Fast And Furious Start To Winter For North, East Europe, Wet Times For UK

Written by Mark Vogan on October 23, 2014 in Rest of Europe, United Kingdom & Ireland, Winter 2014/15 with 0 Comments

As expected, we’re seeing some major early season snow burying parts of the Alps. All thanks to moisture Gonzalo pushing into the cold, polar air sweeping down from Russia.

While the Alps get hammered, so northeast and east Europe shivers.

Austria this morning. Image via @Weathertoski

Via @Weathertoski

It’s not just the Alps or Germany but here’s Sweden right now.

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This morning’s lows. That’s an impressive late October cold outbreak. A positive indicator for later down the road?

Credit: MetDesk

Check out the depth of cold drilling into eastern Europe from the 850mb perspective! That’s WINTER intensity cold for sure…

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The models have this northeast/east cold pool shrinking and departing this weekend into early next week but it returns late next week with the same upper setup repeating with more Atlantic moisture slamming cold and that means more big snowfalls.

As for the UK, I’m noticing that we have two fronts coming south or attempting to come south. The first is dropping out of the NW now but the second with some rather cold air behind appears to get stuck over Scotland. This suggests a prolonged 3, possibly 4 day stretch of rain and a stiff WSW breeze while it’s drier/brighter across England and Wales with ridging affecting France. Heat continues down in Iberia where records have tumbled of late. More stalled, soggy boundaries appear to settle over the Northern UK later next week as more arctic air comes south over North and East Europe. Where Atlantic meets Arctic, look out. Winter has started fast and furious. WE SHOULD WATCH THIS CLOSELY as what the east may be getting now, we here in the west may get later. Of say December?

We could see a decent amount of rain fall now through mid next week.

Credit: AccuWeather Pro

QPF 10 day precipitation. A lot of rain coming to UK western upslopes. STALLED SW to NE fronts are big flood producers. We saw this over Cumbria/SW Scotland in November 2009 and I believe this is coming again… Flood before freeze?

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