17/02/2017 Weather for the Week Ahead

Hello, in a moment I'll take you somewhere which is about to

get more rain than perhaps it can handle.

Now, some of us had a wet day on Thursday,

there were showers in Scotland.

Here's a view though of a rainbow looking out over Perth.

Now, parts of south-west Scotland have been wetter than normal

so far in February. But for the bulk of the UK,

it has been another rather dry month in a dry winter.

And in fact the Met Office says with average rainfall for the rest

of February, winter could well end up for England and Wales in

the top-10 driest in on record.

For Northern Ireland, it could end up

with one of the top-five driest winters on record.

Northern Ireland last winter had its wettest winter on record,

that is an incredible transformation.

It just shows how our weather goes from one extreme to another.

And how about another incredible transformation?

Here is a view of Friday's weather in California.

As another really wet weather system piles in,

another in a really wet winter.

Los Angeles could end up with 50 to 100 millimetres of rain

in a 12-hour period,

there are flash-flood watches in effect.

All the rain in California so far this winter's made

a significant dent in the drought.

Though there are still areas in drought.

North-east USA, Eastern Canada have seen winter storm after

winter storm this week, another one pulling away on Friday

and these areas of low pressure are tracking across the Atlantic,

but just missing us to the north.

We're getting some weather fronts just draping down from them.

Looks like some of these low-pressure systems will get closer

to us next week as our weather turns more active

as we'll see in a moment.

Now, this is Friday's weather.

Bit of damp, drizzly weather from south-east England

through the Midlands,

north-west England, into the west of Scotland to begin with.

That tending to ease,

most of us with a dry afternoon, still mild.

Some outbreaks of rain reaching towards the west of Wales

and the far south-west of England at the end of the day.

Looks quite wet in Western Scotland as Saturday begins.

Windier, too.

This weather system just starting to push its way southwards

late Saturday into Sunday.

Not much rain left on it across southern parts before it

clears away.

Breezier for us all for part two of the weekend on Sunday

and another wet weather system

approaching north-west Scotland here.

Elsewhere though, it will be mainly dry, variable clouds, sunny spells.

It's still mild.

Now, on Monday,

again quite a bit of rain coming to parts of north-west Scotland,

especially to the hills, breezy across-the-board,

but even milder on Monday.

Especially down the eastern side of the UK.

Why? Because we're in between a warm front and a cold front.

This is called the warm sector and this is where we get this

very mild air.

It doesn't necessarily come with a huge amount of sunshine and

maybe drizzly on some western hills,

but there's certainly a mild feel to things as we start the week.

And that's why maybe across some spots in the east

we could get to 16 or 17 Celsius.

But behind a warm front, there follows a cold front.

Temperatures will eventually come down.

They may rise again as the week goes on,

then come down again as another cold front moves through.

This is all part and parcel of our active weather.

As the jet stream just nudges a little bit further south across us,

taking more of these weather systems right across us.

And so our weather turns more unsettled and more active.

And there are bigger variations between mild days and colder days.

So spells of rain in the forecast,

maybe making a bit of a dent in our dry winter so far.

Windier weather for us all, with gales in places.

And colder, certainly compared with the start of the week.

And behind cold fronts, you may see a frost,

you may get some wintry showers across northern hills.

Winter will eventually lose the war of course to spring,

but clearly there are still some battles still to be had.