A large swath of Britain encountered it’s worst snowstorm since at least December 2010 yesterday with lingering heavy snow showers bringing further accumulations to eastern parts overnight thanks to that ice cold easterly. This is the very setup I thought would come in December and while colder than normal, it never really materialised, thankfully, this time around it has come full bore and as predicted, it’s not here for a few days and then gone. I always believed the worst would come following the Christmas and New Year period and it has done thanks to a strong strat warming event which first kicked in around New Year.

While some may still have bare back gardens, there is no deneying that the cold is here and there is plenty more to come over the next 10 days.

While the western Central Belt of Scotland may be asking, where’s the snow, much of the UK has a blanket of white now covering it and with cold Siberian air constantly feeding in on a well organised, stacked easterly flow, this, along with the growing snow cover and depth, means day after day will struggle to get above freezing. Factor in a mere 5 mph wind from the east and it feels more like -6C.

Snow showers have been feeding in, particularly over eastern Scotland through last night and is deepening the snow cover here. This will help ‘cool’ an already colder wind across the rest of the country. These snow showers will also make it to western parts where there is gaps in the hills. Even here in Lennoxtown, snow showers brought a brief overnight dusting but it was gone by morning.

Don’t worry, we’re seeing easterly snow showers currently working into the Glasgow area at the moment and this will continue till Monday when a more substantial snow is possible.

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Speaking of snow, check out the GFS snow forecast for Sunday!

 

Here’s what the GFS is saying snow wise for Monday!

Notice how the Central Belt gets filled in well by both snow showers blowing on from the east and the system which works north on Monday.

Here’s Tuesday morning. Nice!

The worst hit areas from yesterday’s snowstorm, Wales, Northern Ireland and the west Midlands look to see some snow but not the worst.

According to the GFS, the deepest snows by Tuesday will be over southern, central England as well as the S. Uplands and Highlands of Scotland.

I do see an inch or two of snow from Glasgow to Edinburgh with this system on Monday as the moisture sweeps north and through the cold air. The western half of Scotland will see off and on snow showers over the next 48 hours and a potentially more disruptive snow on Monday afternoon. This should mean the bulk of mainland Britain should be white by Monday.

Here’s the GFS snow cover/depth by Tuesday midday!

There is no real end in sight to this cold spell and from what I am seeing, this pattern should remain locked in through the rest of January into the first part of February. As we progress through February, I believe a moderation will come perhaps into week 2 but this may be followed about a week later by another cold wave which takes us through much of the rest of the month.

Here’s the latest ECMWF upper chart and 850 temps.

Mon

Wed

Fri

Notice the blocking high to the north of the UK and the cold core centred over Scandinavia, this is a perfect setup for driving cold, continental air into the UK and Ireland. Weather systems are never far away and so snow showers along with plenty of cloud cover will continue. No high overhead will keep a cold flow but won’t allow any real cold to settle. What I mean by that is, no clear skies, light winds and widespread temperatures under -10 with sheltered spots down to around -20 but as explained, I do think we will see colder temperatures widely before this cold pattern breaks for a time.

By next weekend, the ECMWF suggests a warmup, time will tell.

Here’s the GFS temperature anomaly for the next 8 days.

The following 8 days sees warming, like the ECMWF. Sometimes the models can be too fast is kicking out the low level cold air.

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