10/02/2016 Weather for the Week Ahead

Hopefully nothing too extreme over the next few days.

Fairly typical February weather in fact. A bit of a nip in the air.

Cold enough for a bit of snow at times.

That's been the case over the last 24 hours.

Weather Watchers have been sending in pictures.

This one from South Wales, on Tuesday afternoon,

a dusting of snow at Tredegar.

The reason for the chilly air, we've got a run of north-westerly winds.

It's not desperately cold,

but just about cold enough

for some of those showers

to fall as sleet or snow.

Various fronts coming down in the flow,

pepping up the shower activity at times.

Many of us in between fronts on Wednesday,

which means plenty of fine and dry weather.

Sharp showers across the far South-West,

wintry showers across the north of Scotland.

Any showers elsewhere, fairly isolated.

A feel-good day in fact.

Out of the breeze and in the sunshine

not feeling too bad.

5 to 9 degrees north to south.

On into Thursday.

It could be a frosty start for many of us,

but a lot of dry weather.

Area of clouds floating around,

and one or two wintry showers,

mostly across the north of Scotland.

But many of us will stay dry.

Then the fun starts as we approach the weekend.

If you watched yesterday,

you know there's a lot of uncertainty in the detail.

And that's an understatement.

Low pressure trying to push in from the West

and it's south-western UK

most at risk from rain on Friday.

How far north and east it gets

is open to question. Many places dry,

but with a nagging easterly wind developing.

That'll be a feature over the next few days.

One area of low pressure slips away

and another one will take its place.

Again, it's the more south-western

parts of the UK on Saturday

most prone to seeing wet weather.

That cold easterly wind elsewhere, it looks as if

they'll be a lot of dry weather

the further north and east we go.

But feeling cold, just four or five degrees.

Those low-pressure systems

are in association with milder air

trying to push the cold air away.

Where the cold meets the mild,

there is the possibility

that some of the rain turns to snow.

But we are really no further to clarifying that scenario

than we were 24 hours ago.

Certainly some rain around in the South particularly,

and that risk of snow as it bumps into the cold air.

What we do think is that as we get

into the early part of next week,

low pressure drifts away

and we get a run of cold northerly winds

sweeping across the whole country.

So in some senses we're more confident about early next week

than we are about the weekend. The blues take over,

so it will turn cold for all of us through the early part of next week.

Quite chilly in a blustery wind as well.

It means we'll see

some widespread frosts overnight.

But with time, plenty of dry and fine weather.

Eventually next week, it does look like turning more unsettled,

milder, cloudier, with some rain.

Milder air will try to push in off the Atlantic

to displace the blues and push the cold air away,

but there's a huge question as to how quickly that happens.

As is often the case

when we're trying to get rid of a block of cold air.

It all hinges on the jet stream.

The jet stream is there, it's ready to tip us over the edge,

but how quickly it does that all depends on developments

the other side of the pond in the Atlantic.

And there's huge dips, huge meanders in the jet stream,

as you can see, Stateside.

When you get those meanders in the jet stream,

there's a lot of uncertainty as to how quickly that jet pushes

the mild air across the country. So what we say about next week

is that it will be cold and frosty to start with.

How long it lasts is another matter.

We've got to look to West, to the jet stream,

for clues on how quickly that mild air returns.

I'll update you again tomorrow.

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