06/01/2016 Weather for the Week Ahead

Hello there. There is change on the way, but so far,

the New Year has brought the same old weather,

following on from what has been an historic December.

The stats are all in now, let's have a quick look back.

Four degrees is the average temperature for

your typical December,

the December just gone we smashed that record.

Eight degrees as an average across the UK.

What about rainfall?

It was the wettest on record.

That rain starkly concentrated across

the more northern and western parts of the UK,

which is where most of the flooding has been.

All supercharged by a strong jet stream,

and it does look as though that jet stream

is going to pep up again

over the next 24 hours and bring us

another dose of wet weather

across the whole of the country.

But let's fast-forward to next week,

what a difference.

A fundamental change in the track

of the jet stream, and that will

bring a significant change to our weather,

as we will see in a moment.

Back to Wednesday though, and still some damp,

dreary weather across parts of

north-east England and eastern Scotland,

where we have had so much

rain over the last day or so.

Not the persistent stuff, but still some showers.

More wet weather getting

into the far west of Cornwall,

but in between some dry weather,

albeit quite cloudy,

quite murky, limited sunshine out there.

If we go through Friday evening and night,

the rain out west will begin

to sweep its way north-east

to us, we are all going to

see some pretty wet weather,

unwelcome wet weather, of course.

And unfortunately, it is going to

get hooked up across parts

of Scotland well on into Thursday,

so more prolonged rain here,

watch out for warnings.

Quite a lot of snow over high ground as well.

Following on for the rest of us,

an improving picture, some sunshine,

although there will be some

showers rattling in on the breeze.

Chilly in the north,

a little bit milder in the south.

Now, that front lingers into Friday

across the far north, a bit of uncertainty

about its exact position but the

possibility of further persistent rain here,

with little fronts coming in from the west.

So a mixture of sunshine and showers

for most, the sunshine not feeling too bad,

the showers could be quite heavy again.

Quite chilly in the north, so some

snow over the mountains of Scotland.

As we hit the weekend, well,

more persistent rain quite possibly

coming up from the south-west,

so that could renew

the flooding risk, especially as it stalls

across northern parts of the country,

and again some mountain snow.

But it is a familiar picture,

as we have seen for so long.

Low-pressure dominating the scene across the UK,

and the eastern Atlantic

providing those rain clouds.

But if you were watching yesterday,

we took a further step back

and looked at the North Pole,

where actually, we've got

some unusually high pressure

building at the moment,

And the high-pressure serves to

kind of squeeze out

cold air in various directions,

and cold, dense air acts

a little bit like treacle,

we get a lobe of it,

which has brought a cold snap to the continent recently,

we've got a cold plunge across North America right now,

and it does look as we get into next week, we're going to

start to see some cold air pushing down towards the UK for a change.

How quickly that happens is still open to some question,

but what it will do is send that jet stream much

further south than we have had for a long time.

That is good news in some respects,

because it's along the jet stream

you get most of

the rain-bearing weather fronts,

and we'll be well clear of the jet then,

so the prospect of it turning drier.

Drier but colder.

So yes, a bit of a shock

to the system for some of us,

notably colder next week.

There will be widespread frost,

maybe a little bit of the white stuff,

but perhaps most importantly,

it does look like being

a lot drier than recently.

How long it lasts is another matter,

tune in again tomorrow

and I will give you another update.