Rest of November outlook - and what about winter?
Paul Hudson
High pressure looks set to become dominant across much of the UK for the rest of November, ensuring a lot of dry, fine and settled weather.
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Although cloud amounts are always difficult to determine in these situations, by day there should be at least some sunshine, with a risk of some frost and fog by night.
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It won鈥檛 be entirely dry though, for example a weakening weather front around mid-week will bring a little rain from the Northwest.
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There are indications by the end of the month and into early December that more unsettled conditions will return from the west, although in forecasting terms that鈥檚 a long way off.
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As for winter, it鈥檚 been impossible not to have noticed some of the newspaper headlines suggesting it could be one of the coldest on record.
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But these headlines are identical to the ones published each autumn for the last few years.
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They were a focus of an article I wrote in November 2012, which you can , showing a selection of front pages from The Express all based on predictions from the same sources.听听
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So is there any truth in the headlines?
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Readers of my blog will know that I have written many times about how a decline in solar activity over the coming years and decades could mean severe winters across the UK become more frequent.
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But from a forecasting perspective it鈥檚 not possible to define whether any particular winter will be severe.
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Indeed there are other important variables which help determine how any specific winter, or season, turns out.
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This type of long range forecasting remains the holy grail of weather prediction, and headlines like the ones we have again read this autumn should be treated with extreme caution.