In the near term, i.e. this valentine’s weekend, we do have some wet and windy weather to talk about, however, high pressure looks to remain stubborn and stronger than initially thought to our southwest over the Azores next week. A strong positive over the Azores means an increasingly active Atlantic wave train gets directed towards Iceland and therefore we’re likely to remain in this drier than normal setup through much of the rest of Feb. A top 5 dry Feb remains on the cards. For winter weather lovers, this is a disappointing setup for sure.
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CFSv2 is going for a very dry Feb for not just the UK and Ireland but much of Western Europe.
Had that Azores high not be there, those strong lows would have been slamming the UK and since their driven by some exceptionally cold air on the other side of the Atlantic, we would have been talking snow and cold.
March also looks dry but as stated previous, the key will be April. The fly in the ointment is the El Nino which can turn on the tap into early spring when the atmosphere begins warming, however that is more typical when waters surrounding the UK are warm.
Following a very warm, dry March in 2012, waters surrounding the UK heated dramatically and with the help of the El Nino, rains turned things around in April.
Check out the warm water surrounding the UK following the record warm March.
With the El Nino coming on, a wet April followed. Wet soils and warm surrounding water often leads to a wetter summer.
The dry, warm June, July’s of 2013 and 2014 followed a dry spring and cold waters surrounding the UK.
El Nino + warm water come April tends to bring wetter springs and eventually summers for the UK. This time there could be cold water and a dry Feb-March period and so the jury it out on April.
Latest CFSv2 precip shows a turnaround from dry Feb-March to wet April and wetter May.
Note in the latest ECMWF surface charts through 168h how the ridge weakens allowing more Atlantic involvement ‘temporarily’ before it regroups over the Azores. This is similarity to the end game of winter/start of spring 2012 I referred to above.
Be sure to check out the video for more on the current pattern.
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