It’s safe to say two things, 1 we’ve likely just witnessed the coldest, snowiest final day of February, first day of March in recorded history and 2, the beast from the east is long gone but the all the cold released by the SSW suggests a cold, not warm pattern now through at least the first week of April.

A brutal opening 5 days to March 2018

The beast may be gone but we’re now left with the continued after effects of the powerful mid-February strat warming.

Both AO/NAO are climbing out of the tank but it’s a slow process.

What does that mean exactly? In a nutshell, the tremendous release of polar air into the mid latitudes means our jet stream has been pushed well to the south overloading the pattern and so the resumption of a mild Atlantic flow attempts but fails to push north. As LP circulations reach N England and Scotland, it’s lost much of it’s mild and is cycling cold air around it. This will result in a wintry mix to low levels and snow to high levels.

The jet stream shall remain displaced well to the south, so despite the Atlantic’s return, lows aren’t making it up and over Scotland. Lows remaining to the south mean Scotland remains on the cold side with only the southern UK managing to get into milder air with continued snow risk across Scotland.

LP currently over the UK brought more rush hour headaches as snow whitened many major roads across Central Scotland including the areas paralysed last Wednesday into Thursday.

https://twitter.com/trafficscotland/status/970936265830031360

That band of rain, snow then back to rain is tracking north and shall open the door to clearer, drier and less windy weather through Wednesday and Thursday but the next system brings similar conditions Friday into the weekend.

Both GFS ensemble and CFSv2 weeklies indicate the colder-than-normal pattern lingers and quite possibly could through the rest of the month.

CFSv2 weeklies shows the cold hold into April.