The latest weather buzz

Weather updates from site founder Brian Gaze that keep you in the know.

Winter over and out

Posted Sat 2nd February 2019 14:30

Cold conditions continue in the short term but a change takes place early next week. Disturbances push in from the Atlantic and a predominantly west or southwesterly flow becomes established. It brings milder air across the UK, so is that it for the winter?

February looking mild?

At the moment the medium range models are pointing towards mild weather for much of the first half of February. There has been quite a big turn around in the prospects. Until the last few days a cold February had looked probable but now some model runs are showing spring like weather at times.

The London GEFS 06z plot below shows 850hPa temperatures recovering in the next few days. For the rest of the 16 day period they generally stay close to the 30 year average or above it. A few notably mild runs are appearing and if they verified we could see daytime temperatures exceeding 15C (59F) in the southern half of the UK.    

On the lower half of the plot (which shows precipitation) it looks quite wet in the short term. Beyond February 10th there are fewer rain spikes which suggests the possibility of high pressure building from the south.  

Despite the much milder outlook I'm going to remain very cautious for the moment. Until a week ago the ensemble data was as confident about a prolonged cold outbreak as it is now about the mild outlook. The lesson is that even ensemble models which are intended to account for uncertainty, can and do flip quickly at times.  

TL;DR

The weather will turn milder in the coming days. Computer ensemble models which had been strongly favouring a cold February have flipped and now point to predominantly mild weather during the next couple of weeks. Despite that there is time for winter to return.

Model Inventory

Berkhamsted snow

If you missed out on the snow in recent days here are a couple of short videos I filmed in and around Berkhamsted, Hertfordshire. Level snow depths were between 6cm and 8cm.