Deep Dive 09/01/2024 – Any sign of snow? – Met Office weekly weather forecast UK

This is an in-depth Met Office UK Weather forecast for the next week and beyond.

The weather has changed, with high pressure finally replacing low pressure. It’s also turned colder. Will the cold weather stick around? And, if so, is there any sign of snow? And how should we prepare for cold and snowy weather? Bringing you this deep dive is Met Office meteorologist Aidan McGivern joined by Head of Situational Awareness Will Lang.

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It’s turned colder how long will the cold weather last will there be any more snow and how can you prepare for cold and snowy weather I’m adah mcgiven welcome along to another Met Office Deep dive we do these every Tuesday and every Tuesday we encourage you to subscribe so

You don’t miss them in the future now eagley viewers will notice I’m not alone this week I’m very pleased to say that I’m joined by Will Lang friend of the show head of situational awareness here the metal office previously uh chief meteorologist as well so plenty of expertise with us on

This week’s Deep dive hi good to be with you again today hello and we’re going to be talking about what the signals are for the next week and Beyond in terms of potential cold potential snow what are the uncertainties why we can’t say anything for sure when we’re looking

More than a week ahead and we’re also going be talking about how people can cope with cold and snowy weather that’s right that’s my job really so my job at the Met Office I’m in charge of weather warnings but also in charge of the advice that we give to people but also

To government as well in emergency services first things first did you get any snow yesterday a little bit I was out about 9:00 last night I live in toron in Somerset a few flurries a few grains of snow on the roof of my car when I went out but nothing really

Settling there was a bit around though yeah there was so we got a bit in my house and uh uh kids got very excited about it here’s the here’s the radar that’s on a loop from the last 24 hours um much of this was snow it did start a

Bit sleety in the Southeast but actually we got increasingly cold air from the East mixing in with it by the time it moved through Central Southern England and then eventually into South and mid Wales the Southwest much of that was snow nothing particularly heavy but all very exciting for people in the South

Like us living in get we don’t get much down here so when it when it does happen we get very excited about it a St contrast of course compared to uh the last few months let’s take a look at this this uh map is quite extraordinary shows the amount of rainfall from the

1st of October 2023 to the 3rd of January 2024 compared with the four-month period of October November December January so it shows how wet it has been compared with the four months of October to to January across Eastern Scotland of course storm barette brought such a huge amount of rainfall there

We’ve had other rainfall events since then for Eastern Scotland and Eastern and Central parts of England into the South as well just shows already this month we’ve seen in places 1.7 times the rainfall would expect between October and January yeah it’s been really wet across a large proportion of the UK you

Can see those wet spots again you focused in on things like storm vet for Eastern Scotland also parts of the East Midlands but actually there’s been successive weather events successive bands of rain coming through the Autumn and over the Christmas and New Year period which have really taken things to

These above average levels so it’s been a really really wet few months yeah and that’s highlighted if I show another uh map here it takes some explaining but it really highlights the track of these areas of low pressure now it might be difficult to make it out here but

There’s the UK so there’s France and Spain uh this is the Atlantic out here and what this is showing is for the Autumn uh season 2023 it’s the anomaly in terms of the wind around the jet stream height in the atmosphere and the blues show where the

Jet stream was stronger than normal and the Reds and oranges show where it was weaker than normal so normally you’d expect through the Autumn the jet stream to be sort of running between Northwest Scotland and Iceland wouldn’t you yeah that’s right mostly the storm track will be across the Atlantic we’ll have low

Pressure systems or storms coming in across acoss um yeah yeah Northern Ireland and Scotland giving a most of the Heavy Rain to Northwest Scotland and this graphic shows how it’s all been shifted that little bit further south and that’s made all the difference over the last few months I I mean the number

Of times I talked about South shifted jet stream in my forecast since October November December and what that made a difference to was the track of those lows as well saying this shows the same sort of thing there’s the UK and it shows the sea level pressure anomaly so

The blues there indicate much lower than normal pressure now we typically have low pressure in the autumn in the UK so this is even lower than normal pressure across uh Southern Scotland Northern Ireland England Wales not as low in terms of the anomaly for Northern Scotland that’s right and the other

Crucial thing to throw into the mix here is that if it comes further south the low pressure systems in these areas are less used to getting that large amounts of rainfall I mean you know places like West Wales North Wales we’ll see a lot of rain but in some cases the storm

Track has been even further south than that in some cases the the storm has come from the southwest and then curved up through Central and Eastern England stor beet for example and that’s given all that rain to parts of Eastern England Eastern Scotland as well where

They are not used and the rivers are not as used to that amount of rain yeah and we saw a similar pattern continue into December so again this is the South shifted jet stream uh in December and the result low pressure this time particular across central Southern Scotland into Northern England but lower

Than normal pressure across the UK higher than normal pressure of Greenland out in the Atlantic and uh for for Northern parts of Norway and Finland but yeah it’s um so so I guess the the summary here is that we’ve had what we call a mobile weather pattern a zonal

Pattern uh in in meterological Jan where where systems are coming in from this direction from the west west to east across the Atlantic and hitting the UK and and that’s what’s been the the driver behind all of the wet weather so that explains why it’s been so wet we’ve

Had a lot of storms named storms as well what explains why the jet stream has been shifted South and we’ve had low pressure a mobile uh Westerly and so on well to explain this we look at all of the other big drivers going on in the atmosphere

And there are things happening all the way around the world patterns that combine in a certain way to result in the jet stream being where it is for a certain period of time um for our seasonal forecast we’ve always been talking about El Nino this year and

That’s a a about ocean temperatures in the Pacific but actually that plays a big part in weather across the North Atlantic it has knock on effects to where the jet stream is it can result on average when we have an El Nino year in the Pacific in getting a wetter stronger

Jet stream in the first part of winter in the UK it’s not always the case there are other players uh involved other patterns around the world but that did look as if it was going to have a strong influence this year and that’s proved to

Be the case in that we’ve had this wet Autumn and wet start to the winter with a strong jet stream slightly shifted southwards from where it’s been a textbook example hasn’t it this year and we’re going to be talking more in a moment about what El N means for the

Next few weeks and months but before we do that something has changed in the atmosphere this week of course we’re talking about the jet stream and instead of high pressure instead of low pressure I should say it’s high pressure now firmly in charge and at first this week

We’ve seen this easterly air flow which has brought some very cold air into the South well again we’re following the ice bars uh so where are the ice bars coming from they’re coming from this way around the high where is that coming from it’s coming from well Central northern Europe

Originally Scandinavia this be some really cold conditions you may have seen you know we’ve had minus 40 something like that in parts of Northern Scandinavia not that cold when it gets to us um but it does get uh it does get slightly warmer as it comes across the

North Sea and across northern Europe but this is really the cold air we’ve been digging into from the continent so that’s why we’ve got this decidedly uh biting feel particularly where it’s windy windier across Southern parts of the UK at the moment yeah I mean it’s surprising how quickly it’s turned

Colder it just goes to show that if you get the winds coming from a particular direction the weather can suddenly change and quite dramatically I mean in Devon for it to be snowing early evening and settling even just light snow just shows how cold that that source air is

Um that that we saw arriving but it’s not going to stay that cold this week is it if we just run that forward in fact we’ll skip forward uh a day or so this is this is Wednesday so tomorrow at the time of recording and what we’re seeing

Here is the high pressure just Meandering slightly and what it seems to do is is it it brings more of a an Atlantic influence all the way around the top of it so it’s not a raging southwesterly um but it does bring a bit more of that Atlantic influence and it’s worth saying

At this point actually that um the colors on here represent the air at 5,000 ft or uh 1500 M and it looks really quite warm but at the surface we’ve still got chil air it’s still cold in comparison to what we’re used to in the first half of winter certainly so

While it might not be quite as cold there’s quite a bit of cloud around here so it might not be quite as cold at night in terms of severe Frost but it still feel cold in comparison to what we’ve had yeah it just indicates that anything falling from the sky is mostly

Going to be rainfall over the next few days we’ll see some drizzly showers over the penines of over Eastern England and so on but uh many places actually a reasonable week of weather finally some dry well again you said the dry conditions I mean that that’s really

Really important given how wet it’s been recently lots of flooding around the last few weeks so the fact that we do have some time to dry up for those flood conditions to recover somewhat that’s really really good news yeah but as we go through the week of course things

Start to get more interesting in fact come the weekend this is Friday there’s a front moving into the north it’s a cold front although at the surface as as mentioned it’s still going to be relatively chilly but this cold front represents a change in the air mass

Again so we’re going from a bit of an Atlantic influence there something less cold to the Arctic and if you follow the isobar those winds are coming straight from the north by the stage we’re into Sunday so it’s a relatively slow moving cold front it’s going to bring a bit of

Rain um but the important thing is it’s going to bring a a change in the weather isn’t it by the end of the weekend that’s right again there’ll be a a Resurgence of really cold weather I think the end of the weekend and then spreading further southwards across the

UK in the early part of next week and as you said it’s it’s coming from the Arctic originally uh that means there’ll be plenty of showers around the coast snow showers as well that’s really where we start next week I just want to show you some uh well scenario Maps these are

Uh highly simplified uh just to just to make things clear of course as we go into next week it’s six seven days away so we can’t give the highly detailed forecast but we can just give you an idea of of the kind of setup we’re

Looking at at the start of next week and this is how we start things isn’t it we’ve got this Northerly air flow snow showers especially for those areas exposed to the Northerly but actually I love a good Northerly because you get a lot of sunshine don’t you really cold

But crisp conditions really sunny in land away from the snow snow showers it can be uh it can be quite nice as long as you’re away in you sheltered from the cold and taking precautions yeah that’s key then interesting things start happening the Atlantic wants to come

Back in and what we’ve got here is low pressure trying to make inroads from the southwest and here’s where things get um more uncertain yeah we’re not sure about the detail of this at all really but what we can tell from all of the different forecast models is there is a

Tendency to start to push low pressure back in from the southwest the problem that gives us is when it reaches and and starts to interact with the cold air that cold Northerly which is already across the UK so you get moist warm air starting to come in low pressure from the southwest

Um and then when it reaches the cold air you tend to get snow we can’t tell where that will be we can’t tell how long it’ll last how heavy it will be but these are the kind of situations where you can have some quite significant snow

Events for some parts of the UK so certainly want to keep a really close eye on um particularly as we head into next week looks like we’re okay for the right at the beginning of the week just this cold crisp Northerly uh but then a

Lot to look at lot uh uh uh to play for the second half of the week in particular later Tuesday until Wednesday Thursday we’re looking at this different models are saying different things in terms of the track of these lows and so on um but really you’ve got all the

Ingredients there haven’t you you’ve got the cold air in place you’ve got the additional moisture Supply coming up from the Atlantic with the potential for some heavy persistent rainfall which then mixes with the cold air and so at some point on the boundary you’ll have this area of significance that’s right

We could have a low pressure system coming up in this direction we could sorry I’ve messed up the screen there I’m always doing that I need to build better we could have actually things turning to rain quite quickly in parts of the Southwest depending on where the where where where

The track of the low goes uh but somewhere in between that zone in between uh where we get the rainfall a butting against the cold there that’s where you can get some potentially prolonged snowfall yeah and it’s interesting actually if you look at the temperature Trend graphs for two extreme

Parts of the country so we’ve got abdine on the left here and Plymouth on the right and what these show is again the uh temperature Trend at 5,000 ft 1500 meters because that’s useful for um ignoring the the kind of day night differences and the noise to do with

That it’s much more useful at showing kind of air masses and so on and general Trends it’ll be difficult to see the the day I understand that but what’s important to see here is this is abedine and you’ve got the temperature Trend it actually goes up through the next few

Days as the Atlantic influence uh comes around that high pressure then through the weekend this is Saturday Sunday the Bold line is the main run of the European model this is all the dotted lines in the shaded areas are are the various Ensemble runs so the the European model run at slightly lower

Resolution than the uh main run but just to give us an indication of uh the the differences in the different computer model runs or whether they’re all very similar and they’re all saying the same thing in this case aren’t they there’ll be a downturn in temperatures certainly for Scotland

Um the early part of next week or in fact actually over the weekend yeah that’s okay I’m all every time I’m doing it yeah um so then it stays cold through next week yeah and uh good agreement there for abedine but come on to Plymouth the main run there the Bold has

It turning much colder for the start of next week then it jumps up again and that would indicate that the the main run is is pushing those lows in and pushing milder air in um however the extent of that um spread there you a lot of disagreement for for the likes of

Plymouth about whether it stays cold whether you get the milder air and so on well you could look at that and say that actually the bulk of the model Solutions are saying that it wants to keep it in relatively cold air at that stage but

There’s a lot of spread as we say so a lot of uncertainty in the forecast some of the forecasts pushes that milder air some of them don’t so there’s a lot to play for in terms of the timings and the track of these low pressure systems as

They come into the southwest and just the graph on the bottom here this is the precipitation so all the different runs with various spikes but it just indicates that as we go through next week so Monday to Friday for abedine there’s just that increased chance of precipitation of course abdine in the

Cold air much of that might be wintry and then Plymouth there even greater spikes because closer to those sources of moisture coming up from the Atlantic whether that’s rain or snow or sleet is is the main source of uncertainty but uh yeah we we’ll obviously keep a close eye

On that Alex Deacon will have more in the 10day trend tomorrow but um that’s all we’ve got in terms of the rest of the week or so um I just want to show you this finally and this looks at the next two weeks and really what we’re seeing here is the

Probability of different weather regimes or weather patterns PS for each day so we start at Tuesday time of recording go out to two weeks Tuesday and various weather patterns are represented by various different colors the dark Reds there are the kinds of patterns that we’re seeing over the next few days so

Generally blocked patterns where you’ve got high pressure close to the UK um then the blues that start uh erratically making an appearance from early next week represent that Atlantic influence don’t they so this is the increasing chance of low pressure starting to exert an influence from the Atlantic across the

UK and so what we can see is that increase through next week as we’ve been talking about uh and so by the time we get to the end of next week it’s actually finally balanced as to whether high pressure or low pressure is the dominant influence over the UK and the

Fact that they are in quite close proximity means that we’ve got a bit of a Battleground set up for the UK where the high pressure and the cold are is never never too far away but neither is the moisture bearing low pressure systems from from uh the Atlantic and

That’s why we we do have some concern about there being some snow events at some point over the next couple of weeks it’s not just that first event with that low moving up it could repeat itself this could be the setup we have for you know a good portion of the rest of

January yeah and with that in mind you we’ve been talking a lot about mild air obviously storms wind rain whe flooding was on the news um quite quite a lot last week what do we need to start thinking about now in terms of cold weather actually before we

Move on to tips uh the most important thing obviously is to step toate with forecasts and warnings and so on that’s right you know um Met Office forecast and really keep a close eye out for Met Office warnings particularly if we start to talk about snow warnings next week um

Make sure you stay in touch with those change your plans accordingly that’s the main advice I think but I’d also say there’s other advice that you can tap into keep an eye on um Health alerts for example from uksa for England or equivalent advice from the other health

Agencies of the UK really really important some really really useful advice there uh for keeping your yourself and your families and communities protected in cold weather because seen that there there have been some cold weather alerts issued what’s the difference between those alerts and the the weather warnings that the me

Office issue that’s a really good question they’re frequently mistaken and actually they they’re closely connected because we work really really closely with UK HSA they use our temperature forecasts uh to come out with the alerts they work in a slightly different way though slightly different audiences um

The weather warnings for the Met Office they are focused on everyone the whole community so we want everyone to know that there’s you know snow coming along and taking appropriate action the Uka cold weather alerts are slightly more targeted there is some really really good advice for everyone

And I would urge people to go to their website to have a look at the cold weather tips there but there is specific advice targeted on Health Care Professionals social care the voluntary and Community sector and other vulnerable groups as well so being able to Target those groups with that

Specific advice around cold weather can really really save lives and that’s really important so it’s worth taking note of those warnings too ultimately that’s why we do what we do we do these forecasts and try and get the information out there on YouTube and and many other uh via many other means to

Keep people safe that’s the most important thing yeah that’s right and then that leads us on to talking about the general advice that we give uh to people through winter and that’s part of our weather ready campaign for the Met Office we link up with other partners to

Give their advice as well so that would include you know probably things that people would say are obvious like as we head into a cold snap make sure your Bo your boiler is working and your heating is working and it’s properly serviced make sure your pipes are properly um uh

Insulated make sure you know where your stop tap is in case you get some frozen pipes or things like that so that’s just in the house but lots and lots of travel advice as well stay in touch with the warnings make sure you have uh um some

Supplies with you in case you get snuck stuck in cold weather and snow loads and loads of advice on the Met Office website under weather ready and these useful tips as well that we’ve got now uh weather hacks we’ll go through a few now but if you’ve got your own weather

Hacks or tips let us know in the comments it’ be good to hear about those here’s one cardboard covers for your windscreen wipers yeah so this with with some advice we’ve sourced with our partners in the RAC um so a lot of people do this already um you know saves

The need for for for for lots of scraping in the morning if you put these under your wipers and on your on your U your wind screen another suggestion here is not necessarily CBO covers suggesting that you might use some old socks oh underneath the windscreen wipers to

Startop them getting stuck because if they get stuck you you turn your engine on you you start wiping the engine they can get stuck the engine can overheat yeah so a little hack to save some time and to keep yourself safe in those conditions and never pour boiling water

Of course on the on the Frozen wind screen not a good idea no no uh captain and cozy ah if you cycle in the winter here’s a hack wear a swim cap under your helmet don’t worry about what you’ll look like I don’t think anyone will care

The important thing is you’ll be saying I have not yet done that one have you Aiden I’ve got a BAL of clava I haven’t tried that one out I don’t know whether that would be warmer I would imagine that’s pretty toasty and warm it would be wouldn’t it yeah I’m not sure how

That would feel it would feel it would be it would have been useful a few months ago in the in the wet rides I think that one uh there we go I’ve got a dog clean pores healthy pups if you’ve got a pet well again you know we can

Look after our our ourselves after our families looking after our pets in cold weather is is is can be as an important as well so if you’re taking them about and about out and about on their daily walks make sure that they’ve got clean pores um and they’re not going to pick

Up up up anything or or you know cold conditions have have an adverse effect on them when the paths and Pavements writted and so on that can be uh potentially damaging to the pores uh flask up to warm up that’s a good one uh yeah so this could I mean you there are

People who who go winter swimming even this time of year you know New Years for example and so specific advice here about warming up afterwards making some making sure you’ve got a flask of uh of hot drink or soup with you but that could just be going outside normally you

Know uh it’s good to get outside good for the mental health uh during uh cold and sunny weather but make sure you keep warm and have a hot drink afterwards absolutely uh tagging your TAP as well so yeah so making sure where you know where your stop tap is it does happen

Particularly when you get to the end of cold weather events as things start to warm up again you can get frozen pipes and then they thw and then they burst that can happen unfortunately probably quite a low chance but it does happen so in the eventuality of it happening make sure

You know where your stop tap is uh enable to be able to turn it off should you have a burst definitely worth knowing that sort of thing and wearing thin layers as well this is this is useful to know yeah again it’s probably pretty standard advice it’s it’s it’s

It’s a better way to dress cold weather when you’re going in and out of doors multiple layers uh you know fleeces and and undergarments underneath Etc is probably a better way to do it you can take them on and off as you need them uh rather than one big U uh thick jumper

For example they have it plenty of weather hacks weather tips if you’ve got any of your own let us know in the comments and uh just very briefly um you we talked about it turning colder we’ve talked about the the potential for these Battlegrounds events with with some

Significant snow in place earlier on mentioned El Nino and how that caused um such a mild and stormy and wet start to the winter what would El Nino tend to suggest for the rest of winter well this is where I’m going to bring in lots of caveats again because it’s still really

Really uncertain so one thing I’d like to say is don’t necessarily believe everything in terms of the detail you might see on specific forecasts for 3 weeks time on social media that’s really really difficult to do at these stage so it be a little bit skeptical but based

On the pattern that we’ve seen in winter so far which is to have that wet bit at the middle and that seems to be consistent with an El Nino pattern you do tend to have a colder end to the winter so this is from now all the way

Through till March which isn’t to say it’ll be cold all the way through there will doubtless be wetter periods there will could even be some more named storms but overall the odds suggest based on the elino conditions and the other drivers in the atmosphere that things will tend

To be drier and colder in the second half of winter yeah so things are pointing in that direction which is why uh we’ve got this thre Monon seasonal likelihood of um cold average mild and this is for the January to March period isn’t it yeah that’s right so this needs

Some explaining but what you would normally see at a normal uh for a normal year at this time of the year these percentages would be 20 60 20 and any shift away from that is an indicator of the shift of odds towards one type or another and there is a

Slight shift towards cold in fact it’s more marked than that actually because recent years have been uh fairly mild in Winter um it’s actually more normal in recent years to have these numbers up towards mile 30 40% so the fact that it’s lower than that and the fact that it’s lower than

20% uh shows that the odds are stacked in the cold direction for the coming months again doesn’t mean that it’ll be cold all the way through does doesn’t actually mean that it will necessarily happen it just means that the odds are skewed a little bit in that direction

Yeah by looking at these various Global drivers you mentioned El Nino there’s also the Indian Ocean dipole a lot of these um you we’ve got explainers for them on the Met Office YouTube channels so the Indian Ocean dipole uh stratospheric polar vortex as well I’m sure we’ll cover that in more DET lots

Of jargon lots of uh acronyms abbreviations Etc but they all they all fit together and they’re all interrelated of course um so the fact that um uh the stratospheric per polar vortex is tends to be weak at this time of year is related to how strong the jet

Stream is and that in turn affects um how strong the North Atlantic oscillation is which is whether we get storms coming in or whether we have blocked conditions across the UK so they all act together so when we look at this as as meteorologists and we say everything is

Faving colder thankfully drier as well um we can say the dice is loaded right it’s almost like you you load a dice in favor of six you’re more likely to get six coming up but you could still get the other numbers the way I like to

Think about it is is um Sports punditry so we might say who is going to win you know the Premier League this year we we probably have a good stab at it based on what’s happened so far um and what might happen in the rest of the season but

Plenty of other outcomes as we know can happen who’s going to win the Premier League this year Well I’m going to sit on the fence as I do with the seasonal forecast and say I couldn’t possibly comment brilliant uh that’s all we’ve got time for thank you will for joining

Us really useful to uh to get some insights into how we uh look ahead Beyond a week or so and useful for some of those weather hacks as well pleasure uh and if you enjoy this sort of indepth look at the weather we do them every Tuesday as I mentioned please do hit

Subscribe and we’ll have more on next week’s weather in the 10day trend tomorrow of course will be covering uh all the upcoming weather in our YouTube channel so uh so we’ll keep you updated right here at the metal office but for now that’s all from us bye-bye