This week’s weather menu – plenty of cold with a sprinkling of snow
After a great deal of uncertainty in the run up to last weekend, the cold air won the battle and has arrived on our shores.
It was an unusual forecast in that it didn’t really become clearer as to what would happen until just a few days before hand. Nevertheless the weather through the weekend panned out much as I expected.
The cold air moved in from the east and met mild, moist air moving in from the west and turned rain to snow during Sunday across Wales and south west England.
Settling snow was largely confined to hills above 200 metres, where a few centimetres fell, but didn’t cause any notable problems.
There was even some light snow during Monday morning at low levels across Wales and western parts of England, but it didn’t accumulate and has been gradually fading away.
What’s causing this cold spell?
At the moment, there’s a huge area of high pressure across Russia of around 1060mb beneath which there’s some very cold air.
Each winter it varies in size and sometimes extends westwards across Europe. When it does so, it allows this very cold air to be transported westwards, sometimes reaching the UK.
How cold will it get?
As the week progresses, it’ll turn a little colder day by day. During the second half of this week, temperatures by day will struggle to get much above freezing.
By night widespread, hard frosts are expected, with temperatures widely down to -5C. Some rural areas could dip as low as -10C.
A biting easterly wind will develop as well, which will accentuate how cold it will feel – especially across England and Wales.
Will there be any snow?
At this stage, no widespread significant snow is expected, although there will be snow showers affecting eastern parts of England in particular.
There could be a few centimetres falling in places, especially across the hills, but not exclusively so. Further west there’ll be a lot of dry weather around after a weak weather front eases away on Tuesday.
How long will the cold spell last?
The cold weather is likely to persist until at least the weekend, but beyond this point there is a lot of uncertainty as to what will happen next.
Some weather computer models bring milder air in from the west with significant snow possible for a time. Other weather computer models keep the cold air and largely dry theme with us into next week.
So after a relatively mild winter so far, something more akin to winter has finally arrived.
As well as keeping you up to date here on my blog, I’ll be tweeting regularly from @liamdutton with interesting nuggets of information. Also feel free to tweet me your weather reports, pictures or weather questions!