03/02/2017 Weather for the Week Ahead

Good evening. Thursday brought rain to pretty much all of the UK,

but the winds were the story.

Severe gales through the Irish Sea really whipped up some large waves

and caused some power outages.

There's a potential for more severe gales on Friday.

So more conditions like this. Possibly slightly different areas.

For the weekend, it might well quieten down. Not as active weather.

Still a little bit of rain and strong winds around,

but we might see some chillier mornings and more sunshine.

But not for long.

It's back to the wind and rain early next week and from the middle

of the week onwards, we might start to return to that colder,

and more settled weather that we had just last week before things

turned much more unsettled.

That's still looking on the cards.

But at the moment, the weather fronts, the bands of cloud,

they're lined up from Iberia right the way out to the east coast

of the United States. So we've got further bands of rain yet to come.

We've certainly had a good,

severe gale from this low pressure through Thursday.

We've got another winding itself up.

There are amber warnings out for northern France.

That looks really stormy here.

It could well also bring some severe gale-force winds to

the southern half of the UK.

So, Friday may dawn on a fairly decent note with some sunshine.

It might stay that way in the north.

But already, through the morning, the winds are whipping up in

the south-west bringing in that heavy rain.

Really quite heavy rain for a time as well.

Let's focus, though, on those winds that we've been talking about.

The potential is there for the Channel Islands,

the south coast, gusts to 70mph which will cause some disruption.

50mph inland.

And then also 50mph inland across south-eastern areas,

East Anglia, Lincolnshire later.

That's likely to cause some disruption in these areas.

Could even be some snow over the Welsh mountains as well.

So it's a really active weather day on Friday.

If you have plans, stay tuned to the forecast,

the warnings are on the website.

Through the night, that low pressure transfers to Scotland,

parts of Northern Ireland.

We've got another low pressure just drifting towards the south.

So we could have some more rain

across southern counties on Saturday.

Another storm for France.

It looks a wetter day for Scotland.

But, again, away from those areas,

mild but it still looks mostly dry.

And we can say that about Sunday.

The rain hopefully staying offshore of Eastern Scotland.

A bit breezy here, but drier.

There's the potential for some rain

across southern counties of England.

But, at the moment, elsewhere, despite having a chilly,

frosty start, it looks fairly decent.

And that ridge of high pressure takes us into the start of

the new week.

But this next big area of low pressure,

which dominates most of the Atlantic, is starting to take over.

The difference is it's starting to be blocked by these easterly winds

and high pressure across Scandinavia.

So it'll be a slow progress that that weather front makes

through Monday and into Tuesday.

Coming into the colder air, so some snow on its forward edge,

potentially. And several hours of wet weather.

Fairly strong winds as well with showers following.

But what we'll find through the middle part of the week is

that the low pressure is progressively steered towards

the north-west of the UK,

which means they'll have less influence on our weather, less wind,

less rain as this high pressure re-establishes itself with

its cold, dense air.

So that will block our weather fronts from moving in to

the north and the west

and the cold, easterly winds will ensure that we see

a return to frosts and potentially some fog with lighter winds.

And, of course, some sunshine.

But, eventually, it will become a cloudy high, we think,

so there won't be as much sunshine around.

So it starts mild, wet and windy.

We've got that quieter weekend and eventually the colder weather

winning through by the end of next week.

Bye-bye.