When cold meets warm you gets storms and extremes. There’s been a lot of extreme weather affecting Europe over the past week with arctic air diving south over the Western side of the continent while it’s been like summer in Greece and Turkey.

A storm crossing Iberia producing hurricane-force wind, heavy rain and disruptive snow along with temperatures widely 5-10C below normal.

That very system crossed into the Mediterranean and with warm, moist air driving up against the southern slopes of the Alps, some astonishing snow totals were achieved. Upwards of 1-2 METRES fell in parts of Italy and Austria.

Scenes from Piemonte, NW Italy on Feb 29!

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Prato Nevoso, N Italy.

Following last weekend’s heavy snowfall and cold, temperatures have recovered very nicely along Spain’s Med coast. With the help of strong terral or foehn winds blowing towards the coast (same as Santa Ana’s in CA) AHEAD of the system pushing into Ireland, temperatures topped 27C In Valencia and 28C in Murcia.

Down in the Canaries it was even warmer with Tenerife South Airport recording 28.9C yesterday.

On the other end of the continent, Moscow witnessed their biggest March snowstorm in 50 years, all but crippling transport for a time with up to 20cm falling.

As for here in the UK, snow will affect travel across parts of England and Wales tonight into tomorrow. This will be followed by a chilly weekend with hard overnight frosts.

See video for a look at the complexity of forecasting snow in this evening’s system. Will have much more on next week and beyond in tomorrow’s post/video.

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