The first blast of winter has well and truly arrived with the much anticipated ‘surprise snow’ for some, accompanied by a biting northerly wind which gusted to 71 mph on the Lincolnshire coast, leading to well below freezing wind chills. Sub-freezing wind chills shall continue through Saturday, especially nearer Irish Sea and North Sea coasts. Lighter winds and sunshine inland but remaining cold.

This cold shot albeit brief has arrived in the midst of one of Europe’s warmest November’s. The first half of this month has been 2nd warmest on record for the UK.

Charts not seen since last winter!

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Here are low temperatures this morning. Widespread 0 to -2C but coldest spot was Cairngorm Summit with -8.7C.

Where there’s snow on the ground, skies are clear and winds are light, we may see -7 to -9C Saturday and Sunday nights.

Many high ground locales have woken to a covering of snow this morning.

Beautiful scene from Carrbridge, Highland this morning.

Much of the A9 has lying snow this morning.

Drumnochter

Avielochan

Slochd

Snow not just confined to north.

M74 at Beattock

Plenty of snow over the Pennines.

Beautiful images from Cumbria and Durham this morning. Courtesy of Owen Hemphreys.

Great view across a snow covered North Pennines this morning from Gary S.

With the high moving south over the Atlantic, winds turn northwesterly and the arctic air quickly gets kicked east as early as Monday. As preciously stated, temps don’t recover to the same values as we’ve seen through the first half of the month as our flow came in from the subtropics. We return to a more typical polar-maritime which presents average temps and continuation of the unsettled theme.

2m temp anomaly snapshots for the upcoming week shows the return of milder maritime air but a low pushing into the UK late week into the weekend may bring the return of colder, Greenland origin air. Unlikely to be as cold as this weekend.

See the video for today’s discussion.

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