Snowy Scenes Already Showing Up Over SE Europe, Record Cold Nights Ahead!

Written by on October 1, 2013 in Rest of Europe, United Kingdom & Ireland with 2 Comments

The unusually cold air predicted to sweep into eastern Europe as the UK ridge builds northeast into Scandinavia is doing so and we’re already seeing rather winter-like conditions with cold and SNOW across portions of Romania. This push of unseasonable cold will continue through the rest of the week.

Here was a picture sent to me today out of Brasov, Romania which is elevated just 600m above sea level. According to Nicorel Nicorescu, my twitter follower, this has never happened before this early on here.

Via Nicorel Nicorescu

Via Nicorel Nicorescu

The models for many days now have showed a tongue of bitterly cold air knifing out of Siberia into western Russia and down into the Ukraine and Romania with a potential early season snowstorm thrown in for good measure. According to Iceagenow.com, temperatures in Krasnoyarsk, central Russia hit an all-time September record low of -6.5C in recent days. Plenty more record cold temperatures are expected over the next few nights including in the Russian capital Moscow where overnight lows may dip towards -5 or -6C with surrounding areas extending down into the Ukraine and Romania dropping to -10C at night. Temperatures typically remain relatively warm at this still early time of year over the SE corner of Europe and temperatures are set to run a solid 10-13C BELOW normal through the second half of this week.

According to the Russian Institute and forwarded by Iceagenow.com, temperatures never exceeded 20C during September in Moscow and that’s quite unusual. It may also have just witnessed the coldest September this century. Just this morning, Moscow was seeing snow showers while reporting a temperature of just 1C.

Here’s the latest snow projections for the next 72 hours according to the GFS model.

Courtesy/Owned by AccuWeather Pro

Courtesy/Owned by AccuWeather Pro

Here’s today ECMWF 500mb/850mb temp chart and you can see the tongue of Siberian air beginning to dive southeast as the Scandinavian ridge builds.

Geopotential3250032hPa32and32Temperature32at3285032hPa_Europe_0

Notice how much further south it extends by Thursday. Need to watch that upper low and this could present a LOT of snow to the Ukraine and Romania.

Geopotential3250032hPa32and32Temperature32at3285032hPa_Europe_48

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As for the UK, while high pressure continues to shift east northeast, so the traffic lights turn to green for fronts entering the UK (tomorrow and Thursday) and as stated already, as pressures build, so colder air gets forced south over the eastern continent. Wet and windy weather shall dominate the UK over the next 36 hours but by late week, high pressure builds back in which the wet, MILDER air pushes into the continent. Eventually the mild push will remove the cold.

Here’s the ECM chart for Sunday and you can see the warmer Atlantic air taking charge and slowly but surely driving out Siberian air.

Geopotential3250032hPa32and32Temperature32at3285032hPa_Europe_120

Here’s the surface/precip chart by Sunday and you can see the weather turning much more unsettled over south-central Europe into the Med while ridging continues to pump mild air north from Iberia to the UK with fronts riding the northern periphery bringing wet weather to Scotland.

Courtesy/Owned by AccuWeather Pro

Courtesy/Owned by AccuWeather Pro

By early next week the flow becomes much flatter though not entirely zonal, simply less extreme with the temperature contrast between west and east.

Courtesy/Owned by AccuWeather Pro

Courtesy/Owned by AccuWeather Pro

Looking further into next week and the models appear to try and pump the western ridge again with troughiness and colder air dropping back into eastern Europe.

It’s interesting to see the troughiness and building cold over Greenland despite the NAO being negative. Both NAO and AO is projected to go positive towards the mid and later half of October which isn’t a particularly cold signal for the UK and western Europe.

As mentioned in recent posts, despite the ridge holding firm and likely to continue that way over the next few weeks, keep in mind that the atmosphere is entering a key transition period from summer into winter and the system has to readjust with waters cooling. The feedback of a negative NAO now will have a different ridge-trough setup later down the road.

Here’s the ECM chart out at 240 hours or 10 days from now and that is a rather positive or neutral NAO signal. Greenland will turn rather bitter.

Geopotential3250032hPa32and32Temperature32at3285032hPa_Europe_240

While it’s back to mild once again over Iceland, I am watching another blast of frigid air blow off Greenland late week as a trough deepens over the Northeast Atlantic. The ECMWF is projecting some rather frigid numbers over interior Iceland this weekend and by Sunday morning, based on the ECMWF, temperatures are projected to plunge to -14C over the Central Highland region. That’s bitter and unusually cold this early on. Of course it was just last Saturday where temperatures fell to -13C over the region.

Check out this chart representing morning lows across Iceland on Sunday morning via the Iceland Met Office.

131001_0000_120

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  1. Mark Vogan says:

    I agree! Patience is key..

  2. Michael says:

    I really hope for a change soon. While I enjoyed high pressure back in the summer it’s really becoming boring now. I like when there is difference between the seasons. This high pressure dominated pattern is getting more and more tedious Bring in the autumn gales soon, I say.

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