The coldest air mass of winter is on the way and many of you may be wondering about snow. I have been slow to mention snow because of the uncertainty ahead, a lot has to do with the fight that goes on at this time of year but while I think many may even stuggle to hit 0C with wind chills of -5 to -10C during Monday, snow is looking more likely as a system swirls not far to the south of England. I mentioned this early last week that a surface storm may develop underneath the upper low which has been persistently positioned south of the UK by the models. This may very well throw enough moisture into this cold air mass, that we could see several inches of snow across Southern and eastern England as well as perhaps eastern Scotland Sunday through Tuesday. The snow for eastern Scotland may be more sea-effect rather than any sort of system snow. The air blowing across the North Sea is sure to pick up moisture and push it onshore as snow.

The depth of cold with this air mass appears to be coldest of the season with both ECMWF and GFS aligning with a complete coverage of -10 to -15C air at the 850 mb level across the UK and even Ireland and so throw moisture into that and you’ve got higher ratio snows which means potentially greater snow accumulations even if you don’t have a ton of moisture to play with. The latest GFS shows a covering of snow across far southern counties as well as east-central England.

Here’s another look at those 850 temps for Monday afternoon.

ECMWF

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GFS

Here’s what the GFS is predicting for snow over the next 72 hours, Monday.

By Tuesday it shows a swath across the South Coast of England.

Below is the GFS surface/precip chart for Sunday which shows a surface low southwest of England throwing moisture up into the cold air over the UK. Note the 540 line well to the south over France.

By 54 hours or later Sunday, cold air continues to sweep into the UK from the east and so the band of moisture associated with the low to the SW gets pushed south. The 522 line according to the GFS reaches northern England while even the 534 line reaches London.

By 60 hours another band of fairly heavy precip breaks out along the 534 height line over southern England, this is potentially where a 2-4 inch snow covers the South Coast late Sunday into London. Impressively the 516 height line drops into Fife!

Even by later Tuesday, the system continues to spin not far south of the UK with moisture managing to reach the south coast. The 522 height line makes it to the south of England by this stage too.

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Tags: bitter cold for uk, uk march cold blast, uk march cold snap