Europe February 2019 Outlook

Written by Mark Vogan on January 24, 2019 in Rest of Europe, United Kingdom & Ireland with 0 Comments

Up until the 20th, January, like December has been tame. Milder than expected? Yes because I believed the month would turn and turn severe. We remain in a westerly driven pattern and that was not expected by this stage, especially when taking into account the sudden stratospheric warming event which occurred around Christmas with a split in the vortex taking place on January 1-2.

The lag in the transfer of cold from stratosphere into troposphere has been slower than expected and indeed still has yet to complete it’s journey into the lower atmosphere as can be seen below.

Despite the downward energy transfer fully complete, the mid latitude pattern has turned colder with height rises over the arctic forcing the release of polar air south. However, the westerlies have refused to reverse and this is likely down to both the above as well as the Maddan Julian Oscillation which has remained stuck in the warmer phases of 3 and 4. As you can see from the below chart, phase 4 keeps a positive North Atlantic Oscillation going.

For the winter weather lovers out there, there is projections for change. The MJO is expected to progress into the more favourable phases of 6, 7 and 8 as seen in the graphic below which supports a -NAO.

When you once again look at the polar cross section chart above, the colder air is expected to enter the lowest 500mb level of our atmosphere and both of these combined indicate an increasingly colder pattern for Western Europe.

However, I must urge that both of these expectations are ‘model forecasts’ and have yet to happen. If the MJO fails to progress and or the cold doesn’t make it fully down, there is still a possibility of the NAO failing to go negative and therefore the westerlies would continue.

For the remainder of January, it looks like the westerlies shall prevail but will lobes of ocean modified Canada, Greenland air sweeping into the UK keeping our pattern quite wintry.

As we close January and commence February, we have the potential for building heights west and north of the UK and north to northeast or east winds should begin to show.

It’s also worth noting that Europe shall remain cold and in fact we are beginning to see the cold intensify and expand over western Russia and Scandinavia.

Credit: Meteoceil

Therefore if our air flow begins to shift from Atlantic to Russia, we maximise our cold potential. If we manage to get a widespread UK snow cover (which is possible) and we get an arctic air overhead, we have a shot at surpassing the coldest levels seen since 1995. That would be colder than -22C recorded in Altnaharra back in 2010.

GFS snowfall over the next 10 days is very impressive!