Tuesday's Snow PotentialAdded : Sunday at 14:15 A busy old week ahead if you're a meteorologist with the weather set to make the headlines in some areas as wintry weather conditions bring frost, ice and snow for some.
We're now back in a chilly north-westerly flow as the area of low pressure that brought yesterday's rain is now sitting over the North Sea:
The colder air that has moved south is making itself felt today with the strong winds making it feel colder:
A quieter day follows tomorrow although there will be some patchy rain and hill snow in the west:
However, we will be watching this feature out over the North Atlantic:
This is a secondary low pressure system which, granted, won't look like much tomorrow, but by the early hours of Tuesday a complicated set-up is developing:
That area of low pressure (1006mb on the chart above) is deepening and heading east. This is one area of energy. However, to the north of this secondary low, you can see a cold front approaching Ireland and this is another area of energy. It's still unclear as to whether the energy associated with that cold front will be enough to distort the energy associated with the secondary low to the south, or if it will be the other way round, and this will ultimately determine if and where the snow falls.
Latest guidance suggests that a band of rain pushing eastwards across central and southern parts of Britain and Ireland on Tuesday will turn to snow by the evening:
This could bring several cm's of snow to some central and southern counties of England and Wales and this is what our Advanced Weather Warning issued this morning is covering.
However, we must stress that it's not a done deal by any means - for example, the 00z run of Arpege model kept the precipitation as rain across central and southern counties of England and Wales:
With snow reserved for the higher parts of the northwest from showers:
During the next 24 hours the time period in question comes into range of the higher resolution models so we should gain some consensus on the likely outcome of Tuesday's system - keep checking back for further updates. Don't be surprised though if it ends up as a "nowcasting" event because the margins are simply that fine!
METEOROLOGIST: BARBER |