Time to batten down the hatches for the first ‘storm’ of the 2014-15 season.

BREAKING DOWN THE DETAIL…

This won’t be anything we haven’t seen before but with models repeatedly showing a tight sub-978 centre crossing the North Highlands, expect a decent blow early tomorrow morning across much of Scotland, Northern Ireland and northern England.

Widespread winds should blow 25-35 gusting 50-60 but locally 70-80 with exposed peaks such as Cairngorm in the Highlands likely to clock 120. With the direction of wind, expect a gusty night in the West and through the Central Lowlands with ALL exposed N-S facing bridges particularly vulnerable to intense gusts which MAY shut the bridges down entirely for a time. Those are the Kessock, Friarton, Erskine, Forth and Tay Bridges. I wouldn’t be surprised to hear of gusts topping 80-90 mph on particularly the Forth and or Tay Bridges.

HEAVY RAIN will cause a tough Tuesday morning commute with nasty surface water and spray with localised flooding highly likely.

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Once the main front pushes through during tomorrow morning, expect a much colder feel with a cold, Tuesday afternoon. Tuesday is likely to be the coldest day across the northern Republic, N Ireland, Scotland and North of England since March or April with highs of 7-9C in the North, 10-13C in the South with snow falling in the Scottish Mountains, possibly Snowdonia and the Pennines too.

Gonzalo will produce quite the trough above the UK!

Surface

A Look At What Follows Gonzalo From Upper Atmosphere Perspective

After Gonzalo pushes into mainland Europe potentially bringing heavy snow for some if not many, we get a brief re-surge in heights before another trough attempts to swing in from Greenland late week which like Gonzalo, contains some quite chilly air. Note the big cold cut off over the Balkans. Heavy snow here!

Here comes the next cold low/trough. ECMWF has core passing to our north though! More wind, rain, hill snow.

Surface

Then the upper flow becomes a little more zonal followed by high pressure building in from the south promising a more settled end to October.

Latest ECMWF 7-day snow chart

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Tags: gonzalo, hurricane, hurricane gonzalo, storm, tropics, UK Storm