With the AO heading for strong positive along with collisions of polar and tropical air over east Asia and North America, so we see extended zonal jets strengthening over both Pacific and Atlantic oceans.

Goodbye arctic high pressure and hello the lows dancing around the pole! Check out the 969 low near the pole. Just a couple of weeks ago we had a record 1068 high near to the same place.

The charts below show the strengthening of the jets as they exit Asia and North America.

and extend eastwards…

We have a nice twin jet reflection in both northern oceans but HP over the east Pacific creates a north-south split approaching the west coast of North America.

However, there is no such block over the North Atlantic and so the jet will force the collapse of the high clinging onto British air space today.

Models indicate a near 200 mph jet roaring across the Atlantic over the next few days which will force a ‘series of lows’ to rapidly deepen as they make a push towards NW Scotland Wed-Thu. It looks to be a pretty wet, windy and perhaps stormy 24-36-hour period across much of the UK.

The area west of Ireland and south of Iceland will be an an area of incubation. Where lows will quickly deepen and tighten. It appears we have a classic situation where the southern flank of the low see strongest winds. We could see 90 mph gusts on the Hebrides, possibly exposed NW coasts of Ireland and Scotland IF LP centre get close enough to the UK.

The GFS has not one but two sub-960mb lows tracking ENE between Iceland and Scotland within 24 hours. The 2nd get’s much closer to UK/Ireland shores.

LP1

LP 2

Once the 2nd system moves out, we find ourselves in a continued windy, showery regime with a tight pressure gradient between low to north, high to south.

A 3rd system gets close next weekend.