SATURDAY EVENING JAN 8
Winter releases its icy grip.. no surprise in the north, but elsewhere, updates are needed.
Now that winter is breaking, which is no surprise across the north, the question is what should bring it back? The extreme cold that I think is a sign of things to come more frequently in the coming years is now focusing its fury on eastern Asia and for the next 10-15 days in North America. The relaxation of the pattern here though begs the question, does it ever return. Given what I am seeing, I dont think so. For the north, that is not a big deal. But for the areas over the continent where I was confident that the cold would return as strong, it is a big change.
The core of blocking has shifted west, with one center going back over Siberia and the other into northern and central Canada. This allows more troughines over the northeast atlantic, and the development of the positive NAO. This means the warming touted for the northwest is now getting established in the areas that were very cold and in
areas that have only had minimal cold this winter.
So is it over?
For ALL the areas that had temps more than 1C below normal in Dec, , the possible exception Scandinavia, YES. Sometimes patterns like what we went through are like slingshots, you pull the slingshot back and then it lets go, and flies the other way. In some respects this was a double fooling, because what is going on is what I thought would happen in the US, much like 2006. Instead the cold this year instead of being focused as in Jan 2006 across all of asia is from eastern Asia through Alaska and into the US.. The result is that the cold pool is on the other side of the world so to speak and we are left in warmth.
The latest European computer model indicates to me that much of the next 2-3 weeks is milder than normal precisely in the areas I thought would be cold. So this is a big admission that while nailing the first part of winter in these areas, I was wrong the second half across the continent. Again in the northwest, I think the idea was made clear the worst was in December.
By the first week of Feb, a positive arctic oscillation develops and those are normally warm patterns across much of Europe.
Moral is no coldest winter in a 1000 years, or 100 years ( never my forecast) and after the roaring start, an inglorious ending seems to be in the works. I will be reworking this as I study it more, but felt I had to get it out given the overall revision needed.
A word about email. folks, I am swamped right now with a major US outbreak of winter, which fortunately I caught just after Christmas, and quicker than I came to the conclusion that the worst of winter was over in more places than just the UK and Ireland, which is the subject of this blog. I wont be able to answer email in any kind of complete fashion till after this winter battle in the states is done after the 20th.
thanks for reading, ciao for now
