This morning’s Europe visible satellite view shows the UK separated north-south by two different air masses.

The mild air can be seen streaming across southern Ireland, England and Wales with thicker cloud but arctic can be seen crossing Northern Ireland and Scotland with bumpy, broken high level cloud. This flow is unstable and producing heavy convective style rain, hail, sleet and snow showers, driven by a gale-force west wind.

The surface pressure chart shows that the Northern Ireland/UK air mass is blowing at gale-force all the way from Arctic Canada and Greenland.

The below GFS 850mb temp chart shows the Atlantic’s modifying influence of this arctic air mass.

Notice at the point in which this air mass exits Canada, 5,000ft temps are around -25C but by the time they’ve reached Scotland, they’ve warmed to between -5 and 0C. Still enough to bring hill snow and wintry mix to low levels.

Drumochter Pass on the A9 this morning.

At the source, this air mass was -45C in the Yukon and Northwest Territories. The distance between Canada’s Arctic and Labrador/Newfoundland coast is about the same as from Canada to Scotland. The air mass moderates by about 20C between Yukon and Labrador coast then looses another 20C while crossing the Atlantic before reaching us.

Some good information from EUSTORM on the UK’s double blow this upcoming Christmas weekend.

 

Watch today’s video.