mountain shadow

richie3846 No, but above average for sure. It's the increasing frequency this Spring for me, barely a dry day. Looking forward to 4 or 5 days of dry weather to try and get the grass cut.

Another rainy morning. What a truly awful Spring this is. My son's cricket pitch is essentially a bog and not likely to be playable until mid June at the earliest. Effectively writing off half their season. Old fellas at the club cannot remember it as bad.

As ever, any proper cold stays past day 10, so the risk of snow and ice remains very low. In fact, I'm seeing more evidence that the Iberian ridge will have more influence than Northerly blocking.

First 20 - 25th March First 25 - 26th April First 30 - 31 May

MJB More likely than a White Christmas of course.

Lukesluckybunch But of course, the cold never arrived.

rwtwm More human input needs to be given to the model output. For starters, any predicted decrease in the Iberian Desert High should be amended to increase it instead.

CryoraptorA303 And this on the back of almost all long range forecasts and teleconnections predicting colder than average prospects for February. Very, very scary what is coming.

Global warming saving on those heating bills My Mrs has told me to get the grass cut tomorrow, in the middle of February! Never done that before.

northwestsnow The former drops the Iberian heights whilst the latter maintains the Iberian Desert High at 1030mb. Only one winner. San Sebastian up to 22 degrees tomorrow.

feb1991blizzard Great to see, but I guess like most, lets get in inside 5 days before getting excited.

raz.org.rain Indeed, and when the Atlantic does try and push in, the potential for extremely severe thunderstorms increases hugely.

Met Office philosophy must be to keep on forecasting cold with Northerly or Easterlies until it actually occurs. Just goes to show, that even though they're Professionals, they have no clue either.

stewfox Winter runs from December to February and always has. Whilst March may produce the goods, that is Spring. So, unless there is some miraculous change in the model output, there will be no proper cold for the rest of the month and therefore Winter.

For me, it's the expansion of the Hadley cell in Southern Europe such that the Iberian High has become an almost permanent feature and is turning Spain into a desert. This expansion means the jet stream struggles to undercut into Europe and the real cold is kept in Scandinavia. The Iberian High is now so powerful that it easily suppresses any influence by the teleconnections etc..