Time and time again this winter, modelling has suggested spells of cold with snow but most of those times, it was nothing to write home about. This month sits in between the extremes of the past two Marches. Remember last year? Looked and felt more like January. In fact, if last March had of been January, it would have been below normal for the UK. The March before, well it was the opposite, record warm.

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I understand that many of you are bored with this fairly benign pattern but it’s typical March with ups and downs. I guess the temperature ledger has been on the warm side but in more ‘typical’ levels for March.

Both GFS, ECMWF and other models are all in bed with the cold solution on the way. Of course the cold will be tempered especially by day by the high March sun angle but once the wind, rain, hail, sleet and snow baring front clears the UK and colder air is in place, we could be talking fairly hard frosts, especially late weekend into early next week as a chilly high builds in.

Before we get there. Gales, driving rain along with backside hail, snow and even snow showers, will dominate Thursday’s proceedings across the UK. Winds may gust 50+mph through the Central Lowlands tomorrow morning and these gusts may cause travel issues. Wind and rain will progress south through the day. It turns noticeably colder once that front clears. The wind will be pretty raw. Our new air mass will be a recycled version of what dropped down over Scandinavia. This air will circulate around the upper trough and -10C or lower air at 5,000ft will cross Scotland. Hefty showers follow the main front and these may contain hail, sleet and snow even to low levels.

What’s interesting is that the warmth we have now will get shifted east and central and eastern parts of Europe will enjoy unseasonable warmth this weekend into early next week.

The cold air mass however doesn’t remain over the UK, it will progress as far south as Iberia and the Med Sea. Models suggest a new low forms on the tail of the front that crosses the UK tomorrow and with cold air getting pulled all the way to Iberia and Italy, we may see a surprise snowfall over the higher plateau’s of Spain as well as the Apennines of Italy. The models even show snow over the mountains of Sicily. This would be towards mid next week.

SEE TODAY’S VIDEO!

Here’s the latest GFS surface and 5,000ft temp charts through the next 168 hours.

 

GFS is pretty bullish when it comes to snow over the next week. The pale blues to me always show the model ‘seeing snow in the air’ but it not necessarily sticking. It could well sleet or snow anywhere over the UK and eventually a large swath of western Europe in the upcoming 72 to 96 hours as this is a substantial punch of cold air driving all the way to southern Iberia and the Med but the ground is warm. Only the heavily showers are likely to bring accumulations but I could see the mountains over Italy and northern Spain turn white, especially into next week.

Here’s the GFS snow chart

ECMWF has the same idea!

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Tags: europe snow, UK Snow