The much anticipated and rather dramatic NW to SE divide is setting up nicely as we commence the new week. A frontal boundary marking the northern flank of high pressure will drop south over Scotland later today and this will settle overhead for a couple of days making for a rather soggy affair for particularly the West Highlands.

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Meanwhile, WSW winds will transport sub-tropical air into the southern half of the British Isles to the south of the front and here, with sunshine, temps will climb to 24C across the Southeast (21 widely) tomorrow and 25, possibly 26C (22 widely) during Wednesday. By Wednesday afternoon, as a fairly long fetch of moisture streams along the boundary, the West Highlands may have picked up between 2-4″ of rain, spells of rain across the rest of Scotland. It will feel ok today, tomorrow but on Wednesday, as the boundary sinks down towards the England-Scotland border, look for daytime highs between 6-10C with a chill to that west breeze across N Ireland and Scotland while feeling distinctly July-like over central and southern England/Wales.

GFS surface

Lots of rain captured by the West Highlands next 3 days!

Clear to see where the high is sitting in the above precip map.. Check out the precip over Iberia though south of the high! A lot of the UK rains will be captured by the Atlantic-facing Highland upslopes, enhanced by the orographic effect!

Tue/Wed highs according to the GFS.

Towards the end of the week, we start the cooler trend for all of the UK/Ireland as that very high begins to nose north northwest into the Atlantic, this will turn winds more NW, drawing in much cooler, fresher air to all including the South of England and Wales.

The CFSv2 shows the dramatic flip in the hemisphere wide height field coming up in likely response to the strat warming happening now over the pole.

As you can see below, we go from strong twin RIDGE on both sides of the Atlantic to strong TROUGH as the Europe high shifts into the North Atlantic.

GFS ensemble shows the -NAO signal showing up for April’s 2nd half.

GFS ensemble 500mb height anomalies also reflect this change coming.

It’s looking like a chilly and at times wet end to April and start of May. If the stratospheric warming continues over the pole, this crummy, disappointing pattern may linger well on into May.

Finally, check this out… note how much waters have warmed around particularly Ireland during the past week when it was warm and settled! With the strengthening of the El Nino, I would be watching this warm-up of surrounding UK waters as this could have the capabilities of enhancing rainfall into early summer.

April 2

April 9

Be sure to watch today’s video for more.

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