While the Atlantic high builds and establishes over the UK and near continent of Europe, arctic air is being forced all the way into the western Med and North Africa where even the Spanish beaches are seeing snow. The coldest air of the season is now being felt across Iberia and the western Med.

Infrared imagery via EUMETSAT shows the cold, polar air reaching all the way across Iberia into NW Africa.

The GFS 500mb height anomaly chart shows the setup with the core of the trough and coldest air displaced well to the south as heights build over top but it’s the circulation around a deep low over Italy that’s pulling unusually cold air unusually far south.

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Positioning of the 1032 high west of Ireland and 990mb low over Italy is key as they act as a funnel, pulling cold continental air with Siberian origin into Southwest Europe and with unusually low thicknesses and cold 850 temps, snowfall is supported all the way to sea level along the Spanish Costas.

Surface (note the unusual but not unprecidented low thicknesses reaching southern Spain)

Not often do you see the 528 thickness line reach Algeria!

Nor do you often see the -5 to -10 isotherm reach SE Spain.

Model snowfall projections through the next 5 days. Plenty more snow for southern areas of Europe as the high seals a west-east oriented trough over the Med. Note the model sees snow for the Balearics as well as Morocco and Algeria!

This setup as supported surface lows down to -16.4C over Spain’s snow covered north-central plateaus this morning.

After a cold, windy end to the work week over SE parts of the UK, mild, cloudy high pressure locks us into a rather monotonous weather pattern well into next week.

If you haven’t already, be sure to check out yesterday’s video/write-up for my first thoughts on spring/summer 2015!

See today’s video for the discussion.

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