It’s been a long, stormy winter with a hyper active Atlantic storm train which doesn’t appear to be tiring any time soon. There are striking similarities appearing between this year and 1994 when the US was also cold while the UK was stormy. Like this year, it was a bumper ski season in the Scottish Highlands.

Unfortunately the latest run of the ECMWF suggests SIX systems/fronts swipe Ireland and the UK in the next 10 days starting tomorrow night. Those 6 fronts suggest an additional 4-5 inches of rain falls over western Ireland and Scotland.

While we remain hopeful of some sort of break in this pattern at some point (hopefully in March), the focus of the rain (& snow) in the next 7 days appears to be over southern France/northern Spain, the southern Apennines of Italy and coastal Croatia into Bosnia. The ECMWF has the Adriatic coast baring the brunt with 6-7 inches.

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In the 10 day QPF, rains are still potentially flood producing over the same areas targeted in the front runner 7 days but bigger rains appear to take aim back over western Scotland/Ireland and NW England.

As you would expect, snowfall with this amount of moisture driving up the Pyrenees and Alps, is likely to be measured in feet in the coming days.

ECMWF snow forecast through the next 7 days.

Snow depth next 7 days

Here’s the ECMWF surface charts which shows the continued parade of systems into Ireland and the UK. Note the persistent unsettled weather over the Med too.

System 1

System 2

Appears to be immediately followed by system 3

System 4

System 5

Towards the end of the upcoming 10 days and system 6 (next Thu) looks like another monster sub-945mb low.

-60C In Greenland

While mild over Europe, it’s brutally cold over Greenland thanks to the +NAO, Greenland trough/Europe ridge setup. In fact the -60C or -76F recorded at Summit Camp this morning appears to be the coldest of the entire winter thus far.

Here was the scene a short time ago. Crystal clear, frigid skies. The wind chill at this hour is hovering around -70C or -95F. Ouch!

Here’s the upper chart via the ECMWF for today. Note the cold trough over Greenland as well as over North America.

Latest CFSv2 March/April temps and precip. Trend shows jet stream lifting north. Flood threat appears to shift north while worst hit areas this winter get some relief.

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