There’s a very distinct north-south boundary separating cold arctic air with mild subtropical air for both the United Kingdom as well as Europe. This gradient continues to fuel a very powerful jet that’s transporting system which have originated over North America, even the Pacific and this active, turbulent pattern looks set to stay.

This morning, the below satellite view over the continent shows the cold air, representative of the high, bumpy clouds over Scotland extending into Norway and Denmark and the thicker, milkier clouds across much of Ireland, England, Wales into the Netherlands represents much milder air.

We had a rather interesting, extreme wind storm last evening along the coasts of the continental mainland with gusts of 90-100 mph, particularly focused along the Danish, German, Norwegian and Swedish coasts.

The setup was just right for rapid cyclogenesis over the North Sea yesterday and this caused high level energy to transfer from top down. Earlier in the day we saw powerful wind gusts over particularly Ireland, England and Wales with a gust of 117 mph reported on Great Dun Fell, Cumbria.

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We catch a break today with winds easing and skies clearing across Scotland and Northern England but with cold air in place and snow covering a large swathe of the Highlands, expect tonight to be the UK’s coldest to date. It’s not cold for all of the UK though.

Current UK snow cover seen by the GFS.

Tonight’s forecasted cloud cover at the various levels.

First -10C is possible somewhere in the Highlands by tomorrow AM.

Big north-south temperature difference tonight thanks to that sharp boundary slicing in between. 12C possible in the far south, -10C in the coldest spots of Highland Scotland.

Next system roles in by morning and with cold air in place, snow may cause rush hour issues before a change over to rain.

Here’s that big thermal gradient driving the 190 mph straight west to east jet stream.

This morning surface chart.

I thought I would show you the model 10m wind gusts charts rather than surface for a change as the areas of strongest winds, represent individual lows but I notice how windy this week is overall with spells of particularly strong wind over the NW as a low swings through.

Today.

Next system arrives Wed. Severe gales for NW Scotland, gales elsewhere and very mild even across Scotland.

Next system after Wednesday arrives by the end of the workweek and this looks to bring damaging gusts over N UK.

That system lifts out and in comes the next windy spell next Monday.

Heavy rain will accompany these systems and with saturated ground, expect local flooding.

GFS doesn’t have a whole lot of snow with these systems but the mountains will see some at times.

Meteorological winter begins tomorrow!

See this morning’s video.

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