High Pressure On The Horizon?Added : Saturday at 14:00 February has been a month of contrasts with the very cold and, in places, snowy weather early in the month having been replaced by much milder but wetter conditions in the last week or so. With no real sign of a return to wintry conditions, so thoughts are turning towards spring with meteorological spring just nine days away.
That's not too say there won't be any more wintry weather around, in fact it would be more of a surprise if there wasn't, but for now the emphasis is on the current mild and unsettled weather gradually giving way to something more settled in the next week or so.
For this weekend rainfall is the main concern with more rain today across parts of the southwest which, following on from heavy overnight rainfall, is likely to lead to some localised flooding in places. The rain will ease later, however, further bursts of rain will run northwards along a slow-moving frontal system during the next couple of days:
As we head through next week mild south-westerlies look set to continue, with the most unsettled conditions towards the north and west:
Thereafter, we begin to see a change in weather patterns with model guidance favouring rising pressure over Britain and Ireland, and there is good support for this. Here is the GFS ► for next weekend:
The GEM:
The ECMWF ► ensemble:
There are some subtle differences over timings, but by Day 10 the models are agreed on a predominantly settled outlook:
This bodes well for the beginning of March with plenty of fine weather on offer but whilst daytime temperatures are likely to be reasonable in the ever strengthening sun, there could potentially be a large diurnal range, depending on where high pressure positions itself, and nights could be rather cold and frosty.
METEOROLOGIST: BARBER |