The first ‘strong gale centre’ is set to make it’s closest approach to the UK with the centre passing between Scotland and Iceland later tomorrow into Friday. With wind gusts of up to 80-90 mph over the Western, Northern Isles as well as the NW mainland, this system will be the first of the named of winter 2015-16. Picked by the Met Office and Met Éireann. A pilot project where the two meteorological organisations work in partnership.

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Here’s the latest ECMWF surface chart which shows ‘Abigail’ later tomorrow.

Expect widespread gusts of 30-50 mph over parts of Northern Ireland, NW Republic as well as much of Scotland. Over the ridges of the West and Central Highlands, winds could gust to 120 mph.

With colder air being swept in on the backside of the depression off Greenland, snow levels in the UK mountains will significantly drop to about 2/2,500ft and with severe gales a given combined with temps dropping well below freezing, blizzard conditions are likely in the Highlands and Grampian.

5,000ft temps plummet once Abigail’s cold front pushes through.

A good 6 inches of wind blown snow is likely above 3,000ft.

This system will be followed by a lot of rain for Scotland this upcoming weekend. Within just the next 5 days, western Scotland could see over 6 inches of rain, leading to flooding in places.

Given the records falling across Europe this month and the persistency of warm air flowing in from the SSW, it would be of no surprise if this month turns out to the warmest on record for the continent. All will depend on how the second half of this month turns out and it does look to turn colder.

Nov temp anomalies so far.

Of course we saw a new ‘warmest minimum’ temperature for November recorded just yesterday morning at Murlough, Northern Ireland with a low of 16.1C, breaking the old record set 10 years ago at 15.9C in Eastbourne. This follows the warmest day ever recorded in the UK back on the 1st with a high of 22.4C in Trawsgoed, Wales.

W Germany also experienced record warm overnight minimums at 15.9C at one site.

The UK is amongst MANY European countries to have experienced their warmest November day on record.

Even high up in the Alps and Pyrenees, temperature records have been set.

The temperature soared to 19.3C at 1860m in Doucheur, French Alps.

A record high for November of 8.4C was recorded at 2880m in the Pyrenees. This surpasses the old record of 6.2C set back on November 11, 1977.

However, not every inch of the continent is warm, there has been snow up in northern Finland. This SHOULD happen by now.

A Look At The 10-15 Day

Looking out through the rest of November and there does appear to be a shift in the height field, so much so that we have at least a return to temps more suited to mid and late Nov rather than Sep.

Certainly for the next week or so, our pattern will remain very zonal west-east with the Atlantic the primary driver for western flank countries exposed to the Atlantic but further inland, high pressure shall continue to dominate.

However, models do show the negative sinking south day 5-10 and what this tells me is we’re going to see westerly winds turn somewhat colder and day 10-15 with height rises up into the Davis Straits and west Greenland, the trough deepens over Ireland and UK and therefore it’s a colder setup moves in for late month.

Here’s a global view of the GFS ensemble and EPS as this shows the broader picture and shift in height field over Greenland. Note the reaction over West Europe in response to this amplification in the pattern.

GFS ensemble 5-day mean 500mb height anomalies.

EPS control

See this morning’s video for the discussion.

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