For those of us living particularly in the North and Central parts of the British Isles, we’ll need to get ready to batten down the hatches come tomorrow as we are set to experience the remnants of Leslie as it meets a strong Azores ridge to the south, these two systems will squeeze the pressure field and as a result gales will blow across Scotland and perhaps the North of England with tomorrow evening bearing the brunt with gusts of 60-70 mph widely, even in the Central Lowlands and so minor damage and trees uprooting is possible. Further north, along the west coast and on the isles, wind gusts will get to between 70-80 mph with the tops of the Cairngorms likely to record 100 mph gusts.

Winds likely to remain strong till the weekend in Scotland

Interestingly from the latest models these winds, though won’t be as strong as they will be between noon Thursday and noon Friday, appear to continue blowing up until the weekend and through Saturday even with the ridge to the south and a series of lows which take the same track as Leslie will keep the isobars close together.

This is likely to be the first sustained period of rather windy conditions and it will give us a real sense of what’s in store if you’ve not already had that over the past 36 hours with the chill sweeping down from a rather frozen, cold, Iceland. I’m not being funny when I say that by the way. Iceland is enduring probably one of it’s harshest periods so early with the blizzard a couple of days ago, the cold and persistency in deep lows passing through.

Though it’s not been quite as cold as up in Iceland, our chilly air is coming all the way from Greenland but as it crosses the relative warmth of the North Atlantic, it’s modified.

More autumnal air to sweep south next week

The next 72 hours the cold northwest flow gets cut and the winds veer from a west, southwest direction and this will be the predominant air flow through this weekend. Those much milder wsw winds though won’t make this air feel much warmer though.

While frequent showers and strong winds persistent for the rest of this week and into the weekend with drier, brighter and warmer air always focused in the South, next week appears to see yet more chill come down from Greenland. Right now, the models are hinting at cooler than what we’ve just seen. Hill snow, chilly blustery days and night frosts are all possible throughout next week with hints of November-like air coming down in 8-10 days from now.

A lot more storms to come with rollercoaster temperature regime

Given the current setup, one could argue that this pattern is only going to get more and more active as we push deeper into autumn. The cold in the north is now steadily building and with still plenty of warmth to the south combined with the super warm North Atlantic waters, this could be a very stormy autumn with wild ups and downs in temperature.

There is more bitter cold and snow showing up for Iceland over the next 7 days and what’s going on up there is worth paying attention to for us down here. If we’re seeing that type of cold get pulled off Greenland as these deepening lows pass through, then this turbulent pattern may only intensify as weeks go on and cold continues to build. We could face wild swings in temperature with surges of abnormal warmth ahead of storms followed by biting northwesterlies which with time could support not only cold but even snow.

The warm water temps, lingering warmth to the south and the building cold to the north which will become easily tapped, could spell a wild autumn, one perhaps not witnessed in many years and this could all be a tumble towards a dramatic flip come December with much more settled but colder weather…

Time will tell.