27/02/2016 Weather for the Week Ahead

Hello. Although we still have a few more days to

run of the meteorological winter, indications are that England

and Wales have had their warmest winter on record.

But actually for the past four or five days it has been more

winter-like for most of us than it has been all season.

We've had snow over the Highlands, snow through Snowdonia,

we've had some rain around during the day on Friday

but again it was the exception.

For most of us it was a crisp, dry start.

It will be a crisp, dry start, Saturday.

A little bit of ice around potentially

across Northern Ireland where we've had showers,

possibly in some southern areas, but there's quite a breeze blowing

here. And that's the main change for the weekend.

It stays wintry. Night-time frosts,

quite harsh frosts in the north followed by sunshine,

and a few wintry showers.

It will feel pleasant enough in the strengthening February sunshine.

In the south a little bit more cloud.

A few showers dotted around through northern England, the Midlands

and Wales, but again for most parts it will be dry, reasonably bright,

just the wind will make it feel colder across the south.

But with high pressure in charge this weekend, as I say, we've

already had three or four days of dry, crisp weather,

we're going to have another couple of days of dry crisp

weather before it finally gives way to this area of low pressure.

Looks like we've got some disruptive weather to come

though across parts of the Alps and southern France.

Back home though, what we are encountering again is that

strong north-easterly wind, near gale force,

like Saturday through the Channel.

That will just nag across England and Wales

and make it feel colder compared with recent days.

But not across Scotland and Northern Ireland.

Really severe frosts to start the day. Minus eight to minus ten,

with a lot of dry weather, some sunshine, although it will feel cold

because of the wind in the south, or colder.

Early next week, as I indicated, that high pressure and fine weather

gets squeezed out of the way and it's back to business as usual,

slightly milder air coming in off the Atlantic.

The low pressure's bringing us spells of wet and windy weather.

One whisks through, another one hot on its heels.

So things are going to change.

Not initially. Monday morning is still cold and frosty.

And this time it looks like quite a harsh frost in the south.

A little bit of mist and fog to clear.

And it takes its time, the first weather system, to come

in to dislodge that colder air.

As it comes into the colder air there's a real risk of some

wintriness on the forward edge of that, perhaps some snow around.

But that's gone by Tuesday and we're into that milder envelope of air.

But notice that some areas were raining on Monday, they're still

raining on Tuesday, so we're going to be watching the amounts

of rainfall that we see. We could see 50 plus mm of rain in places.

That's because we've got the jet stream back to a westerly.

That's what we call a more mobile weather situation.

It throws low pressures across the country.

We get little ripples in it, so ridges of high-pressure

building in, and at times an incursion of colder air again.

But for the majority of the week we keep that westerly airstream

going. Until late in the week and we start to see a big

buckle in the jet stream coming out of the United States.

What does that mean?

It means that initially we have this fairly deep area of low

pressure to the south of Iceland bringing yet more wind

and rain in our way, but behind me we've got high-pressure with that

buckle in the jet stream building out of the eastern seaboard.

That high pressure is going to dislodge the low pressures

later in the week. We'll see that moving away.

The high-pressure moving its way steadily in and ahead of it

that north to north-westerly wind dragging in the colder air.

So the colder air looks set to return next weekend.

So it'll be back to high pressure and hopefully settled weather.

The frosts returning

but some strong winds despite some crisp sunshine around.

So a real topsy-turvy week. We will have that back to business as usual,

but potentially some wintry weather again next weekend.