11/02/2017 Weather for the Week Ahead

Hello. We are not done with winter yet

and those of you who live across the eastern half of the UK

will know exactly what I'm talking about.

This Weather Watchers picture from Friday afternoon in Newcastle

really tells the scene -

a light dusting of snow, a cold feel

across the country and that story continues through the weekend.

A lot of cloud around,

the showers will be wintry in nature

and the wind will strengthen as well,

just making it feel even colder

if that's possible.

Now we'll start off with

some wintry showers stretching through

eastern Scotland across the north-east of England

and some of those will push

a little bit further westwards

through the course of the afternoon,

something that we've not seen in recent days,

so I suspect by three o'clock Saturday afternoon

there's likely to be a few showers,

showers chiefly of rain,

across the West Country,

but not a particularly warm feel

to the day, 3 or 4 degrees.

There'll be some showers or sleet

and snow mixed in there across Wales

and really it will be rain

close to the coastline

in the south-east corner,

but a cold feel when you add on

the strength of that wind.

Gales not out of the question,

with further snow showers

across the north of England.

Northern Ireland and north-west Scotland,

you will see the best of any brightness,

but again into eastern Scotland,

those nagging nuisance showers

set to continue and in fact

they'll enhance through the night

on Saturday into Sunday,

across the Pennines and the Peak District

for a time, yet more accumulations

of snow likely, but then as we go

through Sunday, a brisk easterly wind,

but it's likely that we'll see

the snow showers turning back to rain.

To the north and south perhaps

something a little bit drier

and perhaps brighter into the north-west,

but still not particularly warm.

Now as we move out of Sunday into Monday,

we will start to see the isobars squeezing up,

the wind strengthening again,

but starting to swing round to a south-easterly,

so there is a glimmer of hope

in the story as we look further ahead.

On Monday, there'll be a little more

in the way of sunshine

breaking up that cloud, that breeze,

a little bit of drier air, not...

not quite as cold as it has been,

5 to 8 degrees the high.

As we move out of Monday into Tuesday,

we'll start to see the winds really slowly pivoting around from

a south-easterly eventually to a southerly direction.

This weather front likely to threaten

into the south-west.

It might bring some cloud

and outbreaks of rain,

but it'll start to, again,

bring a slightly less cold feel

across the country, 6 to 11, double digits

in the far south-west.

As we move into Wednesday,

more of a southerly flow,

a good deal of dry weather

is expected in the story,

lighter winds, so if you get

some sunshine coming through,

10, 12 degrees will certainly feel

much better than it has done of late.

So, as we go on to the latter stages of the week,

it looks likely... it's going to be a slow process

but this milder air will push right across the country

and we've lost that bitterly cold

wintry flavour.

As we look further afield,

the six- to ten-day period,

that area of high pressure

that's so been dominant

just recently, if that sits close

towards France, there's the potential

of allowing those areas of low pressure to move in

and that will bring some wet weather,

so something perhaps a little more mobile,

a little bit more unsettled,

however there is the potential

and this is the less likely scenario,

but if that high pressure drifts

a little bit further north

and just centres itself more across

England and Wales, the low pressures

will skip to the extreme north

and we're likely

to stay drier yet again.

That will cause a problem with some early morning frost and fog,

but once that lifts, we could see some dry weather

continuing into the longer

six- to ten-day period.

Take care.