The first snow of winter

Northern parts of the UK woke up to their first snow of the winter yesterday. It was well forecast and highlighted in the blog I wrote last Friday, which mentioned the areas most likely to have some snow.

At 9am yesterday morning, Eskdalemuir, Dumfries and Galloway had the deepest snow I could find on the weather observations, with 15cm. There are, however, a limited number of weather stations and it’s possible that some places further north and west of here could have had even more.

Belfast and Glasgow had a few centimetres of snow, as did other parts of Scotland, Northern Ireland and northern England.

A snow-covered rose in Perthshire, Scotland

There were some problems on the roads, with the M74 in South Lanarkshire closed for three hours after a lorry jackknifed. The A9 between Perth and Inverness was also badly affected by snow and ice.

Over the next couple of days temperatures will fluctuate quite markedly across the UK as a surge of mild air is temporarily pushed northwards ahead of an area of low pressure, before the cold air eventually comes back again behind it.

As rain bumps into the colder air later on Tuesday, there’ll be a further spell of snow for Scotland – mainly north of the central belt.

Wednesday into Thursday will see temperatures briefly climb back into double figures for most places, before the cold air floods southwards again on Friday with further wintry showers for the northwest of the UK.

I had quite a few snow reports and pictures tweeted to me yesterday. Your weather reports are always welcome and very useful. You can find me on Twitter @liamdutton or visit the Channel 4 Weather website for the latest forecast.