As expected, the much colder flow on the backside of this morning’s frontal system has lead to fairly widespread and low level snowfall across parts of Northern Ireland, Northern England and particularly Scotland. Bright, sunny skies followed this morning rain and snow but through the second half of the afternoon, the air turned colder and with a brisk westerly breeze, the hefty showers driven in have been falling as snow.

Here was the scene this afternoon at my house.

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I captured this shot earlier today in Ayrshire. A decent covering following overnight snowfall.

Note the 850mb temperature difference between this morning and this afternoon according to the model. Note the drop from 0/-5C to below -10C, cooling the column and thus the atmosphere supported frozen precip to near sea level in places.

This AM.

This PM.

While snow showers will be off and on across the North, those snow showers appear to become more of an issue further south through Wales, Midlands, even higher parts of the South tonight. Into tomorrow and after an icy start for many with perhaps some snow on the ground, the focus abruptly shifts to the next intense low pushing in from the Atlantic.

The next deep low sweeps in during Wednesday and this may be quite the wind maker. Of course any more rain is unwelcome and only likely to worsen the already serious situation across Southern Britain but I think the main attention will be drawn the how strong the wind gets over Southwest and Northwest England as well as Wales.

The below surface chart though not appearing too terrible with pressure of only 960mb, the wind field with this appears to be much more tightly wound and with the tighter isobars comes stronger winds.

Check out these 10 metre projected wind gusts according to the ECMWF. Yes 70, 80kts appears likely along coasts with the model suggesting 90kt gusts (103 mph) just offshore and these could conceivably push onshore in exposed areas.

Winds should widely gust to 50-60mph over inland Wales and a good part of England but 80-90 mph gusts are likely along the coast. Coastal flooding is likely to be an issue while rainfall flooding impacts many areas struggling to cope at the moment.

Let’s not forget the cold air in place. SNOW could be an issue particularly over higher roads in northern England, Northern Ireland and especially Scotland as the main rain band pushes in. Don’t be surprised to see near white out conditions over the Southern Uplands and Highlands at some point tomorrow.

ECMWF projected snow cover by Thursday.

Enjoy the ‘calm’ or relaxation of the atmosphere Thursday because the next system pushes on on a very similar track and intensity late Friday into Saturday.

Once that system has cleared to the northeast Sunday, some pretty cold air gets drafted in from the northwest.

Check out the 850 temps.

These next two systems will really build the Highland snowpack which is already impressive but you could probably add an additional 2-4ft on top of the big depth already there.

Could also see snow cover elsewhere expand with cold air associated with these systems.

Snow depth through 96 hours.

Looks like a chilly respite comes after that weekend system.

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