Winter incoming.....but will it stick around?
Well here we are approaching mid January and for most of us winter as we like to know it is yet to begin, with Mother Nature again having shown little respect for the calendar. This week however things are finally about to change, with winds slowly but surely edging around to a northerly quarter and allowing air of Arctic origin to seep south across the UK.
Even during the first half of the week most of us will start to notice the chill, but away from hilly areas temperatures should remain high enough to keep most of the precipitation in liquid form, with the main wintry hazard probably coming in the form of ice where skies remain clear for any length of time overnight.
By Thursday/Friday the air should be cold enough to support sleet or wet snow even at lower levels from the Midlands northwards and with a rather complicated set of fronts set to meander around in this colder air some potentially significant snowfalls are by no means out of the question. Ice will continue to be a hazard overnight too, especially where snow is lying or late showers have fallen.
Into the weekend the overriding signal is for pressure to rise from the west and with cold air in situ there will be widespread overnight frosts and perhaps some patchy freezing fog. Temperature inland will dip to between -3 and -6c quite widely, but where snow is lying values below -10c are far from out of the question, meaning a real shock to the system. The exception to this drier rule may well be eastern England, where winds from the east could bring some occasional sleet/snow showers, especially close to the North Sea coast.
Thereafter the jury remains out as far as prospects for the following week are concerned, with all the main models struggling to nail down the general pattern, let along any detail. What they are seem to agree on however is a quick return to mild, wet weather looks very unlikely, with a decent consensus emerging to at least keep pressure relatively high over or close to the UK - but as even the position of the centre of high pressure will very much dictate what conditions we see at the surface.
So at this stage it's very much watch this space regarding prospects beyond mid month, but all the details for the remaining weeks of winter will of course be covered in our mid season update due to be issued on Friday 15th.
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