While wintry showers rattled in on a stinging, gale-force west wind across Scotland while temps soared to 16.8C in central London, Friday. That was the warmest day of 2014 in the UK. Yesterday was much milder across Scotland. Thanks to the approach of a front associated with a sub-955mb low near Iceland, accelerating SSW winds and sunny skies may push temperatures today towards 20C around London.

According to my weather friend Wassim Cornet who’s based in Brussels, Belgium. They hit a record high of 18.9C yesterday, beating an old record set back in 1950. He tells me that they should beat today’s record of 18.8C set back in 1977. Many towns and cities from Spain to Denmark should see their warmest day of the year so far with some records falling.

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Temporarily, Northern Ireland and Scotland will be chilly again today with colder air feeding in on the rear of the front. The same front that will keep skies cloudy and damp across Ireland, N Ireland, Scotland and the far N of England where highs only manage 5-7C but head into the sunny skies really from points south of the Lakes, and it’s 15 or 16C quite easily. Look out for wintry showers later today into Monday in the North and patchy ice Monday morning as overnight skies clear.

Tonight and tomorrow sees the front sink southeast but by the time in reaches Birmingham and points further south, it’s just cloud as the height fields sucks the moisture out.

By Tuesday that front has decayed and high pressure builds right over the UK and Ireland which means mild, settled and most importantly, DRY probably right up till at least next weekend.

Here’s a look at the GFS ensembles which show the mean 500mb height anomalies through the next 16 days in 7 day increments.

The front running 7 days shows this… a significant positive anomaly. All the disturbed weather will be north and west of Scotland and Northern Ireland, particularly midweek.

However, there’s quite the turnaround in the 7-14 day!

9-16 shows the trough deepening and with high pressure shifting WEST out into the North Atlantic, one must consider a potential late season cold spell.

Here’s the 850 temps which show the cooling beyond 7 days also…

0-7 day

7-14

9-16

The ECMWF shows our protective bubble of high pressure shifting west by the end of next week and particularly into the start of the week commencing the 17th as a northerly winds drive pretty cold air south, initially into the near continent but as we progress towards the 20th, late season brand arctic air appears to push into the UK while the ridge repositions over the mid North Atlantic.

NAO shows negative trend.

A little too far out as to how chilly it may be but certainly both operational as well as ensembles both show a significant cool down the week after next.

Here’s the ECMWF which shows the sharp cool down beyond 7 days.

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