20/02/2017 Weather for the Week Ahead

Hello. It's getting towards the end of February, but it's certainly

felt much more like spring this weekend than winter.

The reason is purely down to our wind direction.

It's been coming off the Atlantic.

Very mild air blanketing the country, but as you can see,

the week ahead shows some changes.

We'll see this cold air meandering its way south then northwards again.

So we will see a seesawing in our temperatures as we head

through the next five days.

The reason? We've got the jet stream, the zonal jet stream,

which is driving our weather front from west to east.

At times, we'll be in the cold air to the north and at times,

the milder air to the south.

But all the time, we'll see a daisy chain of weather fronts

delivering rain and, at times, wind across the UK.

Through Monday, we start on a very blustery note for the east of

Scotland, north-east England.

Gusts of wind up to 50mph contending with some rain and some

hill fog as well. There'll be some coastal and hill fog further south.

So it'll be quite a grey start to the day.

But, if the sun comes out in the south, it's here we could see

temperatures achieving perhaps 16 or 17 degrees Celsius.

It's fresher air, though, by that stage across the north of Scotland.

That's behind this weather front.

We could see a touch of frost on Monday night into Tuesday morning

across the glens of Scotland, whilst the mild air

holds firm across the southern half of the country.

We've got the next low pressure starting to march in late Tuesday.

But, at least between those two, for a time,

there'll be some brighter weather around.

As I say, though, temporarily,

before that wet and windy weather returns to the north-west

and we've still got a lot of rain, or cloud at least, in the south.

Gusts start to lift up in the north.

That's because of the approach of this low pressure,

which could give us our first spell of gales, or severe gales.

That's the first area of low pressure we're watching.

You can see how tightly packed the isobars are.

Behind it, there's some really cold air nipping in.

So some Arctic air, potentially.

But still in the south, we've got that band of cloud

with outbreaks of rain and really quite mild air.

The 7 in the north, with that Arctic air coming in,

will feel considerably colder

because of course, as well as that, it's blowing a gale.

Thursday is the next area of low pressure that we're watching.

This could, again,

be a very deep area of low pressure giving us gales or severe gales.

Its track is uncertain, that is the main concern.

But it could be that central and southern areas see

those gales on Thursday.

And, because we've got that cold air established in the north,

when the weather front comes in, we could well see some snow for a time.

Not just as it comes in,

but also on the north-westerly wind following on behind.

We're into the colder air by the end of the week

as that low pressure whisks out the way into Scandinavia.

Friday looks like probably

the driest and brightest day of the week.

It starts on a cold note,

temperatures won't be exceptionally high, only 7 to 10 degrees Celsius,

but with lighter winds and sunshine, not too bad.

But already by Friday we've got that next weather front not too far away.

So looking further ahead, this pattern of our meandering jet stream

and our mild and cold air continues out to day ten as well.

So that means the weather will continue to be changeable

with spells of wet and windy weather into the north-west.

When we've got the brighter spells,

the lower temperatures, it could look like this.

When we've got the milder air, leaden skies,

a lot of cloud and some rain.

At times, there will be further spells of windy weather with

some gales, potentially.

But temperatures will be higher,

so we'll continue that seesaw as we go through to the end of the period.

Plenty going on, very changeable weather.

You can find more on the website.