All courtesy of the 929mb Atlantic weather bomb a couple of days ago, the freezing line is getting awfully close to the North Pole according to the GFS while the UK is bathed in below freezing wind chills and blustery snow showers.

There’s been an unnerving thaw on the Norwegian Arctic Island of Svalbard this week.

These comparison images are from December 2015 but we’ve seen the exact same thing happen this week with bare ground showing.

During Friday, a feature has been crossing the North Sea, carried by a strengthening easterly wind and is expected to enhance sleet and snow shower activity this evening and through tomorrow. Coverings of up to 2 inches is possible even to lower elevations of eastern England with potentially 6 inches over the North York Moors, Peak District and Pennines.

Snow showers have brought light accumulation to Edinburgh city bypass late this afternoon.

Nasty conditions currently on the A68 at Soutra. This will be the case in many high level eastern routes tonight!

MO has a yellow warning in effect for snow.

Air temps tonight dip back near to freezing across the board and factoring in a strengthening ENE wind overnight, wind chills will be in the -5 to -10C range across east, southeast Scotland and across a broadening area of England.

Current temp and wind chill this evening.

Clearest skies and lightest winds over central and western Scotland snow fields mean a sharp frost, locally severe in sheltered glens where -12C is possible.

ARPEGE model shows North Sea feature moving in tonight enhancing snow showers as well as wind. Very dicey travel on exposed eastern routes tonight and watch out for ice!

ENE winds turn gale-force tonight and through tomorrow in eastern Scotland and more widely over higher exposed parts of England.

Through the weekend, slightly milder air begins to gain ground as winds swing to a less cold SSE direction. Through next week the GFS shows HP returning to southeast Europe and low pressure near Iceland which brings our flow back in off the Atlantic mid and late next week.

Watch this evening’s video.