Joe Bastardi's Europe Column
POSTED: 7:49 a.m. November 18, 2009

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The thoughts expressed in this column represent Joe Bastardi’s personal interpretation of the weather pattern formulated from his expert analysis of the conditions affecting the weather in Europe. This discussion is usually updated Weekly (sometimes several times during the course of the week) so please check back often!
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HADLEY CENTER IDEA MAKES LITTLE SENSE FOR WINTER

http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/weather/world/seasonal/index.html

Something is wrong here with this forecast. Notice the United States and the Far East are near or below normal. That should raise alarm bells at the Hadley Center that their model has problem. Do they have any idea how rare it is for Europe to be that warm, with all that blocking across the pole, and the Far East and the eastern United States not to be warm?

I suspect their model has a warm bias now built into it. If we look at the CFS from the US, it now LOOKS LIKE OUR FORECAST! In other words, we do have a model coming around to what we have been saying as it has a colder-than-normal winter for Europe, centered over the eastern areas with the winter deepening to a point where February against the normals is coldest!

It is going to be interesting to see how this turns out. The analog package that favors 1969, 1976, 1977 (weighted twice), 2002 and 1963 certainly is not in line with the UKMET model idea. The look of the Atlantic, with the tripole of warm, cold warm in water temps and the rapid cooling of the Mediterranean all argue for whatever early warmth that is occurring to back off. It is interesting to note how the UKMET is seeing the reversal from the warm November over North America but doesn't see it in Europe.

So the line is drawn. I have a great deal of respect for the UKMET people but I am wondering if they are aware that their model idea is a long shot. In other words, if Europe is that warm, it's going to be hard to the other areas forecast colder to be warm, but you wouldn't know that unless you went back and looked at past winters.

So at the least, we have an interesting test coming up. Granted the forecast is for November through January, but the public utterances from them and me are in different camps this winter.

Thanks for reading. Ciao for now.