Slush, Muck and Ducks..Added : Thursday at 14:25 You know that saying in the weather... "Ice in November to bear a duck, rest of the winter be slush and muck."
We'll explain this a bit more in a second, but when we were looking at the charts earlier this week with the GFS ► sending the UK into Narnia later next week, so we were left wondering whether this winter really was going to be what we call "front loaded" which is where the colder air comes in early.
As meteorologists, of course we love snow, but early snow in November is a bit like opening Christmas presents on December 1st. The trouble with colder air at this time of the year would indicate that the Arctic isn't being allowed to cool down properly as warmer air forcing itself into the Arctic circle displaces the colder air South.
Anyway, the GFS ► backing away from this scenario now and only some briefly cooler air into Western Scotland later next week looks likely :-
The GFS ► continues though to keep this meridional pattern going through the course of the month and you can see how this affects the airmass gradients across the Northern Hemisphere :-
So, no surprising that at the end of the 6z GFS ► run it has another go :-
Back to the ducks and whilst there is no statistical link between cold starts and mild ends to UK winters, the notion that a cold pattern would establish itself for that long would indeed be rather far fetched, which possibly explains the weather lore.
From a meteorological perspective, November cold tends to be a half hearted affair. Give the Arctic a few more weeks of cooling conditions, surface and soil temperatures to drop a bit as well as surrounding oceans and then we will welcome the Arctic Northerlies, but at the moment? Just a bit too soon, but thank you GFS ► for the entertainment...
METEOROLOGIST : MARSH |