A late taste of winter
The recent mild weather is expected to end abruptly during the coming weekend as much colder arctic air pushes southwards across the UK. Some snow is expected with northern areas likely to see the worst conditions.
Brian Gaze, Senior Forecaster for TheWeatherOutlook said, "We are confident that much colder weather will develop across the UK, and after the recent mild and spring like conditions this will come as quite a shock to some people. Although we are now into the middle part of March, snow is not that unusal at this time of year, and is actually more statisically likely than during December."
At this time of year the days are quite long and the sun is increasingly strong, and these factors do tend to increase the amount of convection taking place which in turns increases the development of showers. So places which usually avoid showers during the winter months may well catch some fairly heavy ones during the expected cold spell.
The likely cold weather will follow what has been one of the mildest winters on record in the UK and across much of western Europe. For much of the time during the last few months the wind has often been blowing from a very mild south westerly direction, but during the weekend the wind direction will change to the north bringing down cold air from the arctic.
Issued 21:00 GMT, 14/03/2007
About TheWeatherOutlook
TheWeatherOutlook was founded by Brian Gaze in January 2001. Since then it has become one of the UKs leading independent long range weather forecasters, notably forecasting the heatwave of summer 2003 months in advance, the mild winter of 2003/04 and the November snowfall this year. Long range forecasts are produced by using a wide range of data which includes historical records and output from global computer weather forecasting models. TheWeatherOutlook provides a wide range of forecasts including some to the agricultural sector and to cable television.