Most medium range weather  forecasts seem to be predicting a cold spell coming up – which is great news for climbers and skiers, especially when we think back to last winter which was typified by dumps of snow followed by large temperature swings and then rapid thaws.

There is plenty of snow above 850m at the moment on northerly aspects, and a slow thaw,  so with the on-set of colder conditions later this week we should be in for  pre-Christmas treat.

As they say, one snowfall doesn’t make a winter, but at least trends are encouraging.

 

Unisys Medium Range Forecasts (MRF) tend to be my “go to” for looking ahead. I’ve been following them for years now, and as computer power grows, they definitely are getting better at predicting the 10 day “trend”. 10 years or so ago the 10 day look ahead tended to be very vague  but the last two winter seasons I would say they give much more accurate trend.

http://www.wetterzentrale.de/ is another excellent resource for MRFs.

The UK Met Office does produce MRFs, but they seem buried in the website…

 

http://weather.unisys.com/gfs/9panel/gfs_500p_9panel_eur.gif

 

Unisys MRF for the next 10 days: