Over the course of the weekend, we had the perfect atmospheric setup both near the surface and in the upper levels for Saharan dust to get picked up, transported north and dropped over southern England yesterday. Many folks who headed out door this morning only to discover a strange dusty film on their car. Probably frustrating if the car has only just been washed.

[s2If current_user_can(access_s2member_level1)]

This rather large plume of Saharan dust would have commenced it’s 2,000 mile northward journey late Saturday as a strong low west of Iberia and building high pressure over the central Mediterranean generated strong southerly winds. Not only did these winds push the warmest air of the year into the UK yesterday, with London topping 20.9C but this warm, long fetch southerly, also contained dust particles from Africa’s Sahara Desert. The particles fell to earth over England thanks to large scale sinking beneath high pressure as well as the heavy showers which developed, in part thanks to the warm, unstable atmosphere.

Check out this image captured this morning from the BBC roof camera at Broadcasting House in Central London.

This initial 500mb chart off the ECMWF shows the setup which pushed the dust northwards.

Check out this interesting ‘dust aerosol optical depth’ chart showing the dust blowing northwards from the Sahara UK-bound!

As for the conditions across Western Europe in the coming days. High pressure remains strong over the heart of the continent and this high will build north over the UK by midweek, potentially supporting even warmer conditions than we saw yesterday.

Tonight sees heavy showers push north over Ireland, England and Wales as energy pushes north along the boundary separating low pressure top the west, high pressure to the east. Low pressure west of Iberia continues to push heavy, thundery rains into Portugal and Spain where local flooding is a concern.

ECMWF surface chart for this evening.

During tomorrow, the rains affecting southern Britain tonight will affect the north tomorrow while it’s drier, sunnier and warmer in the south. Staying very unsettled down across Iberia, glorious sunshine and warmth to be had across central and western mainland Europe.

The frontal boundary containing windier conditions along with rain is never far to the west and during Wednesday, the front trues to push into the western UK. It’s looks likely to bring cloudy, damp, breezy conditions to Ireland. Wednesday could see highs in and around London top 21, maybe 22C with enough sun and southerly flow. Note the very wet weather continuing to plague Iberia. Not the best for folks taking an early vacation..

The warmth with African origin (like yesterday) is visible in the projected 5,000ft level temps.

This week’s pattern certainly supports widespread above normal temperatures across Europe with the exceptions of Iberia and parts of Scandinavia and Russia with lower pressure is dominant.

Be sure to check out yesterday’s UK/Ireland weekly forecast and Europe outlook for more on the pattern through the next couple of weeks…

[/s2If][s2If current_user_cannot(access_s2member_level1)][magicactionbox id=”18716″][/s2If]