10 Day Trend – Calmer weather as we heading into spring?
The last week of meteorological winter promises more changeable and windy weather but there may be signs of calmer conditions next week. Alex Deakin has the details.
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00:00Welcome along to the last Met Office 10-day trend of meteorological winter.
00:06The weather, though, is going to remain pretty lively over the next, certainly, four or five
00:10days, chopping and changing day on day.
00:12Let's run through the pressure sequence through the rest of this week.
00:15Still plenty of isobars, still plenty of weather fronts, but we also do have high-pressure
00:21systems at times moving in.
00:23So, it's not going to be low after low after low.
00:27We will see some lengthier, drier periods in between.
00:31Why this change?
00:32Well, it's a subtle shift created by a subtle variation in the jet stream, that fast-moving
00:39ribbon of air high up in the atmosphere.
00:41It's still very active.
00:43It's been creating the storms over recent weeks.
00:45But the strongest winds high up in the atmosphere are shifting more out into the mid-Atlantic
00:50and this potential shift, split rather in the jet stream, may well allow high pressure
00:56to build in here through next week.
00:59More on that in a moment.
01:00Let's get through the next few days because, as I said at the start, chopping and changing
01:03pretty regularly.
01:04At first, we've got this cold front swinging south, introducing a much colder air across
01:11the UK for Thursday.
01:13Significant wind chill and these little weather features likely to bring some heavy snow showers
01:18across Scotland, Northern Ireland, maybe parts of Northern England too.
01:21With gusty winds, that could mean blizzards, so we do have a Met Office yellow warning
01:26in place.
01:27I'm not going to go into the details of that here.
01:29You can see it for yourself on the app and on the website.
01:33This is the 10-day trend.
01:34So, let's look at what happens beyond Thursday and, well, what's this?
01:38A little bump in the ice bars, a little ridge of high pressure, which promises most of us
01:44a fine day on Friday.
01:46But as I said, the weather's chopping and changing, so that doesn't last into the weekend.
01:49The ice bars come together again, the winds pick up, these weather fronts will bring some
01:53rain to the north and the west and you can see milder air is spreading back in.
01:59So, as I said, chopping and changing, cold on Thursday with that risk of snow, a cracking
02:05day on Friday if you like your winter's days to be full of blue sky and with much lighter
02:10winds than of late, before the winds pick up through the weekend and it starts to turn
02:14a little milder once more.
02:16The weekend, however, isn't that straightforward.
02:19We do have to keep our eyes peeled on events for Sunday.
02:23This is Sunday's pressure chart and this is potentially a pretty vicious area of low pressure
02:29at the moment, likely to be, well, to the west of the UK.
02:33But even then, the ice bars fairly close together, it is going to be a windy day.
02:37We do have to keep our eyes on this because it could be a little bit further east.
02:42Let's see where it comes from.
02:43It develops from an area of low pressure that's fairly innocuous as it clears away from the
02:48eastern seaboard of the US.
02:50The jet stream picks it up and initially just tracks it out into the mid-Atlantic, but then
02:56it develops it a little dip in the jet stream.
02:58The low crosses from the warm to the cold side and that really intensifies that low
03:04pressure, turning it into a fairly vicious looking low by the time we get to Sunday.
03:09Now, of course, with all that that's got to go on and we're talking five days ahead here,
03:13there is a chance that low is either further north, but also potentially further south
03:18and that could bring some strong winds across the UK.
03:22This is just one computer model run and of course, for these longer range forecasts,
03:26we run the computer model several times and that's what we've got here.
03:29We call these the postage stamps.
03:31This is for Sunday, the middle of Sunday and the darker colours where we're going to see
03:37some stronger winds.
03:38You probably can't see much detail here.
03:39Let's zoom in a little bit and you can see different solutions.
03:44Most of them do have this fairly vicious low pressure system well to the west of the UK,
03:49but some suggesting some strong winds across parts of the UK.
03:53But the ones with the really dark colours tend to have that low further away from the
03:58UK.
03:59But it's definitely something we need to keep an eye on over the next few days, that developing
04:03area of low pressure.
04:06That low will scoot away to the north.
04:08But another issue we need to keep an eye on is its weather front as it trails across the
04:12UK.
04:13That could bring some periods of longer rain across parts of England and Wales.
04:18And of course, after recent heavy rain, recent flooding, that is something we need to just
04:22keep an eye on at this stage.
04:24But that too should be clearing away, maybe not completely until Tuesday and that will
04:29then allow high pressure, it looks like, to topple in behind.
04:34And that high, or at least areas of high pressure, are more likely to dominate our
04:39weather through next week as this graph shows.
04:42This is the European outlook for next week from the ECMWF model where blue is low pressure,
04:49the orange and red high pressure.
04:50You can see for the next few days up to 100% dominated by low pressure systems, but quite
04:56a strong signal here of a change into next week of seeing an area of high pressure, what's
05:02that 70, 80% more likely to see high pressure than low pressure from Tuesday onwards.
05:08And that would really calm the weather down across much of the UK.
05:12This is the American model, actually, a GFS model, and it shows quite a significant area
05:17of high pressure sitting slap bang across the UK.
05:20This is for next Wednesday.
05:23Not quite that clear cut.
05:24Again, this is just one computer model and we run them several times.
05:28The European model suggesting just around the middle part of the week we could see more
05:33of an easterly wind picking up as well.
05:36So that's also something we need to keep a bit of an eye on.
05:39But generally, it looks like high pressure will certainly be closer to the UK for next
05:44week.
05:45So significantly less windy.
05:47We're going to see less chopping and changing with the weather, certainly once that weather
05:51front's out of the way for Monday and into Tuesday.
05:54With high pressure nearby, clear skies at night, we are likely to see some frosty mornings.
06:00Still plenty going on then, certainly in the short term.
06:02So make sure you stay up to date with the very latest.
06:06Weather warnings, of course, are always available on our website and through our app.