29/12/2016 Weather for the Week Ahead

Hello. The weather's set to show various sides to its personality

over the next week to ten days.

There's some heavy rain, some snow in the forecast,

but in the short term,

it's all about the frost and the fog in particular.

As you may be aware,

the fog's already had an impact in some areas, I'm afraid.

As we go into Thursday,

further disruption is likely to your travel plans.

Check out you BBC local radio station for all the latest updates.

There are warnings in force from the Met Office

for a good chunk of England and east Wales as well.

Some areas will enjoy some sunshine -

for example, around some coastal areas,

and, for Northern Ireland and Scotland,

relatively benign -

although there will be some dampness across the far north-west.

Quite mild here, up in the double figures.

Elsewhere, a few places will turn pleasant,

but chilly-ish in other areas, mid-single figures -

and, as we saw during the course of Wednesday,

where that fog sits around all day long,

and it will do across some central and eastern counties,

so temperatures will struggle to get above freezing

all day long, so, very cold here.

The fog reforms again as we head into the evening,

becomes more extensive for a time,

but, as we get into Friday,

I think it'll start to lift up into low cloud.

It'll still be shrouding some of the hills,

but visibilities at lower levels will be somewhat better.

Meanwhile, a front arrives across the north-west,

which will bring some more persistent

and, at times, heavy rain.

That's going to stick around for a couple of days

and cause some problems.

Some very mild air in advance of that

across parts of Scotland and Northern Ireland,

widely up into double figures.

Not as chilly as it has been further south.

That front is still there on New Year's Eve,

so, further heavy and persistent rain

across the north-west,

gradually starting to head its way southwards.

At long last some milder air

pushing into southern areas on the breeze,

but only briefly,

because this front, a cold front,

heads southwards on New Year's Day.

Some question mark about how quickly it clears away.

A spell of heavy rain.

That clears through and opens the door

to another shot of arctic air,

and that does mean that the showers across Scotland

will start to turn to snow,

even at quite low levels, actually.

For the rest of us, once that front has cleared away on New Year's Day,

as I say, there's a bit of a question mark,

then the sun will come out -

but it will feel cold in that wind.

That's the story through the early part of next week.

It's going to feel chilly again on Monday.

Plenty of sunshine around, after a frosty start.

A good few of us will stay dry -

but further sleet and snow showers accumulating snow,

particularly up over the high ground

of northern Scotland - but elsewhere,

where you're exposed to that wind,

you might see a dusting of snow

and widespread frosts overnight.

It'll start to cloud over, though, with time.

As we look towards Tuesday,

fronts beginning to come in from the north-west.

Now, there's a big question mark

about how quickly that happens

and whether anything comes out of those clouds,

but a cloudier prospect

as we head towards the middle of the week,

and, briefly, a milder one, as well.

A little area of yellow pushing in.

It's not going to be VERY mild,

but just not as cold as it will be

at the start of the week.

Now, what happens after that

is causing the computer models some issues.

The boundary between the mild and the cold

is marked by the jet stream.

If we pull out and look at the northern hemisphere,

you'll see various ripples in the jet stream,

various troughs and ridge,

and the behaviour of these,

perhaps as far afield as the Pacific,

will have a downstream effect

on the behaviour of the jet stream closer to home.

At this stage, though,

despite all the conflicting signals from the models,

the best bet is that after that milder interlude,

it starts to turn colder again towards the end of next week,

with a renewed chance

of some frost and some snow.

We'll update you again tomorrow.