warming and neither was the polar vortex displaced, but we still saw an awful lot of high latitude blocking which allowed colder air to filter South.
So, an interesting Winter coming up from a meteorological point of view with the Atlantic determined to return later this month. As for after? You'll have to ask those ducks.
METEOROLOGIST : MARSH |