It has been a week of weather that will go down in the history books for many regions of Britain and Ireland with record-breaking low temperatures and significant snowfall. In fact it has been confirmed that Thursday was the coldest March day since records began with Tredegar in Wales recording a maximum temperature of -4.7°C. The good news, if you don't like the cold and snow, is that the freezing conditions are now abating from the south.
It's still a cold start to the weekend with temperatures close to or below freezing in many areas and this means snow and ice are still causing problems. For Scotland it remains very cold today with temperatures stuck around the freezing mark as snow showers continue to affect central and eastern regions whilst the west is drier and brighter. Meanwhile for England, Wales, Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland there is a lot of cloud around and bands of rain, sleet and snow are slowly pushing northwards, the snow becoming increasingly confined to higher ground as we go through the day with that less cold air seeping in from the south. There will be some drier intervals too so it won't be a complete wash out but on the whole a rather cloudy, misty and murky day is expected. Temperatures will hover around 1°C or 2°C at best over the snow fields to highs of 7°C or 8°C in the extreme southwest and across the Channel Islands so a thaw of lying snow will be getting under way.
Scotland will be cold and frosty again tonight with snow showers in the east but further south it won't be as cold as recent nights with temperatures in some areas holding up above freezing. Showery outbreaks of rain, with some sleet and snow over higher ground, will be pushing northwards across England, Wales and Ireland and these continue into tomorrow with the thaw well underway by this point, but for many parts of Scotland it will be a different story with the cold hanging on.
METEOROLOGIST: BARBER
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