This weekend brings us into the midway point of a pattern transition where we say goodbye to the cold and return to a mild, stormy regime. As always, this will and has come with problems. Like i’ve said all week, this cold period wasn’t going to end at the click of a finger but will come gradually and not without fun and games.  Did you see snow yesterday or last night? Boy o boy, what a snowstorm for many places. See the picture of the M6 last night. What a way to end a cold spell, right? The met office tweeted new snow depths this morning and funnily enough, Redesdale Camp in Northumberland reported a snowdepth of 33cm which is the highest of all. Here in Lennoxtown, we got our first real snow of winter but sadely for my and my neighbours it was too little too late. My point being is never say never. While many focused on the warmth that was coming, many failed to recognise the snowstorm that would preceed the warmth.  Although charts bring a return of warmth and end of a pattern many of us hope for during winter, there are many things to consider. Things cannot flip around fast when you’ve had two weeks of snow and cold. Warm air slamming into a solid cold dome means further snow, perhaps freezing rain before plain old rain and warmer temperatures. It just so happens that we probably saw the biggest and most widespread snow event of winter across the UK right at the point where the cold spell was ENDING, so this winter spell certainly didn’t give up too easily and in fact produced the largest snowdepth of the winter.  [s2If current_user_can(access_s2member_level1)] Check out this image taken on the M6 last night, gridlock!

Many of you are asking, is that winter over? Like I said at the close of the early Dec chill, unlikely. Remember that we’re only at Jan 26th, pretty much half way and given what we’ve seen both locally and globally, there is plenty more winter left yet.

Urban Flood & Slip Risk Is High Over Next Few Days

Watch out if your travelling tonight and tomorrow as flooding and major icing will bring a fresh set of headaches. Be especially careful with ice being covered by rain and snow melt water. Very dangerous.

The air will warm bigtime in the southwest and to a lesser degree up the western flank but as for the east, I’m not convinced it gets significantly warmer. Perhaps 3-4C through tomorrow, 5C maybe on Monday over the deepest snowpack.

Atlantic Door Becomes Well And Truly Opened: 4 Storms To Strike Within Next 5 Days

After a series of snowfalls and cold dominated for the past 10+ days, we now face a a very active spell lasting about the same amount of time with one low after the other sweeings across the UK.

The wet and windy cycle begins tonight with a front which bringing in rain, not snow and this is a modest introduction our Atlantic driven pattern. (Till snow is gone, the air won’t be particularly mild, esp east). The real storminess comes Monday-Tuesday on the backside of tomorrow’s system which appears to follow the North Atlantic monster. While the sub-940mb low weakens and drifts up towards Iceland, the trailing system will track further east and turn north, clipping the Outer Hebrides and looks likely to bring our second batch of UK-wide heavy rain in just 36 hours, only winds look to be more noteworthy.

The front and associated rain band will sweep across the UK tonight bringing a spell of wet and windy weather. Urban flooding can be expected. Gales will affect the coast but it will be blustery everywhere.

Here’s the latest precip & pressure chart off the GFS for tonight.

Here’s the GFS for later Monday, note the next front sweeping a band of heavy rain across the country. In the pressure chart below, note the tightly packed isobars. Severe gales may impact the coast while gales are widespread across inland parts.

Amazingly, within 24 hours, yet another active cold front will sweep in from the southwest. Yes, a 3rd storm between tonight and Tuesday night. Check this out.

After system three clears to the northeast of Scotland into Wednesday, winds could turn very strong on the backside of the system according to the GFS. Powerfu, possibly damaging NW winds may cover much of Scotland Wednesday before that eventually clears by early Thursday. However, like we see in the early part of the week, while one clears, another follows on the heels.

Here’s rain band No. 4 pushing in later Thursday.

Of course these charts are taken from one run and so the exact play out of next week, although very active will probably not play out exactly like this. Prepare for more flooding over the next week or two. Always keep at the back of your mind that our fields remain saturated. All the water for last years rain, particularly December remains, it doesn’t dissappeared and so between the still-flooded fields in many areas along with frozen ground, further ‘signigicant’ flooding will recure.

What Can We Expect In February?

Ok, so what are my ideas for February? I’ve said that I believed we would see a return to colder during February and that we may even find Febryary as the coldest month of the entire winter. Severity and duration of any cold during February or even March remains very much unknown but firstly I will show you this…

This is the initial stratosphere temp at 50mb and this shows that there is still plenty of warmth over the polar strat which supports more arctic cold within the mid-latitudes further down the road.

Here’s 144 hours. Though there appears to be less warmth, there is warm lobes dropping down over North America and Europe which may suggest a return to cold for Europe into week 2 of February, keep in mind of the lag period! (North America should have a wild front and middle part of February). This provides good support for a continued -AO.

What about the NAO, afterall is back to positive once again and the cold is leaving Europe?

Notice it is seen to go back towards negative around mid-Feb.

Finally, here is a look at the CFSv2 for Feb. While the first 10 days are mild and stormy, check this out for from Feb 10th on.

Feb 10-20

Feb 15-25

As you can see, between the stratospheric temperature remaining on the warm side and the support of a -NAO midmonth, these both support the CFSv2 cold look from Feb 10 onwards. I have more evidence to support cold all the way into early March but will show you this is a more focused long range post soon.

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