More Typical Low Over High Setup For Western Europe Next Week

Written by Mark Vogan on April 3, 2014 in Rest of Europe, United Kingdom & Ireland with 0 Comments

In the last 5 days, we’ve had a rather weird upper pattern which has brought wind, rain and cold to Spain and Portugal while Saharan dust and high levels of air pollution impact the UK. As for Scandinavia, winter has returned to Sweden, Finland and Russia.

This has been our 500mb height field setup in the past 5 days. Highly amplified and unusual.

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The latest low to sweep across Iberia will change the equation as the systems continues pushing east through the Med. This low will ultimately let burst the bubble of high pressure extending from Italy up to the UK. As the air slowly exits the tire, Atlantic low pressure will make a return to the UK. Once that occurs (this weekend), we’ll have flipped around the large-scale height field with low over high pressure, more typical of the time of year.

Iberia will loose their wet, windy and chilly regime and return to a more typical early April pattern with building high pressure supporting warm, sunny days.

So, ultimately low pressure returns to the Northwest while high pressure returns to the Southwest but there will be a back north-south fight between ridge and trough and there’s hints of ridging trying to push north into the UK and near continent mid next week.

Despite a cooler and more unsettled pattern returning to Ireland and the UK, the NAO is poised to go positive which supports an Atlantic trough/Europe ridge.

nao_sprd2

Modelling suggests high pressure reaching the UK mid next week with warmth from Spain pushing up into at least southern Britain.

Here’s the 500mb/surface charts now through next Thursday off the GFS.

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36 hr 500mb

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36 hr surface

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72 hr 500mb

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72 hr surface

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120 hr 500mb

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120 hrs surface

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144 hr 500mb

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144 hr surface

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168 hr 500mb

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168 hr surface

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500mb height anomalies off the GFS ensemble shows battle between ridge and trough through the next 16 days. Classic April setup with likely back and forth for UK/W Europe. Don’t be surprised if the ridge wins out over France/S Britain with the negative NAO.

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