Snowy Sunday?Added : Friday at 13:51 A cold Arctic Maritime air mass is now affecting all parts of Britain and Ireland bringing plenty of bright winter sunshine to many areas but also a fair number of heavy sleet and snow showers to the north and west of the country, as demonstrated by this lunchtime's precipitype radar:
This pattern continues for another 24 hours or so but the wintry showers will gradually become confined to more north-eastern parts during Saturday. It will remain cold though with a widespread frost forming tonight:
Let's take a look at the synoptic chart for Saturday:
A ridge of high pressure building in killing off those showers and bringing a cold but sunny day for many. However trouble is lurking out over the Atlantic in the form of that low pressure system to the south of Greenland. With it comes milder air, but it will be meeting the very cold air in place over the UK and Ireland:
A battle will take place on Sunday as that low pressure system moves in and for this we'll take a look at some of the higher resolution models to see what they make of the situation as it literally will be a case of a few miles potentially making a big difference in the weather.
The FMI HIRLAM model for Sunday morning shows a swathe of precipitation across central and southern parts of Britain and Ireland:
However it's not telling us whether it is rain or snow. So let's take a look at the Arpege model for the same time:
Slightly further north than the HIRLAM model, the Arpege shows an active frontal system and if we take a look at the snowfall chart for the same time we can see that parts of Wales and the Midlands are seeing plenty of snow if this model was to verify:
The GFS ► for the same time isn't too dissimilar:
With central and northern parts of Wales into the Midlands at highest risk of seeing snow along with parts of Ireland.
The other concern on Sunday is the potential for some very strong winds on the southern flank of this system with a risk of severe gales spreading east close to the south coast:
If all that isn't enough for you to get your teeth into, the latest GFS ► output is showing this for Monday:
Lots going on this weekend then so keep a close eye on the forecasts. We will take another look at Sunday's snowfall potential tomorrow when the time period in question will be covered by all the high-resolution models. |