For the past few weeks I’ve been saying about there being an increased chance of seeing a secondary warm spell before we cool down considerably towards months end as the NAO/AO flip back negative. There’s a deffinate battle setting up next week between warm and cool over the UK and Ireland and both the ECMWF and GFS are both agreeing and persistent on a squeeze in the thermal gradient across our area. It’s a ridge-trough battle and it’s going to be interesting to see which one, if any wins out.. If neither win and dominate UK air space, bet your bottom dollar, it’s going to be very windy as the temperature difference will be large over a small area. Very wet weather is also highly likely along this sharp boundary. Join these two together with a due west flow right across the Atlantic and gale-force winds blow to try to counteract the imbalance in temperature, just like the atmosphere does with pressure.

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This is turning out to be a headache as it’s tough to pinpoint. If it’s going to go either way next week, I’m swaying more towards warm with ridging rather than cool with a trough and it’s simply because the NAO is continuing to climb into positive but I admit, there’s a heck of a cold pool and trough not that far to our north mid next week.

Below is a series of GFS 500mb ensemble means through next week and you can see not only the ECMWF but GFS showing the sharp thermal gradient and strong WESTERLIES blowing across the UK next week.

We may find temperatures warm in the south but cool with heavy rains in the NW across Highland Scotland.

120 hrs

132 hrs

156 hrs

Here’s the ECMWF for the same period. Not much difference.

144 hrs

168 hrs

If we don’t see a few days of warmth next week, then i’m affraid we likely won’t through the rest of April as medium range models show the -NAO trough setting up in the means again over NW Europe.

Significant Cool Spell To End April?

Check out these temperature anomalies for Apr 24-30.

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