Incidentally, what an awful send-off for the 20th century 1999 was here from this perspective. The fewest dry days on record!

Together, these scenarios actually have a majority over the one that stays very unsettled in northern Europe (31 versus 20).

So, I believe the wet ensemble mean signal is dominated by what goes on earlier next week, with a decent change of a shift to drier weather later on.

...which would lead to either widely cold, somewhat drier weather if it headed northward in the Atlantic (cluster #2 in the image), or such conditions in eastern Europe while the west became very mild but mainly dry if it headed northward across western Europe (cluster #3).

One scenario sees that high pressure keep the Atlantic storm track aimed at northern Europe when usually it would head further north due to the changes over N. America.

The other sees it connect with a high building northward somewhere within the N. Atlantic-Europe sector...

Strangely, the unsettled theme is maintained despite plenty of changes taking place over North America.

However, there are actually two leading scenarios, which both relate to an unusual dominance of high pressure across the Arctic (all that red shading in these maps).

Disturbingly, the ECMWF ensemble signal for anomalously wet weather barely changes for next week.

While many water stores are still recovering from last year's drought, this is too much rain too quickly. A big pattern change is sorely needed.

It's more probable that the actual result looks more like this from the IFS 00z, with snowfall largely confined to high ground.

Still, this is far enough ahead in time that a more snow-conducive outcome can't yet be ruled out. Something to keep an eye on.

What's more, because temperatures are dropping from some way above freezing, there tends not to be much accumulation of snowfall especially at low elevations.

For an exception to this there needs to be a stronger undercut of cold air &/or slower departure of low pressure.

For England the net result of these trends is a noteworthy signal for cold weather with snow risks ~13th-16th Feb, with a possible but highly uncertain return of milder conditions afterward.

Quite a few runs have a brief milder spell followed by further cold weather.

Secondly, a subtle trend toward higher heights in the Arctic & northern North Atlantic later the week after next.

Despite a (welcome for them) signal for high pressure over Iberia (dry!), this has reduced the signal for milder weather to establish in north-western Europe.

Interesting how that differs to over here, where the opening 10 days of January 2021 brought some frosty nights with mostly dry weather.

There was only 7 hours sunshine during that time but this was in part due to freezing fog on a couple of days, which made for some striking scenery.

What's more, this year the reserves in the southwest are still recovering from last year's drought.

Gives a sense of just how vast those reservoirs are!

Where there's good long-term storage, probably true if excluding meteorological drought.

Elsewhere, it depends. Last year demonstrated how a very wet autumn & January can still be followed by water reserves in parts of the southwest dropping very low.

Prior to 2003, when I only have monthly sunshine records, the closest contender in my lifetime is 1995 which had 157% of the usual January rainfall & only 81% of the usual sunshine, while temps were similar to 2026.

Pretty dire, but as I was a kid then, I can't really recall it.