After the howling winds of yesterday which brought down trees and cut power across many parts of the UK and Ireland, high pressure is now building in from the Atlantic and this is settling things down. The chilly air mass combined with clear skies and light winds means tonight will be the coldest of autumn for both Northern Ireland and Scotland with a widespread penetrative frost.

Even at 6pm, frost is already forming and by dawn Friday, I expect many towns and cities in the North as well as NI to be in the range of -2 or -3C while rural areas are in the -4 to -6C range. A few snow covered communities tucked away in the Highlands could get into the -8 or -9C range.

Check out the surface chart off the GFS valid 6z tomorrow morning.

[s2If current_user_can(access_s2member_level1)]

Here’s the projected temperatures at 9am.

While cloud begins to fill in over the UK and Ireland in the coming days, we remain chilly through the weekend but I believe we’ll begin to notice slight warming in the days next week. Any clear sky by night should produce frost but ultimately, the high that will build, will also eventually draw in warmer air from the Atlantic while the cold currently over us shifts east.

Here’s the current jet stream position driving arctic air into the UK.

Here it is by 60 hours and notice that it’s driving the arctic air into central Europe.

By 90 hours it’s north-south oriented along the Germany-Poland border while we have milder air flowing in from the Atlantic.

Now let’s take a look at the 5,000ft level temps and note where the core of the cold driving south is positioned.

In the 48 hour surface chart you can see the trough and cold focused more from Scandinavia south into central and even southern Europe. This setup not only provides more stormy, flooding conditions over Italy and the central Med but MAJOR snows for the Alps.

The snow chart agrees. This looks like a great setup for major snow pack building..

When looking well into next week, we and the western fringes of Europe including the north of France, Low Countries and Denmark, appear to be in a no man’s land of weather with the core of high pressure slightly west which which drive relatively mild air across Ireland, the UK and western fringes of Europe while the trough and core of cold is centred over central and eastern areas.

It looks to turn pretty darn cold from Germany on east and even south into the Balkans with heavy snowfall likely.

Here’s the GFS surface chart by Tuesday.

The front running 6 days looks to see a warming trend for us here in the west while it turns considerably colder in central and eastern parts but let’s keep a close eye on the 6-10 day range as both GFS and ECMWF appear to try and back the ridge west again. This next 2-3 weeks could be a tough forecast challenge and may come and go when it comes to cold but I suspect we will start to see the mean ridge retrograde westwards through the first half of December. There are a lot of signs that this winter won’t be a flop. We only have to look at what’s going down for the US.. Major cold there could be followed by major cold here…

LOOOONG WAY OUT BUT CHECK OUT THE 384 GFS 5K TEMPS.

360 hour Control off the ECMWF!

Little sign of any cold signal off the CFSv2 500mb height anomaly chart over the next 2 weeks but there are signs in week 3 and 4. I suspect the return of a Greenland block will show up before then..

 

[/s2If][s2If is_user_logged_in() AND current_user_cannot(access_s2member_level1)]

That’s it, [s2Get constant=”S2MEMBER_CURRENT_USER_DISPLAY_NAME” /]!

To continue reading, you need to have a valid subscription to access premium content exclusive to members. Please join a subscription plan if you would like to continue.[/s2If][s2If !is_user_logged_in()]

Sign in to read the full forecast…

Not yet a member? Join today for unlimited access

Sign up to markvoganweather.com today to get unlimited access to Mark Vogan’s premium articles, video forecasts and expert analysis.
[/s2If]

Tags: cold, europe cold, europe snow, UK Winter Forecast, winter, winter weather