Election predictions since last general election in the UK scraped using the Internet Archive from the Electoral Calculus website. Reform have drifted from having an out-and-out majority in the last couple of months. Maybe these Tory defec(a)tions are making them less popular? I hope so.

Proper spoilt child in playground antics. Every day gets more and more removed from sensible, rational behaviour. Think I might do early retirement to enjoy life before the World falls to pieces, although not sure how long I'd have to enjoy it...

Today's speculative email to my CatInsight inbox (I've not worked as a sole trader in 4+ years now). 1) Maybe when sending out emails you can also explain what agentic automation is? Not everyone lives in your techbro world. 2) How do you know I've got a team(s)?

Lovely hook winding up over S England in the radar imagery (and sharp cold front?) associated with the mesoscale low pressure moving across England today...

Never a good look when authoritarian regimes start lecturing democracies on how to do things.

GFS' turn to churn out the Dailyexpressbait

Seven forecasts from 10 Jan 00Z to 13 Jan 12Z showing the forecast verifying at 25 Jan 12Z: % of ensembles with 850mb temperatures < -10c. More than enough time for the forecast to make an absolute nonsense of this, but the trend is quite interesting.

Something good in a world slowly going to pieces: a brilliant demonstration of "Love Thy Neighbour" through food as two guys eat out in every nation around the world in New York (and ably demonstrating why New York the best food city in the world). www.instagram.com/tastebuds_ne...

Ah well, back to the 7c daily maxima blandness. Can I be the first to declare winter over please? Partly as I'd just quite like some warmth and vitamin D please. RIP winter 2025/6 you will not be missed.

Remarkably, light sleety snow falling even at sea level in Deal, Kent CT14 1/10 - that's our lot for the next few years! #uksnow

I realise that the UK weather community is thin on the ground, but I'll rattle on anyway. Always fascinating in the rain/snow marginal situations... rain is winning at the moment...even though the model (ECMWF) wanted snow:

Particularly interested in the transverse banding in the precipitation over Cornwall ahead of the bent-back warm front. Could it be...?

If you believe what AI has spat out for me (caveat lector), here's a timeline of recent red warnings given today's red warning issued for SW England... not as rare as I was imagining, but obviously worth heeding...

Ridiculous. Or is it?

Quite a few models exceeding 100 mph gusts for Scilly Isles. A quick scan admittedly of ERA5 rather than observations suggests it might be a generational event for there - if not longer a timeframe...

In all seriousness though - these are windspeeds on the Scilly Isles - if they come off - that are commensurate with the strongest winds in the October Storm in 1987 on the coast at Shoreham-by-Sea. Re-cast the averaging times to the Saffir-Simpson scale and it's equivalent to low Cat 2 hurricane.

123 mph? Now you're just being Scilly.

Putting the hot & dry summer of 1976 into context 50 years after the extreme summer for the UK and Ireland, what can we still learn? climatelabbook.substack.com/p/the-summer...

Midlands or M4 Corridor or a bit of a damp squib, depending on which model you want to side with for Thu eve/Fri morning snow event in the UK...

06Z intermediate model run clickbait. Nothing to see here. Absolutely nothing.

Friday's low has bifurcated into two camps this morning. GFS and UKMO to the north, ECMWF (and their AI model), DWD and JMA over N France / Benelux.

@norcrosscricket.bsky.social Whilst you're rudely avoiding "wartime Britain" by being Down Under for the winter, I ask you to spare a thought for us this morning. There is a tiny light at the end of the tiny, but it's barely there.

Taking my mind off the fact that the world's going to hell in a handcart by medium range fantasycasts (that said, this is only T+114...)

A personal hill I will die on, but endlessly fascinating that despite 3 Cat 5s and 4 Cat 4s that insurance can still see the season as "quiet" purely because it caused no losses.

What just happened ... Comedy: Jamie Kaler

Just as a corollary to the below - the winter proportion of 850mb temperatures in SE England by year. One thing strikes me (I could be wrong) is how the extreme cold becoming less frequent but extreme warmth doesn't seem to be changing that much.

The -10c 850mb line coming close to UK in next few days made me dig out its frequency in SE England. Last daily instance in the box shown (based on daily average data) is 12 Feb 2021, ~1800 days ago and just about the 2nd longest >-10c spell since 1950 (longest is 6 years from 2 Jan 97 to 7 Jan 03).

Genuinely lost count of the times this winter where East Kent has been sopping wet... would love to see some radar-derived monthly/quarterly accumulations if such exist anywhere?

Great to see two names from my time as a student at Reading - Stephen Belcher and Piers Forster - in the honours list for their work on climate science.

I wish people would stop posting the T+300h model output just like I am here.

"Step away from the T+ >240H, I repeat, step away from the T+ >240H".

Imagine if the Daily Express discovered the ensemble maximum snow depth output?

Critique in no more than 1000 words (25 marks) #uksnow

Two great post-doctoral topics: almost tempted to apply myself...!

Thought it was a Christmas miracle; ended up being ground clutter #radarpranks

Happy Christmas, especially to those who struggle at this time of year. Chilly but probably no snow for most in the UK and for my Christmas Message this year (!), here's the % change in winter snowfall for the last 21 years vs the previous 21 years in the eyes of ECMWF C3S seasonal forecasts

I've finally given up on a wriggle developing in the flow tomorrow leading to surprise wintry weather in the SE. At Least It Will Be Sunny and all that.

Suitable weather whilst feeling under the weather on the shortest day of the year. 10c and murk. Can we have the yellow circle on top the blue background back, please?

"...analysts have warned that risk-adjusted pricing is set to deteriorate further, with a benign hurricane season potentially triggering 10–15% declines..." Losses should not dictate whether a hurricane season is "benign". A fairly obvious hill that I'll die on.

Chart Shows The Exact Minute 492.348-Mile Snow-Mega- Blizzard-Bomb-Beast-From-The-East Cakes Most Of SE England On Christmas Day Remember You Heard It Here First Not From The Daily Express Or That Regional Newspaper Website Chain With "Live" In The Title Follow Me For More Snow Clickbaitcasting

For the seasonal affective disorder sufferers like me, today is the first light at the end of the winter tunnel: all sunsets start to get later from today until June...

In all seriousness, I don't think I've seen such a long run of uniform south-westerlies in the UK. All the way out to mid-to-late Jan.

Anyone fancy some westerlies? Be my guest.

The last 8 runs of the ECMWF longer-range 46-day forecast, verifying on Xmas Day for the UK. Almost as if the model tends towards a winter mobility basic state! NW/SE pressure gradient, but pressure slowly increasing towards the SE broadly across the runs... #atleastitwillbemild

And, well, if that doesn't get at least a bit of discussion going on in here then it's time I threw in the towel. Would love to hear what people think.

Here's 10 different views on the 2025 hurricane season from a report we did at Oak Global. 1) ACE was pretty much bang-on average, but the number of hours of Cat 4s was almost double the usual: these contributed nearly all the ACE as we had so few weak Cat 1-2s this year.

My colleague Hannah Croad and I have written a 10-15 minute read on the hurricane season & put some thought around why we didn't end up with US insurance losses, but why this season's activity should still concern us from a risk perspective. More here: www.linkedin.com/feed/update/...

Explaining a potentially difficult concept to an audience is quite an art and @aidanmcgivern.bsky.social is very good at it. Some of the @metoffice.gov.uk content on slightly more deep dive topics is really top notch. www.youtube.com/watch?v=KweN...

Probably for the 2nd time this winter already I've thought "an extra 2-3 degrees lower and this would have been fun"... sod's law it'll be roaring westerlies by January.

A bit of discussion whether the percentage of storms making landfall as hurricanes is static or not using counterfactual analysis. Thanks to a) modelling experts Reask and b) AI without which I wouldn't be able to produce pretty-looking graphs like this one. oakreinsurance.com/news/hurrica...