01/03/2016 Weather for the Week Ahead

Hello. February 2016 was a leap year

and there was plenty of sparkle in the weather story to greet us,

but the sparkle came from blue sky, sunshine,

but also a hard frost as well.

As you can see quite clearly from the weather watchers'

photographs that were sent in in the morning, it was a beautiful start.

The frost lifted as we had sunshine for a time,

but then the cloud arrived later on in the day.

The reason for the change that we've got to come through Tuesday

is all tied in to this weather front.

It's going to continue to bring some wet and windy weather.

The heaviest of rain from the west.

But, more noticeably, it's going to introduce milder air from the west.

That means a change to the story, for today at least.

The rain clears away to the south-east,

a trail of showers behind.

But temperatures widely into double figures, particularly through

England and Wales, something that we've not seen for quite some time.

Highs of 8 to 12 degrees.

It's all change again, though, as we run out of Tuesday into Wednesday.

We see these weather fronts starting to drift their way south

and east through the night

and the wind swinging back round to more of a north-westerly direction.

So cold air floods in again and that means that some of those

showers could have a bit more of a wintery flavour.

A mix of rain, sleet and snow.

There will be an organised band of showery rain just

drifting its way steadily south and east through Wednesday.

Behind, a trail of showers turning increasingly wintery.

A colder feel when you add on the strength of the wind.

Highs of 5 to 9 degrees.

As we move into Thursday, we continue with this northerly flow.

So it's going to be another cold feel to the day,

with a weather front knocking on the door for the end of Thursday.

What all that means is that, yes, it's still a cold wind direction.

There's going to be a lot of cloud around.

In spite a dry story, it will feel a little more disappointing.

Highs of 4 to 9 degrees.

By the end of the day, some rain pushing in to the west.

Now, this could turn a little tricky, because as that weather

front continues to push in across the cold air on the leading edge,

for a time, there could be some snow.

Chiefly to higher ground, but we'll need to keep a close eye

on that one as that wintery flavour is set to continue into Friday.

To the far north, it should stay bright and crisp.

We've got that rain and snow to the higher ground

and then behind showers trailing in -

4 to 8 degrees the overall high.

As we move out of Friday towards the weekend,

we start to see an amplification in the jet stream.

By that, I mean this skipping rope

effect as it starts to

undulate across the country

and it sits to the south of the UK.

What that means to us is that

when the jet stream dips down to the south, we drag in this cold air.

So there is little change in the weather story

as we move into the eight to ten day period,

which basically means it stays cold for the beginning of March.

Yes, we've got this cold air flooding across the country.

The one thing with this amplification is that

computer models struggle to get the detail correct in the weather story.

At the moment,

it does look as though towards the end of the weekend, we are

likely to see high pressure building from the west, which means the

quietest of the weather is always likely to be out towards the west.

We still drag in this colder, northerly wind

and any showers along North Sea coasts could be wintery in nature.

So, for the longer-term period,

it does look as though March will look somewhat like this -

cold, frosty mornings, freezing fog could be an issue as well.

Any showers we get could be wintery in nature.

So those poor old spring daffodils may be shivering for the first

week of March.

More from me tomorrow.