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Spring 2021

Initial look at the meteorological spring

20/01/2021

The meteorological spring

The meteorological spring runs from March 1st to May 31st. At the start of the season cold weather is a risk and March often brings more snow than December. By May genuine warmth is possible.

Winter 2020/21 has been varied so far. The provisional UK mean temperature for December was 4.3C, which is 0.5C above the 1981-2010 long-term average. January has been a mixed month with the provisional Central England Temperature (CET) until the 18th running 0.7C below the 30 year average. 

At the moment the outlook is a changeable one. In the south a mix of colder and milder spells is expected. Northern parts of the UK probably spend more time under a cold air mass. On balance the current guidance suggests February could be quite a chilly month.

Seasonal models

Publicly available data from most of the seasonal models now covers the three month spring period.

M/A/M = March, April, May

The Climate Forecast System v2 is available on TWO. View the latest CFS v2 charts.

At this stage aggregated temperatures for March, April and May are considered more likely to be above average than below. However, even in that scenario sharp cold snaps are still possible. The seasonal models do not show a clear signal for precipitation anomalies at this stage.

Summary

Tentative suggestions for the coming spring are:

1) Over the 3 month period temperatures are more likely to be above average than below

2) There is no clear signal for precipitation to deviate significantly from the 30 year average. Nonetheless, this could change in future updates

The TWO seasonal forecast will be updated to cover the spring months on February 28th.

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