Large swathes of Northern Ireland, Northern England and particularly Scotland are wakening to a covering of snow on this chilly Thursday morning. The models have been pretty spot on with the heavy snow showers expected. This is the first WIDESPREAD significant snow of winter. Today could see parts of Wales and Southern England get in on the wintry scenes and this heralds the start to cold spell number 4 of this winter season.

I drove up to Fort William and Oban and managed to get home around 2.15 this morning. Roads were snow packed but passable. Some inclines were touch and go but I was prepared in case I got stuck.

Here’s some of the pics from last night’s drive.

A snow packed A85 near Tyndrum.

Tyndrum

Kilsyth

Lennoxtown

ECMWF UK snow cover at 0z Friday looks pretty accurate.

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As stated in previous posts, this is not the same system which hit the Eastern United States but it’s a byproduct of reamplifying the upper air pattern and by forcing a North Atlantic/Greenland blocking high and in turn this forces the trough and arctic air south into the UK and Western Europe.

Like the last cold pattern, this looks like it will stick around through much of next week with further snowfall potential, especially in more southern parts and it looks like it could turn very cold by night early next week.

There’s cross model agreement that the blocking high to the west may try to nudge east into Ireland, maybe the UK later next week. However, this, like the last time, may be a slow process as the cold air mass dams and makes it tough to break.

Notice the GFS ensemble, ECMWF Deterministic and EPS Control starts to provide a slightly flatter look over the N Atlantic with more +NAO look in the day 5-10. This doesn’t mean it turns mild again. Models can be too quick and pushing the trough, especially arctic troughs.. east.

ECMWF Deterministic

EPS Control

The end of the week and through the weekend on into early next week sees the high well to the west and lows to the east which keeps the arctic north wind blowing.

Due to wind, cloud and precip, the models aren’t printing out particularly chilly overnight lows but the ECM does suggest a cold Tue into Thu next week. Long way off though.

With a lot of relatively deep snow cover, it doesn’t take much within arctic air masses for temps to fall sharply.

See video for discussion.

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