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Winter Forecast Bust


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Posted
  • Location: Bedworth, North Warwickshire 404ft above sea level
  • Location: Bedworth, North Warwickshire 404ft above sea level

Unfortunately my forecast thread got locked due to bickering so I'm just starting a new one to say that my forecast has obviously gone very wrong and is effectively bust.

Even if Jan and Feb turn out as I predicted (which I don't think they will) then it would be for the wrong reasons.

Oh Ian matey :D

That you do a winter forecast at all is probably oneof the most important efforts anyone could make to a weather forum and you go to alot of time and hassle to compile them, so don't think that you are unappreciated, there are far too many folk on here ready to stick the boot in when they see fit.

But the truth is the majority of us wouldn't have the guts or knowledge to do a forecast, and the more information we have about coming events the better, we can all decide afterwards.

Keep up the good work matey :shok::)

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Posted
  • Location: Home near Sellindge, 80m/250feet, 5miles from Coast
  • Weather Preferences: Severe Storms and Snow
  • Location: Home near Sellindge, 80m/250feet, 5miles from Coast

Busted AGAIN!.. Told you many many times not to use the modern E.. Theory

However i will say , well done for putting your hands up for admitting the forecast was wrong. :cray:

Have a great xmas and a happy new year

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Posted
  • Location: Beccles, Suffolk.
  • Weather Preferences: Thunder, snow, heat, sunshine...
  • Location: Beccles, Suffolk.

It seems like your forecast has gone the same way as my (unpublished) thoughts. I'd fully expected mildness... :cray:

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Posted
  • Location: Lincoln, Lincolnshire
  • Weather Preferences: Sunshine, convective precipitation, snow, thunderstorms, "episodic" months.
  • Location: Lincoln, Lincolnshire

Good to see this- it can take guts to admit to being completely wrong!

My December forecast was along similar lines to yours (I envisaged more of a cyclonic southerly bias, and possibility of cold snowy weather after Christmas, but the general theme of mild and 6.5C CET was in strong agreement). I think it's fair to say that my December forecast has been comprehensively busted as well, which is why it was paramount that I got in the midmonth update promptly.

I am starting to seriously wonder if the synoptic trends associated with the "modern winter" are starting to reverse. There are a few scientific papers out there which have hinted at this, suggesting that part of the Northern Hemisphere warming may have been assisted by changes in synoptic patterns (stronger westerlies, warm anomalies over the continents and cold anomalies over the oceans) and that this may be starting to flip back towards more prevalence of synoptics that were common in earlier decades. While some of the recent changes in synoptics can be explained by the NH warming and higher SSTs, it's clear that not all of it can be. So we'll have to see if, in future, we go into an era of winters which, while not as cold or snowy as the 60s or 80s, exceed those of the 90s and 00s, at least for a time.

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Posted
  • Location: Leeds (Roundhay) 135m
  • Location: Leeds (Roundhay) 135m

I think many people got caught out this December with most expecting the cold weather arriving after Christmas! Still takes guts to admit your forecast is wrong so early in the season! You put time into your forecast and actually wrote one unlike some who just sat and criticized (yet couldn't write one themselves)

Hope you have a good chrismas :p

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Posted
  • Location: Home near Sellindge, 80m/250feet, 5miles from Coast
  • Weather Preferences: Severe Storms and Snow
  • Location: Home near Sellindge, 80m/250feet, 5miles from Coast

which is why it was paramount that I got in the midmonth update promptly.

I personally believe that no Long Range Forecast should be updated or touched , because this can lead to some claiming that the forecast was correct even though it wasn't at the time.. Not saying you do that but i have through my time on weather forums seen it happen. It's ok if you want to post a reply as an update but the original MUST be left intact

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Posted
  • Location: Lincoln, Lincolnshire
  • Weather Preferences: Sunshine, convective precipitation, snow, thunderstorms, "episodic" months.
  • Location: Lincoln, Lincolnshire

Does this really apply to a monthly forecast that is updated twice a month, once at the beginning and once in the middle? It's surely better than having a one-off forecast issued on the 1st of the month that looks completely wrong and out of date by the time we get to the 20th...

In addition, in the midmonth update I always make references to the forecast issued at the beginning of the month, e.g. "this cold spell is set to be much more potent and longer lasting than I expected at the start of the month".

I can see the point but there is a large difference between this and, say, updating a month-ahead forecast whenever I feel like it and turning around and saying "the original forecast is invalid- this forecast counts and I was right so there!".

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Guest North Sea Snow Convection

Good to see this- it can take guts to admit to being completely wrong!

My December forecast was along similar lines to yours (I envisaged more of a cyclonic southerly bias, and possibility of cold snowy weather after Christmas, but the general theme of mild and 6.5C CET was in strong agreement). I think it's fair to say that my December forecast has been comprehensively busted as well, which is why it was paramount that I got in the midmonth update promptly.

I am starting to seriously wonder if the synoptic trends associated with the "even larger teapot" are starting to reverse. There are a few scientific papers out there which have hinted at this, suggesting that part of the Northern Hemisphere warming may have been assisted by changes in synoptic patterns (stronger westerlies, warm anomalies over the continents and cold anomalies over the oceans) and that this may be starting to flip back towards more prevalence of synoptics that were common in earlier decades. While some of the recent changes in synoptics can be explained by the NH warming and higher SSTs, it's clear that not all of it can be. So we'll have to see if, in future, we go into an era of winters which, while not as cold or snowy as the 60s or 80s, exceed those of the 90s and 00s, at least for a time.

Not that I do forecasts, but I can try to imagine that if you feel you have a reputation at stake for issuing a forecast that lots of people read and think that there is a lot riding on it, then it might not be easy to admit it is going wrong. I don't however think it should matter - if the forecast has been issued in the right spirit, then people are not going to hold you to anything in terms of the outcome. At least they shouldn't.

TWS- your own forecasts have the benefit of some anecdotal knowledge as well as an understanding of some of the technical issues. I think that this can help with recurring patterns - especially as far as the UK is concerned where our climate is maritime and although it has been predominantly always mainly atlantic based, we are a crossroads for airstreams from all points of the compass. The patterns this winter for eg perfectly illustrate this with mild southwesterlies and an atlantic trough meeting the cold continental and arctic air that has set up a fair bit earlier in the season than we have seen in recent years.

This makes forecasting this winter especially difficult - so no one should be too hard on themselves if their predictions go wrong

Edited by North Sea Snow Convection
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Posted
  • Location: Blackburn, Lancs
  • Location: Blackburn, Lancs

Unfortunately my forecast thread got locked due to bickering so I'm just starting a new one to say that my forecast has obviously gone very wrong and is effectively bust.

Even if Jan and Feb turn out as I predicted (which I don't think they will) then it would be for the wrong reasons.

Aye, but my best guess is still looking good Ian. Anyway, I think you have been very gracious in defeat, so to speak! :good:

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Posted
  • Location: Norton, Stockton-on-Tees
  • Weather Preferences: Snow and cold in winter, warm and sunny in summer
  • Location: Norton, Stockton-on-Tees

Unfortunately my forecast thread got locked due to bickering so I'm just starting a new one to say that my forecast has obviously gone very wrong and is effectively bust.

Even if Jan and Feb turn out as I predicted (which I don't think they will) then it would be for the wrong reasons.

Hats off to you Mr Brown!!

Because of your 'even larger teapot' stance you do get a lot of abuse on this forum, and although I feel that sometimes you do yourself no favours, nearly all of the abuse is totally unwarranted.

It takes courage to issue a detailed winter forecast, particularly if you are as well known as you are, and you are daring to forecast a mild winter.

It takes a great deal more courage to admit that you are wrong, especially as there will be a large faction hoping that you fall on your face.

:hi:

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Posted
  • Location: Cheddington, Buckinghamshire
  • Weather Preferences: Winter: Cold & Snowy, Summer: Just not hot
  • Location: Cheddington, Buckinghamshire

Fair play to you Ian, shame that the Met Office don't do this with their LRFs!

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Posted
  • Location: G.Manchester
  • Location: G.Manchester

Well although the December forecast is bust I certainly wouldn't rule out a very mild January/February. December has on average been the coldest month of the winter and effectively the only month to show a cooling.

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Posted
  • Location: Blackburn, Lancs
  • Location: Blackburn, Lancs

Well although the December forecast is bust I certainly wouldn't rule out a very mild January/February. December has on average been the coldest month of the winter and effectively the only month to show a cooling.

Not impossible, but highly unlikely, given the current synoptics being shown!

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Posted
  • Location: Lincoln, Lincolnshire
  • Weather Preferences: Sunshine, convective precipitation, snow, thunderstorms, "episodic" months.
  • Location: Lincoln, Lincolnshire

Fair play to you Ian, shame that the Met Office don't do this with their LRFs!

Sadly, that is one area where the MetO gets criticised where I have to agree with much of the criticism.

A mild January/February is, indeed, not impossible- but I think a mild January is starting to look quite unlikely. A mild February is still a possibility but as Ian went for a closer to average February that wouldn't help!

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Posted
  • Location: South East Cambridgeshire 57m ASL
  • Location: South East Cambridgeshire 57m ASL

It does take guts to admit messing up your forecast, so that is fair play to you like Nick said. I think a majority of people thought December was going to be a milder than average month, including me, with above rainfall. This cold spell has took me by suprise especially as these synoptics are very rare for pre-christmas

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Posted
  • Location: Redhill, Surrey
  • Weather Preferences: Southerly tracking LPs, heavy snow. Also 25c and calm
  • Location: Redhill, Surrey

Nice one IB.

Intersting point made by TWS re potential reversal of synoptic pattern. I believe this to be the case and that the spreading of the ITCZ and the jet moving northward is in line with the solar/lunar cycles and the warming seen. The solar cycle says reversal and so does the lunar cycle.

Re IB saying his forecast is bust even if Jan then Feb turn mild, if folk read what he is saying is that it would be for the wrong reasons hence his forecast is wrong. I admire this because Ian has made his forecast on the back of his theory and that the synoptics would be because of this theory. I have made mine with RJS with me using the the solar/lunar cycles that say the jet is on a longterm southward shift. RJS using his excellent theory and they marry up hence why we do it jointly. If we had cold due to an intense HP sat over us then our forecast would be wrong even if was cold as we don't forecast that, we forecast retrograde northerly blocking HPs with southerly tracking LPs etc.

I believe Ian was onto something and that we had seen a change as I have stated many times BUT not because of AGW and not irreversible..... I believe the reverse started in 2007.

BFTP

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Posted
  • Location: Irlam
  • Location: Irlam

Unfortunately my forecast thread got locked due to bickering so I'm just starting a new one to say that my forecast has obviously gone very wrong and is effectively bust.

Even if Jan and Feb turn out as I predicted (which I don't think they will) then it would be for the wrong reasons.

A bit too early to call it bust but where do you think it went wrong at least for December, Ian? Last winter, you played the "Hale winter phenomenon" card, you can't use that this time, though.

Infact, if we speculate, this winter turns out a touch colder than last winter, how do the supporters of the "Hale winter phenomenon" explains this? For the record, I don't buy the theory.

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Posted
  • Location: Hayward’s Heath - home, Brighton/East Grinstead - work.
  • Weather Preferences: Snow and storms
  • Location: Hayward’s Heath - home, Brighton/East Grinstead - work.

I would just like to say well done to Ian for admitting that his forecast has gone bust. It is difficult to even know where to begin to put out a forecast anyway and I certainly would have gone along the same lines that you did Ian for December so I would have been completely wrong there as well.

One thing though, Ian, that I would have to question was your steadfast belief during the autumn months that any factors that could possibly be drivers of cold, and I am sure that I brought these to your attention, were seemingly not considered. Is this because you didn't see them as being strong enough or that they didn't fit in with your overall mw theory. I too would like to know what factors in your opinion that have caused your forecast to bust.

c

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Posted
  • Location: Redhill, Surrey
  • Weather Preferences: Southerly tracking LPs, heavy snow. Also 25c and calm
  • Location: Redhill, Surrey

Ian

That's a good question by C, after last winter and now this one...why do you think your theory has floundered? Before one misreads the point, the change in pattern over past 20years was sound [maybe not causation]. To see the jet staying south for so long MUST be ringing alarm bells with you?

regards

BFTP

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Posted
  • Location: Irlam
  • Location: Irlam

...why do you think your theory has floundered?

The problem for me was that the theory was applied, absolutely and rigidly. There was no room for flexibilty and as a result as what happens to a building that is inflexible, when a tremor strikes, it collapses. The theory would have been fine if to say northerly blocking is becoming rarer but could still occur. Ian gave the impression that northerly blocking during the winter season had become extinct.

Even Ian can't say there has been no true northerly blocking this winter thus far.

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Posted
  • Location: Rossland BC Canada
  • Location: Rossland BC Canada

I have the optimistic feeling that we are only a few years away now from a situation where long-range forecasting becomes perceptually more reliable and starts to "back into" the accuracy range now staked out by the conventional models at day 4-6. In other words, I'm saying that in the rather noisy and cluttered field that is long-range forecasting, there probably already exist some approaches, some workers, some recent track records, that would encourage one to say "look there instead of at FI" for guidance in the time frame beyond seven days.

Ian, in my humble opinion, has fallen victim to a situation where a plausible anchoring for long-range forecasts in one particular region (western Europe) has dissolved faster than most had expected. That plausible anchoring was the long-term height anomaly and temperature regime witnessed in broad general terms from 1988 to (April) 2007 that seemed to thwart even the efforts of a modest block in winter 2005-06 to deliver anything more than feeble wintry synoptics. Given the combination of this persistence ("the trend is your friend," as they say) and the claimed results of global warming studies, it probably affected everyone's range of expectation to some extent, and there's no saying that this background warming is not real and affecting even this winter's rather robust blocking and cold anomalies.

More reliable long-range forecasts do seem to be coming along, I think people on Net-weather would generally agree that if you take the whole range of them available in past years, there has been an improving trend. I know there has been for Fred and myself -- in fact, I should mention that Fred was overly kind perhaps in his remarks, I feel that if he had gone solo this winter he might have appeared to have nailed this cold winter regime more so than our combined effort which tended to be filtered through my growing conservatism in such matters (just because I didn't totally trust that the signals for this 1962-63 style blocking could be sustained over the warmer North Atlantic without interruptions of the sort we saw last January).

I would imagine that there are going to be very mild winters in the near future, and this whole process of returning to a paradigm of a full possible range of outcomes may once again fall out of favour once the quiet sun episode fades from experience and memory (if it does). So, hopefully, these advances in LRF will lock in at some point and more credible agencies than isolated amateurs or mets dabbling in LRF in their spare time will be making, issuing and taking credit for the forecasts. That way, it won't be just an academic exercise that has no win situation, just a variety of lose and draw situations, all inevitably terminable by human frailty of some kind or another.

It's only a discovery if other people say so, until when, it's a personal obsession.

I'm basing all this in part on UK + Ireland, and in part on U.S. experience, as I see many different approaches being used, and some encouraging track records (anyone can fluke one LRF by chance, a track record is necessary for credibility). The challenge is going to be for somebody (and I'm on the case, hopefully not alone) to investigate all the promising techniques and try to get a handle on why they work independently or if they are perhaps different ways of looking at the same problem. This sort of approach requires that one be resistant to, although not totally opposed to, clamours for enshrining global warming as a huge factor in all forecasting. A more successful approach is going to require maintenance of balanced assessment of past climatic performance and not any tendency to throw out all records from before a certain date. At the same time, there is probably a new base line in existence, perhaps it is now descending back into a more historic mode, but different regions will respond differently to these recent changes, for example, North America seems not to have been affected very much if at all.

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Posted
  • Location: Sheffield South Yorkshire 160M Powering the Sheffield Shield
  • Weather Preferences: Any Extreme
  • Location: Sheffield South Yorkshire 160M Powering the Sheffield Shield

Theres a few bust forecasts. Anyone remember the mild end to Dec and mild start to Jan.

Nothing wrong in getting it wrong even the pros get it wrong. As long as you admit it went tis up everything is fine.

GP is doing very well this winter and was forecasting a very mild Feb after a cold jan. Will it happen ???

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Posted
  • Location: Huddersfield, 145m ASL
  • Weather Preferences: Lots of snow, lots of hot sun
  • Location: Huddersfield, 145m ASL

It's only a discovery if other people say so, until when, it's a personal obsession.

I'm basing all this in part on UK + Ireland, and in part on U.S. experience, as I see many different approaches being used, and some encouraging track records (anyone can fluke one LRF by chance, a track record is necessary for credibility). The challenge is going to be for somebody (and I'm on the case, hopefully not alone) to investigate all the promising techniques and try to get a handle on why they work independently or if they are perhaps different ways of looking at the same problem. This sort of approach requires that one be resistant to, although not totally opposed to, clamours for enshrining global warming as a huge factor in all forecasting. A more successful approach is going to require maintenance of balanced assessment of past climatic performance and not any tendency to throw out all records from before a certain date. At the same time, there is probably a new base line in existence, perhaps it is now descending back into a more historic mode, but different regions will respond differently to these recent changes, for example, North America seems not to have been affected very much if at all.

I don't want to clutter things up by repeating the whole thing, but I have to say that that RJS is a beautiful example of the kind of thoughtful, informative and fascinating posts that you have become noted for on Netweather, and is one of the reasons I stick with this forum as my number one port of call. Great analysis, excellently written, balanced and informative. 10/10 !!!

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Posted
  • Location: Redhill, Surrey
  • Weather Preferences: Southerly tracking LPs, heavy snow. Also 25c and calm
  • Location: Redhill, Surrey

Theres a few bust forecasts. Anyone remember the mild end to Dec and mild start to Jan.

Nothing wrong in getting it wrong even the pros get it wrong. As long as you admit it went tis up everything is fine.

GP is doing very well this winter and was forecasting a very mild Feb after a cold jan. Will it happen ???

Very very well PIT, its on our LRF thread. :cc_confused: :unsure: If you spent Xmas down here...yep it was fairly mild, and yes the cold hung on to the north more than mentioned. Thank you though for your imput and nice that many parts have stayed cold [for cold lovers].

By the way, GP MAY well update his Feb thoughts by mid Jan...just a little heads up.

BFTP

Edited by BLAST FROM THE PAST
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  • 2 weeks later...
Posted
  • Location: Glasgow, Scotland (Charing Cross, 40m asl)
  • Weather Preferences: cold and snowy in winter, a good mix of weather the rest of the time
  • Location: Glasgow, Scotland (Charing Cross, 40m asl)

Hey, most of the LRFs on here are bust, particularly mine, which went for a quite period at the end of December, a December CET of 5.5C, and a very mild spell to start January!! Nowhere near right at all! Long range forecasting in such detail takes real guts, and having read over many of your previous seasonal forecasts I think you are one of the most accurate long range forecasters out there. good.gif

It has been a surprising winter for all of us though, even those who went for cold didn't think this cold this early!

LS

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