26/01/2016 Weather for the Week Ahead

I have heard it said that when you

get a blizzard in America, it turns up on our doorstep a few days later.

That actually turns out

to be something of an old wives' tale which means that what

we have seen in New York City in recent days is unlikely to

appear on the streets of London over the next few days.

The reason for that is that we tend to get our intensely cold air

and our widespread snow when the wind is coming in from the east

or from the north, from the Arctic.

When we have westerly winds, as we have had in recent days

and will continue to do,

any pulses of cold air tend to get heavily modified by the huge

expanse of the Atlantic Ocean which is relatively warm.

That means that, what starts off as snow stateside,

will soon get warmed out and turn to rain.

So this particular storm system is travelling across the Atlantic

rapidly and is warming out as I speak.

This means that what falls out of the sky over the next few

days will be wet rather than white.

Wet and windy.

Foul start to the day for many north-western areas,

with gusts over 60mph rattling up the Irish Sea.

That could have an impact, as could the heavy rain.

Couple of inches or more in some places. Met Office warnings in force.

A wet and windy start across the north and the west, a dry and

bright start across the south-east but the rain will eventually arrive.

It brightens up later on across Northern Ireland and Scotland,

with a few showers.

After a chilly start, temperatures will rise up

into double figures, courtesy of those mild westerly winds.

And then a double whammy, potentially.

As we go through Tuesday night and into Wednesday,

another area of low pressure tracking across the north.

The exact track of that is important because on the northern fringe

we could see some snow, mostly up over the high ground.

A lot of wet weather and potentially some very strong winds

on the southern flank as well.

So watch this space.

That clears through later on on Wednesday

and then we're into brighter conditions

but also colder conditions,

with some showers turning to snow,

particularly over the high ground of Northern Ireland and Scotland.

But I'm not expecting widespread blizzards or anything like that

but it will be turning colder later on across the north-west.

Into Thursday, something of a lull.

Brighter skies for many with some pleasant sunshine.

Temperatures not as high.

Then we will see some more weather systems spreading rain

and strong winds into the north and the west.

Another pulse of relatively mild air coming in off the Atlantic

before a cold front arrives later on in the day.

So temperatures bouncing back up again on Friday,

up into double figures quite widely.

Then we will see a pulse of colder air following that frontal

system south-eastwards, so temperatures falling back down again,

into single figures in many places.

Some sunshine but also some wintry showers, especially in the north.

You get the idea that temperatures are going up and down like a yo-yo

and that is really the message for the week ahead.

We'll see spells of wet and windy weather,

relatively mild conditions, then colder,

brighter conditions with overnight frost before the mild,

wet and windy weather spreads back in again.

All courtesy of a pretty strong jet stream,

coming in from the Atlantic, coming in from the west.

Hence no real potential for widespread snow or severe cold.

So to sum up, next week, yet day-to-day fluctuations.

Rapid changes, some sun, some rain, some wind.

Snow possible, particularly over the high ground,

but certainly no widespread blizzards envisaged for some time to come.

That's it from me, I will update you again this time tomorrow.