Britain and Ireland has had a very testing week with today sealing the deal on a triple whammy punch from the Atlantic. Just when you thought it couldn’t get any wetter or stormier, it has. Man and structure is becoming tired from the constant, seemingly unprecedented, cruel hammering from the relentless Atlantic. Today, like every other day, is a mess with more flooding, more damaging wind gusts and more misery.

The flood situation is simply getting worse as of this writing and my heart goes out to all those affected.

The ONE silver lining to all this is that the ski season is the best in 25 years here in Scotland thanks to a near perfect freezing level along with the never ending supply of moisture from the Atlantic. According to a spokesperson from the Nevis Range Resort near Fort William, it’s snowed every day since December 20.

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Once again, Glencoe Mountain Resort as well as The Nevis Range must dig out it’s chairlift after another big snow and wind event over the last 48 hours. The below picture was from this morning, BEFORE today’s next big hit.

According to glencoemountain.co.uk, the current snow depth at the top of the mountain is 13 feet. Lower elevations sit at a still impressive 6 feet. Another foot or two of fresh snow is likely tonight through tomorrow.

Here’s today’s visible satellite image captured from space. Looks familiar doesn’t it. Looking at the latest hook of cloud with nasty tail extending into the sub-tropics is a near permanent look these days from space. Can’t really tell the difference between today and yesterday or last week.

Top Gusts So Far

Scilly St Mary: 80 mph

Plymouth: 77 mph

Culdrose: 77 mph

Great Dun Fell: 76 mph

The heavy rainfall is piling in from the southwest with moisture plume seen extending well into the sub-tropics.

Here’s mapping which shows the extent and scale of the current UK flood situation. (Source: BBC)

In the first 2 weeks of February, the UK and Ireland has been hammered by up to 6 major Atlantic storm systems, each packing heavy, flooding rainfall, damaging winds and even snow. The last 7 days have been particularly tough with all three cyclones measuring pressure below 960, possibly 955mb. That’s quite exceptional and on top of that, the constant battering from wind and wave has greatly weakened trees and structures.

All this comes on the heels of southern England’s wettest January in over 100 years.

Light At The End Of A Very Wet Tunnel?

Here’s the current ECMWF surface/precip chart over Europe with the latest storm over the UK.

This weekend sees the low lift north and thus the strongest winds, rain and snow eases, turning more showery.

Through the first half of next week and the low pressure which affects us will be a much weaker version of what we have now but this makes way for higher pressure with a cool northerly flow towards midweek.

Next system pushes in at the start of next week.

Drier, brighter weather appears to be likely with frost by night midweek.

Unfortunately the unsettled weather (in modified form) appears to continue with more depressions pushing in more from a WNW direction rather than southwest late next week. Somewhat good news for the hard hit South of Britain and Ireland.

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Tags: british floods, uk floods, UK Storm