Our wild March here in the UK continues and just when you thought it couldn’t get much worse, an Atlantic storm system will swing an arm of heavy precipitation into our cold air tonight and could produce the biggest ‘disruptive snow event’ for the UK yet. Tonight through Saturday’s event will make a 4th in just 10 days.

A lot of moisture slams into cold air sitting over the British Isles tonight, forcing heavy snows to break out. Strong to gale-force SE winds will make conditions worse tonight through Friday as blizzards set in over high, exposed areas. How much snow is expected? It wouldn’t surprise me if we see as much as 2-5 inches at low levels through the Midlands and over western parts of Northern England extending into Southwestern Scotland. As for the hills, an impressive 8 to 14 inches is possible over the spine of the Pennines as well as over the Southern Uplands. Factor in strong to gale-force winds and expect blizzard or near blizzard conditions over the higher, exposed routes with significant blowing and drifting.

These nasty conditions look set to last right through early Saturday.

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Here’s the very latest charts off the GFS for the storm situation.

Surface/precip chart through 24 hrs.

Note the higher concentrations of moisture over the mountains (orographic influence)

Snow projections through 48 hrs, notice the high totals of 8+ inches over the Pennines, North Wales mountains and Southern Uplands of Dumfries and Galloway.

This system as mentioned will continue to bring wind and snow well into Saturday before the boundary gets forced south with another push of cold air from the northeast.

Next week is looking calmer but cold remains firmly in our pattern.

The well respected BBC Look North Meteorologist Paul Hudson blogged today about the UK being on it’s way to the coldest March since 1969, when considering to the Central England Temperature (CET). Given the fact that next week looks just as cold as anything we’ve seen so far this month, we appear highly likely to see our coldest March since 69′ and this would in fact beat my idea of seeing our coldest in 30 years but my idea encorporates an area from Scandinavia to Ireland. This may still be the case. It will be interesting to see stats when this month is over.

BTW, here’s the GFS snow projections out at 114 hrs.

144 hrs.

 

Unfortunately I am unable to show you but the GFS temperature anomaly for the next 8 days show a a very cold UK and bitter tongue sweeping through Europe. The 8-16 day shows warming. Is the GFS seeing a potential recovery from deep negative in the NAO/AO?

Here’s the latest ECMWF into next week. As stated, it turns more settled with higher pressure but the bitter cold holds. In sunshine expect pleasant temperatures but at night under clear skies and light winds, expect hard to severe frosts and unusually cold night temperatures.

Sat

Mon

Wed

Fri

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Tags: cold uk march, coldest march since 1969, europe cold, march freeze, uk march weather, uk weather