By Paul Homewood

It has been suggested that the Sudden Stratospheric Warming event in the middle of last month was not widely forecast well beforehand, and that somehow only the Met Office knew about it.

In fact, this is bunkum, as amateur weather blogger Mark Vogan discussed on 5th February:

Whether you love weather, cold weather or both, we all get excited at the thought of a sudden stratospheric warming event. No question it’s a truly spectacular event and awesome to watch on the many incredible graphics we have at our finger tips these days.

While they only occur every so many years, there is a problem when they do occur with either the collapse of the entire polar vortex or split. Either way we know it’s effects often lead to extreme cold winter weather for a prolonged period within the mid latitudes. But where do those cold pools go? The upcoming SSWE which is seen by the models may see a piece of the vortex drop into Western Europe bringing us bitter cold during the later of February and much of March OR could go into eastern Europe with mild blocking high pressure leaving the UK disappointed.

While the SSWE looks likely, the models still have differing opinion on where the cold pool sets up. For example the first below chart doesn’t look good for cold weather lovers in the UK and west of Europe.

However, this does!

Latest tweets on the forecasted SSWE.