You may have woken this morning to a hard, ‘icy’ frost or even at light dusting of snow. That’s because we’re on the backside (cold side) of a frontal system associated with the latest low. Over the next week or more, we have a series of lows heading our way and these will bring the return to more appreciable higher ground snowfall, predominantly across Scotland but quite possibly Northern England, Wales and Northern Ireland also.

I’ve pointed out time and time again that these lows will drag some pretty chilly air with them across the Atlantic and though the air mass modifies as it crosses 5-10C waters, there’s still enough chill to present even low levels with some sleet and snow at times along with a cold wind. WINTER AIN’T OVER!

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ECMWF 7-day mean 500mb height anomalies.

Showers during yesterday and overnight presented a pretty significant ice risk while snow showers were producing a slight winter wonderland as far south as Surrey this morning.

Expect a widespread frost tonight into Sunday morning but the next batch of wind, rain and ‘significant Highland’ snow arrives tomorrow. Behind it? More cold WNW wind with sleet and snow showers lowering.

Here’s the latest ECMWF charts.

850mb temps for today… Yes we’re under -10C temps at 5,000ft. That’s why it feels a touch nippy out there.

Here comes that next front. This will be a decent snow producer for Highland Scotland, remember the source that spawned this low in the first place… It formed on a boundary which divided +20C air over the Caribbean with near -40C over Ohio!

850s are cold behind the front.

This next low (Sunday) appears to detach from it’s own CF and pinball’s SE towards the N Coast of Scotland. This sets the stage for potentially stormy conditions Mon-Tue with widespread gales and severe gales on the coast. Snow too as there’s plenty of cold air around.

Projected 10m wind gusts.

The parade looks set to continue through next week but as we head towards day 10, a west-east boundary appears to set up over the UK and Ireland. Exact positioning will determine whether we stay on the cool side or we may get in on the warmer southern side. The CFSv2 is hard to trust but it remains adamant that we see ridging with warmer, drier than normal conditions in March.

Time will tell and I will look more at March in the coming days. Stay tuned.

See video for more.

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