It has been a wild day of weather across many parts of the UK as the latest in a series of active weather fronts swept in which bumped up against cold air firmly in place. While rain fell along the coast, heavy snow quickly broke out over most inland areas. For central parts of Scotland where we have seen a few ‘coverings’ of snow this winter, today was certainly the biggests with 3.2 inches accumulating here at my house in Lennoxtown. According to AccuWeather as much as 2 inches fell in Glasgow and I’m sure .
Many parts of the country all the way down to Birmingham have been hit hard by snow with road closures across parts of Yorkshire, Derbyshire as well as the prone routes through the Highlands and Grampians.
By tonight, some places will have picked up 6 inches with some higher parts perhaps nearing a foot of snow. The rain is now falling steady over many western parts of the country with a report of 9C on Uist, a sign of things to come tomorrow. Through tonight the rain band will sweep across the country leaving drier, clearer skies in it’s wake. Watch out for rapid ice formation with all the standing water freezing as temperatures drop.
While icing will be a problem particularly in the North, flooding will be a problem more widely tonight, the trouble is that following a substantial snowfall, the heavy rain is not going to wipe out the snowcover fast and so the rain water will ‘pool’ between snow piles and urban flooding will and is becoming an increasing hazard tonight.
Here are some photos of the snow around Lennoxtown which I captured late this morning.
Courtesy of Mark Vogan
Courtesy of Mark Vogan
Courtesy of Mark Vogan
Courtesy of Mark Vogan
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What’s interesting about this pattern and the bigger picture with all this is that this is the second ‘big and disruptive’ snow event to end a cold spell. The end of the last cold spell at the close of January ended with heavy and disruptive snow and here we are again, only this time is arguably worse.
This system was highlighted a few days ago and in a detailed post yesterday about it’s origins which stem back to winter storm Nemo and the Blizzard of 2013. These types of situations are always facinating meteorology top think that this very system which brought the biggest snows of winter to central Scotland, initially brought produced the US blizzard of 2013.
See yesterday’s post which shows you this system as it tracked across the Atlantic from Saturday to today. The GFS stood this system out as a sizeable snow producer, in fact it had crazy snow amounts of 6-12 inches at low levels and 12-18 inches over the hills, however what I will say is that this system was picked out from the rest and we did indeed see 2-4 inches widely, the biggest of the season for Central Scotland as well as other parts of the UK.
So, what next?
MILD air returns tomorrow and yes, your snow cover will be gone across the majority of the UK within 48 hours with the combo of rain and warmer air.
Here’s the latest ECMWF which shows not only milder air but a high building into the UK for the upcoming weekend. What sunshine, normal or above normal highs, seriously?
Thursday
Friday
Saturday
Sunday
Is This Return To Mild The End To Winter?
Just like the brief mild but stormy spell we encountered at the close of January I think the current warming will not last. It may hold for a week if your lucky before yet more cold tries to come back in from the east. In fact, take a look at the ECMWF chart for the period between the 20th and 24th . This ‘mild’ appears to end around a week from now if the ECMWF is correct. This plays nicely into my overall February idea in which mild spells will occur but will be overwelmed by a colder pattern which always fights back and wins! More snow is highly likely long before we reach March!
20th
21st
22nd
23rd
Remember what I said before the end of January.. February is likely to be the coldest of all three meteorological winter months and may in fact be coldest in several years. We’re on track for the coldest month of the winter for the UK overall.
Some video I captured from earlier today.
Follow my weather updates on Twitter @MarkVogan
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