virtualsphere

I've been looking at Aprils following some previous very strong El Nino events* and what's quite striking is the strong trough anomaly over the UK, which mirrors what we've seen recently, and the setup also looks similar to the charts @Cambrian has posted above for 10 days time with the high over Greenland and into the Altantic: Rolling this forward to the summer and we get the high to the west of us - which is also something we've seen a bit of this week and in some of the models recently. If you look at the summers individually this masks a range of options and if the trough is closer to the UK it could be wetter, but if something like this was to verify it wouldn't be a bad summer for those of us in the west as long as the high stays close enough to the UK to be enough of an influence. It might not be as hot as some recent years though. *looking at this 2023-24 has actually been classified as "strong" rather than very strong which these charts are based on, though: https://ggweather.com/enso/oni.htm El Niño and La Niña Years and Intensities GGWEATHER.COM

2010. Mainly for the December and to a lesser extent January, but June was also a very good summer month and I'd happily sacrifice the poor July & August for such an unusual winter.

9.5C and 70mm please.

36.1C, Heathrow, July 29th.

6.6C and 104mm please

raz.org.rain Re. Iberian heights, worth remembering we're coming off the back of an unusually strong Nino event so it's not unprecedented... They'll probably disappear at some point, the question is how long we'll have to wait... February? March? April?

4.6C and 52mm please

6.1C and 123mm please

For a moment there I thought you were referring to the film of the same name and was looking out for a run with some mega-Northerly and -40c 850s....

9th Feb 2007. We had deeper snow in 2010 but that fell over a longer period. Although we had a dusting on the 8th, this pretty much fell in a single afternoon. Unfortunately it rained the following day so there was little chance to make the most of it!

Looking a bit further ahead with that MJO modelling, if this persists we would be entering phase 1 towards the end of December. If the cycle continues with some amplitude, and allow for a few days response time, the Nino composites for 1-2-3 in January are certainly interesting and would fit with forecasts any colder spell to be more sustained after Christmas: Compared to the December phase 2 which is what we're probably seeing play out in the more immediate modelling: Obviously a long way to get there first!

6.0C and 136mm please.

Looking at these long range models and given both the Nino and where we are in the solar cycle, it's intriguing that the Met Office are hinting at blocking to the NE rather than NW in their winter summary. If we discount early winter, given the background seems to favour later winter blocking, looking at some previous Nino winters for Jan & Feb we get a block positioned to the NW (I picked out Feb 1983 as an individual example given the stronger ENSO signal). This would also align with the solar research suggesting a general cycle of blocking NE at solar min (perhaps Feb 2009 / 2018 / 1986 etc) followed by further NW as the next cycle activity starts to pick up (1979 / 1987 / 2010 / perhaps last Dec etc). Of course you can argue that 1991 & 2013 which are closer to max are actually blocked back further NE. Anyway, there seems from my very amateur perspective to be more signals for any block to be towards Greenland rather than Scandinavia...?

Shouldn't there only be one light blue and purple line each on the chart? Quite a difference there! Edit - just spotted the same question posted on the model thread. I'm sure I've seen these graphs with only one set of lines before though.

Wet, but not out of the ordinary here in SW Wales, March was wetter as was last November and October 2019, with October 2021 coming close. I think the depressions taking a more southerly track and also passing further east through the UK have led to more of the country being affected by the rain this autumn, and possibly quite an unusual rainfall distribution for Scotland and N England with maybe as much or more rain in the east than the west. By comparison, Dec 2015 is by far the wettest month I've experienced in recent times whereas I think some eastern parts were fairly dry.