Prospects could currently be summed up as "likely a less rainy, more seasonal feel for at least part of next week".

Rather a lot of soggy scenarios for later in the month. Could be a blocked pattern but with high pressure in the wrong place to keep weather fronts away from the UK.

This lends support to my general impression over the past decade or so that while exceptions do occur, displacement events have a strong propensity to produce surface weather patterns that send cold air to other parts of the northern hemisphere, as opposed to the UK.

...with split type events producing cold weather in the CET region more often than displacements, especially within what's usually about 5-15 days of the event onset, peaking at nearly two-thirds of cases.

Displacements barely step outside the climatological distribution.

This combination tells us that while it has been even warmer than that GFS run in some years past (e.g. 2022, 2015, 2011), none of those years were as warm in the first 6 days of November as 2025 has been.

The stat. projection in comparison to an estimate using today's GFS 06z makes for interesting viewing.

That GFS run keeps the mean to-date in the top 2 throughout, yet the stat. shows that for the period 7th-20th, even warmer conditions exist in the historical record.

For the -NAO pattern to bring cold weather to NW Europe, low pressure instead needs to be positioned either further south, or further west while tilted from NW to SE.

The ECMWF 00z det. produced the second setup later in the month.

See how low pressure is positioned too far northeast for cold air to reach NW Europe from the north, with an exceptionally warm flow from the south instead affecting much of western Europe.

The ECMWF 00z det. run has a similar scenario.

This has subsequentially been topped by last night with a minimum of 14.2°C, a new record highest for November here, as well as the latest 14.0°C or higher on record, previously held by 29th Oct 1984 (14.4°C).

Only ~10 miles to my S, Bournemouth Airport didn't get below 14.7°C!

...as the weakened polar vortex state provides a 'window of opportunity' for blocked weather patterns if for example the Madden-Julian Oscillation is traversing the Pacific.

A possibility in late Nov or Dec this year, but no more than that at this stage.

All in all, major SSWs are a massive wildcard in weather forecasting, only occasionally serving as a direct driver of cold weather in NW Europe, but with a propensity for dramatic results when it does.

Otherwise, it comes down to other forcing factors like tropical phenomena...

This is interesting because the displacement type is typically the least effective at bringing cold weather to the UK.

It tends to take a split type (not mixed), such as seen in early 2018, to produce a dramatic result in the UK... & even then it's far from assured.

Those three are:

14th Dec 1965 - displacement type => UK cold spell
1st Dec 1987 - mixed type => UK cold spell
10th Dec 1998 - mixed type => UK mainly mild

The mixed type is one where the polar vortex is both displaced & split, a relatively rare variation.

In both instances, we can see the moderating effect on near-surface temperatures of a generally windy, at times wet weather pattern.

Despite which, values may widely reach over 4°C above average even by day this Wed-Fri.

I was thinking yesterday how nearly every November seems to have at least one day in the opening week or so that has a more late September or early October like feel to it with sunshine that feels reasonably warm.

In fact the climatology is more interesting when you compare 1991-2020 with 1961-1990.

The more recent baseline actually dips below the older one for the means to-date of 6th to 9th, which means the opening 3rd of October tended to be cooler (yet month as a whole milder).