There are times when you just need to play with the charts, and that's exactly what I have been doing over the past few days./

I've been moving around the analogues to see what, if any, paternities suggestions I could find for late September and October.

Now, what I have done here is to take the GFS ensemble model output from a couple of days again, and it's forecast for 8-days time (so 7th September).

Then I took the analogue years from that date (i.e. the years showing a similar atmospheric pattern to the forecast for 7th September and projected those forward int 10-day steps.

Whilst this is not an official forecast, I thought it might make interesting reading for you.

So, using the analogues, below would be the forecast for the 10-day period 17th to 27th September.

Now, what this rather surprisingly shows, when compared to the operation long range models, is low heights south of the UK and high heights to the north. This suggests higher pressure north of the UK and lower pressure to the south with a chilly north to northeast flow for many. This pattern would brings wet weather in the south, drier to the north.

It goes against what the operational suggests, but given there is much confusion in them, especially in the ECMWF 6-week, Im wondering if this is where we could head?

The second 10-day period runs from 27th September to 6th October and the chart is below. If anything this one strengthens the flow to the north, again a pressure flow we are not seeing repeated in the operational models. It also has lower pressure to the south, running through Iberia and into northern parts of Central Europe and the southern UK. The impact on the UK and Ireland with me a cool east to northeast flow. Dry weather in Scotland and much of the northern half of Ireland, whilst wetter weather prevailed to the south. Cool for all.

And the final 10-day run from 7th October to 17th October shows a much more unsettled pattern over the UK, one of low heights, jet streams and low pressure. This would be cool and wet with strong winds.

Now, don't take any of this too literals right now, I'm showing these charts to give you full-disclosure as to the thoughts going through my mind for the long ranges right now. The most interesting aspect as far as I am concerned is that the ECMWF 6-week signals uncertainty, and then the analogues comes up with this strong idea of the high to the north and low pressure to the south.

So, I'm going to be watching in the next few days to see how this pattern develops. If it is sustained then we know we need to be cautious of the long ranges heading into October. If it's not stacking up, we can dump this particular set of analogue years and start again!