As the sun rose over Europe this morning, it unveiled a rather impressive looking satellite presentation with bands of cloud clearly marking where the ridge and trough was as well as where the warm and cold air was. As well as throwing rain bearing fronts across Iberia, France and up into Ireland and the UK, a large and complex low spinning over the Atlantic is also pumping very mild air up into the UK. In turn this is deepening a trough and driving the coldest air of autumn into Scandinavia. While it snowed in some locales, elsewhere beneath clear skies and light winds, temperatures plunged to -18C or colder in the north of Norway, Sweden and Finland.

Check out the 850 temps projected today from the ECMWF. Quite the contrast between the UK and Scandinavia.

Here’s the 500mb height anomalies off the ECMWF, note the Greenland block and strongest negative heights directly over Scandinavia.

As of this writing, (early afternoon), the temperature is 17C in Southern England while -4 to -8C over far northern Sweden and Finland.

Here’s the current scene from the Tarnaby region of northwest Sweden.

Here’s another view of the clear blue skies over fresh snow. Just beautiful.

Tonight could well be colder as the air mass grows colder. Here’s the 850s for tomorrow.

With clear skies, light winds and fresh snow on the ground, we could see -20C over northern parts by dawn tomorrow morning..

Over the weekend, the current setup remains with another front bringing heavy, flooding rains to today to Ireland and much of the UK tomorrow while cold, arctic air holds to the north and east. There is little change really in the next 5-7 days along the low southwest of Ireland will make a move, eventually passing just NW of Scotland as a deepening low. This could bring stronger winds to the UK mid next week and is poised to warm things up considerably across Norway, Sweden and Finland.

By 96 hours or next Tuesday, the ECMWF has the low SW of Ireland deepening and will make a northeastward move with wet, warmer air pushing into Norway.

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By 144 or Thursday that low over bringing wind, rain and mild air to Scand, while more lows push towards the UK from the south. This to me is the start of a wetter, stormier pattern.

Wetter, Stormier Pattern Taking Shape To End The Month?

The warm waters caused by our warm summer have done their work in helping hold stronger heights over western Europe, now they look set to provide a different feedback towards late month.

By 168 or next Friday, low pressure is positioned over NW Scotland bringing a lot of widespread rain to Ireland, the UK and western Europe.

Check out the 204 hour and note the central pressure in that storm over the North Atlantic!

The GFS has a similar look to next week and also it too has a stormier setup towards the end of the month. By 240 hours it has a sub-980mb low off NW Scotland and likely bringing widespread gales as well as heavy rain.

Soon followed by an even stronger system at around 300 hours.

Fantasy land of course that far out BUT, are you seeing what’s going on here? We’re entering a WETTER period, a period which I believe is important to see if your looking for a further west mean trough this winter.

As you can see both NAO and AO is going back positive which supports stormier, wetter, milder times for western Europe.

That takes me on to snow cover.

I’ve been watching closely the snow cover over Asia and I’ve noticed that it continues to grow west. Did you notice the first cold shot into Europe was aimed at the east? The current shot is more central. Noticing the trend? As the snow continues expanding west and has now reaches Finland, parts of Sweden, so the cold and trough is holding slightly further west.

I’ve stated before, that where it likes to rain most during October-November, that’s where the trough and arctic air likes to go during winter and I’m watching this upcoming 2-4 weeks carefully. My suspicion is that the pattern warms into November with heavier rainfall affecting western Europe with the flip back into positive with both NAO and AO but as we now know. The NAO, AO should have no issue flipping back negative and when it does, that trough and cold may want to get further west. Perhaps not with the next shot but the one after.

The reason for it staying warmer here in the west I think has a lot to do with the warm waters and the type of summer we’ve had.

Check out the snow cover for Oct 18 last year.

Here’s yesterday.

Notice the snow cover is extends further south over east Asia this time last year but it extends much further west this year. As this expands west, so too will the cold and once those waters surrounding the UK and Ireland cool, look out!

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Tags: Europe Snow Cover, October weather pattern, Winter 2013-2014 Europe Forecast