25/02/2018 Weather for the Week Ahead

The big freeze is on the way.

We have not had weather like that in a number of years.

Let's have a look at the key points.

Disruptive snow on the way,

winds will be bitter

particularly across eastern and southern areas of the UK.

Frost and ice, but there will be sunshine as well.

It won't be snowing all the time - there will be

crisp, blue skies as well.

This is the picture for next week.

That cold air all the way from Russia will have engulfed

the whole of the continent and drifted way out into the Atlantic.

This does not happen very often.

Let's see what will be happening day by day and break it down.

Monday morning, the first of the snow showers will start to

reach Eastern counties of the UK.

Initially there will not be too many of them

and for many Monday is a sunny, bright, cold day.

Temperatures will struggle, barely above freezing.

Winds will be strong, particularly across the south and east,

hence it will feel colder than that.

Temperatures could feel as cold as -5, maybe even lower than that.

And then we'll be watching these snow clouds

developing across the North Sea as they are driven by that

increasing east to north-easterly wind.

By the time we get to Monday evening,

early hours of Tuesday, more snow showers will bring

a covering of snow to these eastern areas of the UK.

By the time we get to Tuesday,

widespread snow showers are expected across the country.

The strength of the wind will be such that the snow

showers you can see developing will blow

right across the country, the whole of the UK,

into Ireland, and possibly out into the Atlantic as well.

Most of us will see some flakes of snow and it will be settling

and it will be very cold as well.

And these snow showers, developing over Tuesday evening

into the early hours of Wednesday.

On Wednesday there will be even more snow showers around.

Winds will be so strong that in some areas

there will be drifting on top of that as well.

Particularly around eastern areas of the UK.

Again the wind will be such that snow showers will continue to

cross the country. They will be hit and miss.

It is virtually impossible to say which town will get a snow shower,

which town will get more snow compared to another one.

These are the daytime temperatures.

Really below freezing across most of the UK.

And this is a very rough guide how much snow there could be

lying on the ground by the end of Wednesday.

Possibly 10-20 centimetres in some eastern counties, further west

a little bit less than that, but I wouldn't be surprised if it is more.

Very difficult to predict exactly how much snow,

just a rough idea at this stage.

Temperatures first thing on Thursday morning in the middle

of cities will be widely down to -4 or -5.

Where there is snow in the countryside

it could be -10 degrees or lower.

It gets very interesting towards the end of Thursday.

We could see another spell of very wintry, snowy weather with

easterly winds and an area of low pressure bringing some

moisture, mixing with this cold air.

Strong winds on top of that, gale force winds.

All of this is snow.

This could mean potential blizzards across

southern parts of the UK. Yes, blizzards.

At the moment, we are not certain of this, but there is potential for it.

And even as we head into next weekend

that milder air tries to mix in with the cold air,

and on the boundary there could be yet more snow on the way.

Stay tuned.