The storm is whipping pretty good just now here and for some, it’s downright damaging! Top gusts have been clocked at 111 mph on exposed Aonach Mor summit, located E of Fort William, 105 mph on Cairngorm and even down in Cumbria, gusts of 101 mph have been recorded on Great Dun Fell.

The A9 linking Perth with Inverness has been closed since yesterday due to extreme snow and wind conditions. It temporarily reopened but has in the last 5 minutes been reclosed.

Here’s a live view from Drumnochter Summit.

Current Satellite view

Current surface map showing central pressure down to 944mb.

[s2If current_user_can(access_s2member_level1)]

500mb height anomaly perspective of this storm is impressive. This is a pattern changer!

As this low drifts up towards Scandinavia filling as it does, this sets the stage for a VERY COLD WEEKEND/START TO NEXT WEEK as we pick up a reinforcing shot of cold air straight from the arctic.

Embedded fronts riding this northerly flow will INCREASE the chances of snow before we see a chance of WIDESPREAD snow early next week.

GFS snowfall dramatically increases over the next 6 days.

Next 24 hrs

3 days

6 days

UK close-up

24 hrs

3 days

6 days

Behind these fronts, the air will feel that bit colder and we set the stage for some very cold nights, particularly late weekend into early next week.

Finally…

Here’s the 500mb height anomaly for the upcoming 7 day period. That’s a cold air mass and coldest since January 2013.

2-metre temp anomalies next 7 days

This significant pattern shift was of course highlighted here first with the timing pretty good but I suspect this cold pattern will last through the rest of January and is in response to the 10mb warming we saw over the North Atlantic back at the start of the year!

The following 7 days off the GFS ensemble remains with the cold theme and in fact we are LIKELY to pick up a more easterly flow. Colder of course than a northerly.

Day 9-16

What’s coming, was forecasted here first… Sure, there are ‘forecasters’ out there that have been saying it’s going to be cold but eventually your going to be right. However, it was stated HERE that MID to LATE January was the period to watch just like the first 2 weeks of December and Christmas to New Year week was. I clearly stated that there will be plenty of mild too.

More in today’s video.

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

Tags: arctic oscillation, north atlantic oscillation, stratospheric warming, sudden stratospheric warming event, UK Snow, UK Storm, winter