It’s a new week and another week down on what has been a rather disappointing winter for us here in the British Isles, Ireland and for much of Europe. The good news for our neighbours across the North Sea, it appears winter is coming and it’s already arrived across Scandinavia and Russia.
The winter as a whole hasn’t really materialised with the focus of cold on the other side of the hemisphere and greatly helped by the fact the NAO has been predominantly neutral or positive. We’ve never really been able to shake off that strong Atlantic jet and without that jet slowing down and allowing ridging to build to the west and north, no cold air has been able to come in from the north or east. There’s been simply no blocking high that’s been so eagerly anticipated.
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However, for a decent swath of mainland Europe, a chunk of Siberian origin air will get involved as pressures over Norway, Sweden and Finland build to 1040mb at the surface and this acts like a wheel, drawing that cold air west underneath. Unfortunately with the strong westerly flow in the upper levels crossing the Atlantic, we here in Ireland and the UK can only hope for a colder WEST wind blown in from an increasingly cold USA.
As you can see the AO is not an issue right now…
The NAO however is.
Denmark down into Germany and likely as far west as the Low Countries, colder air is on the way but while more Atlantic lows cross the Atlantic and push up into Iceland and the Norwegian Sea, fronts will cross the UK, all but holding back any cold from crossing the North Sea. There’s going to be somewhat of a battle setting up, particularly late this week as Atlantic air bumps up against colder air coming in under the high, that could bring snow and disruptive snow to areas such as Denmark south into Germany and possibly the Netherlands and Belgium.
Is winter going to be a complete no show for us on the western fringes? The good news is, we still have another full month of meteorological winter, the bad news is, that clock is ticking and unless we get a negative NAO, winter weather is looking less likely.
I will say however, we could see something similar to last year with winter hitting late on. You never know, get 2-3 weeks of cold, with some snow in February (which is STILL very possible) and I’m sure many of us will be much happier and more satisfied.
That stratospheric temperature profile cannot be ignored. The axis swinging out over the Atlantic and setting up over the UK, may well set off a much colder end game for us
Here’s the ECMWF snow cover chart through the next 7 days.
Below is a look at the very charts shown in the video released a short time ago.
ECMWF surface charts.
24
72
144
204
ECMWF 500mb/850mb temps.
Today
48
96
144
192
240
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