We continue with the wet and windy theme as we open Wednesday but when taking a step back and looking at the bigger picture, there’s some real signs of change as we enter winter’s final month.

Back to the here and now and blustery showers across Scotland will turn to snow this morning into afternoon across higher ground including high level roads while the gustiest winds are gradually transferring from north to south over England and Wales.

Drier, brighter but cooler behind the front this afternoon and this sets the stage for a colder night with widespread frost, particularly England and Wales while wintry showers continue across Scotland.

The next and potentially biggest impact system shall makes it’s presence felt later tomorrow into Friday with a combination of further strong to damaging winds, heavy rain and potential for snow even to lower levels.

These passing lows are entraining ocean-modified Greenland air and so snow will get more mention today, tomorrow, Friday and particularly into the early the weekend.

There’s a noticeable squeeze in pressure early Friday which could produce damaging westerly winds across Northern Ireland and Scotland.

If this is correct, strongest winds of the week by far sweep in Friday AM!

Note the sharp lowering of thickness values early Saturday, this could support a ‘surprise snow’ even through the Glasgow-Edinburgh corridor Saturday AM.

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Another system moves in Sunday and this rollercoaster temperature setup shall continue into next week as the stormy pattern continues into early February.

Colder pattern returning mid-February?

Now that we’re entering the final 30 days of winter with the peaking of this Super El Nino in our rear view mirror as well as reduction in westerly QBO and the fact that the polar atmosphere is now seeing significant energy transfer from stratosphere to troposphere and the most pronounced warming yet, a much drier, colder pattern is becoming increasingly likely for UK and West Europe.

A  sudden stratospheric warming event late month or early February looks more and more likely. This would shut down the westerlies and possibly bring our flow in from the east. El Nino winters with the right conditions and with SSWE’s are infamous at presenting a wild and cold end following warm and wet first half.

VERY IMPORTANT INDICATOR: Notice the westward push of warmest El Nino waters and cooling in close to SA… Also notice how warmest waters are to the north of UK between Greenland and Scand. Blocking high to position here?

The GFS ensemble shows a polar vortex split with warming streaming straight over top of the pole and across Greenland into Atlantic. This has the ability at extending major blocking from Arctic down over Greenland into the Atlantic right where we want it in February.

The EPS control sees an explosive in heights across the Arctic day 5-10, 10-15.

5-10

10-15

See this morning’s video for the discussion.

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