What the MET Office says about snow next week in Lancashire
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00:00Hello, I'm Catherine Musgrove. I'm a senior reporter for the Lancashire Post and Blackpool
00:06Gazette. The Met Office has warned that from Sunday, our region is set to see a major change
00:12in the weather. It's going to be much more wintry. But does that mean snow? Well, some
00:18national newspapers and regional papers have been talking about the Arctic air bringing
00:23in a wall of snow of just four centimetres deep. But actually, the Met Office experts
00:29say that things are much more unsettled and much more difficult to predict than that.
00:35They produced three scenarios. And the one that they've got most confidence in is that
00:40it's actually just going to be quite damp and wet next week. Let's see what the experts
00:45have to say in this 10-day prediction that was done just a couple of days ago.
00:50Hi there, and welcome to the Met Office 10-day trend. The weather is expected to turn colder
00:56into next week. But will there be any snow? And if so, where? I'm going to try and answer
01:01those questions in a moment. However, if you've experienced some frosty mornings this week,
01:06you might think that the weather has already turned colder. That's simply the result of
01:11a clearer area of higher pressure now being in charge of the weather compared with last
01:15week's gloomy anti-cyclone. And as a result, under those clear skies by night, we have
01:20seen temperatures fall away, some frost and fog patches. And in some places, we'll see
01:25more frost and fog over the coming nights. But for many, actually, increasingly cloudy
01:31skies arrive over the top of this area of higher pressure from the Atlantic. That's
01:36especially for north-west Scotland, where it will be a drizzly, mild, but damp start
01:40to Thursday. And Northern Ireland, likewise, seeing some thick cloud. Further south and
01:46east, the cloud will be broken. There will be some bright spells coming through. It's
01:49not a return to the anti-cyclonic gloom that we experienced last week, but it is a cloudier
01:55picture compared with the last few days. 12 or 13 in the south after a chilly start, and
02:00mild once again in the north-west with all that cloud coming in. The drizzly rain continues
02:06on Thursday night in western Scotland and Northern Ireland. Some cloud breaks for eastern
02:11Scotland and, more especially, southern parts of the country. So, again, some frost and
02:16fog forming in the south, a chilly start here, but away from the fog, actually, a bright
02:22enough start. And skipping forward to Friday afternoon, little change. The fog tends to
02:27lift in the south. There will be variable cloud coming through, mostly dry here, but
02:32there will be increasingly some damp weather into north Wales, the north Midlands, north-west
02:37England and, especially, Northern Ireland and western Scotland, with an increasing breeze
02:42coming through. Now, the rain in the far north-west is being caused by a weather front, which
02:48will start to sink south during Friday evening. A narrow, but potentially intense feature
02:54with some heavy rain and gusty winds for a short time as it sinks south. And by Saturday
02:59morning, it's across northern England, pushing into north Wales. To the south of that, it's
03:04a similar start to Saturday compared with Friday. Some frost and fog, but also some
03:08bright weather first thing, and lots of fine weather in the south continuing into Saturday.
03:14But that front's becoming slow-moving as it runs into higher pressure. It marks the
03:19boundary between mild air to the south and colder air coming in from the north. And when
03:24we get these temperature contrasts, you can get areas of low pressure forming. And that
03:30looks likely for Sunday, an area of low pressure forming close to that weather front along
03:34with the temperature contrast. But different computer model simulations have different
03:40ideas about how much that low will form and how much rain we'll get as a result of it.
03:46What looks likely, though, is that Saturday will be a largely fine day for southern parts
03:51of the UK as that front in northern England and north Wales becomes slow-moving. So, some
03:55brightness in the south, some brightness coming through for northern areas, especially northern
04:00England later and Scotland and Northern Ireland. But also, increasingly, a cold wind bringing
04:06frequent showers to Scotland and Northern Ireland, especially near north-western coasts.
04:11It'll feel cold in that wind and it'll be cold enough for some sleet and snow across
04:16higher parts of Scotland. Initially, rain at lower levels through Saturday daytime.
04:22By the end of Saturday, the front is across central parts and it's going to be petering
04:27out, so the rain easing for a time. But it's along that front, like I say, along that temperature
04:33boundary where we could see some more widespread rain develop into Sunday. I wouldn't take
04:39this too literally. There are these differences coming through in the location and the depth
04:43of the low on Sunday. But either way, it looks like spells of rain will move through Northern
04:48Ireland, southern Scotland, into England and Wales, mixing potentially with the cold air
04:52to give some snow over the Pennines, for example. Mostly rain elsewhere across England and Wales.
04:58Rain, though, keeps those northerly winds in the north and increasingly cold, so a marked
05:04wind chill and the snow potentially coming down to lower levels. But again, mostly settling
05:09over hills above about 300 metres on Sunday. Increasingly windy in the north-west as well,
05:16so the risk of gales. That's going to make it feel especially cold. And either way, whatever
05:21happens with this low through Sunday, it does tend to pull away for the start of next week
05:25with the Arctic winds then becoming widespread across the UK, bringing the cold air into
05:31the far south. And by Monday, this is the most likely set-up for the UK. Cold northerly
05:39wind which, passing over relatively warm seas at this time of year, would pick up moisture,
05:45pick up instability where the air is rising, and lead to frequent showers, especially for
05:51northern and north-western coasts because of the wind direction. And those showers could
05:57come as far south as the south-west of England, parts of Wales, and there'll be a mixture
06:01of rain, sleet and snow. The further north you are and the higher up you are, the more
06:06likely you'll see sleet and snow as opposed to rain. Any settling snow, most likely over
06:10the tops of the hills for England and Wales, and parts of Scotland and Northern Ireland
06:15seeing mostly snow over the hills. But I think northern Scotland could see snow settling
06:20to lower levels by this stage, such as the coldness of the air. Now this is one computer
06:28model simulation for the atmosphere for Monday. It's the most likely outcome for Monday, but
06:34it's only one simulation. And over the next few days, you might see some exciting maps
06:39get posted on social media or in the press that show various parts of the UK plastered
06:45by snow next week. But it's important to remember when looking at those maps that they are just
06:52one computer model simulation of the atmosphere. And professional meteorologists don't just
06:58take one computer model simulation of the atmosphere, even if it's the snowiest or the
07:02most exciting, and say, that's what's going to happen. We run the computer models dozens
07:07of times and end up with dozens of simulations of the atmosphere. And the reason we do that
07:12is because of chaos theory, the idea that subtle changes at the start of a forecast
07:15can escalate into much bigger differences by days five, six, and seven. And so all these
07:21different simulations will give us an overview of where computer models are agreeing and
07:27where they're not agreeing. And so we can talk about the most likely scenarios and the
07:32less likely but still plausible scenarios for a week's time. And that's what I'm going
07:37to do now. So the dozens of simulations from the Met Office, the European model and the
07:43American model can be summed up by these charts, which come out as the most likely weather
07:49patterns for next week. And there are three of these to look at. The first one has very
07:53similar conditions to the last graphic with northerly winds, showers for many, rain, sleet
07:58and snow, especially coastal parts, but some sunshine away from the showers, especially
08:03inland. And these minus twos indicate two degrees below average, so cold. This is another
08:09plausible scenario for next week, similar sort of thing, winds coming from the north,
08:14below average temperatures, showers, some sunshine away from the showers, but low pressure
08:17a little closer to the UK. So perhaps bringing some more prolonged wintry precipitation to
08:23some areas. And the third one I want to show, which is also coming out as a plausible scenario
08:28for next week, is for an area of low pressure, more widely dominant across the UK, bringing
08:33unsettled weather, bands of rain, sleet and snow, depending on where you are with below
08:38average temperatures. So we look at these scenarios and we look at where they're agreeing
08:44and where they're disagreeing. Where they're agreeing is on northerly winds. This chart
08:48sums it up well. Each of these boxes indicates the possibility or the probability of northerlies
08:53or southerlies out to 27th of November. The most recent set of model runs is on the top
09:00row and the reds indicate a high chance of southerly winds and the blues indicate a high
09:05chance of northerly winds. And that's indeed what we've got from Sunday. Throughout much
09:09of next week, a high chance of northerly winds across the UK, although the blues become paler
09:14later on before fading away into the following weekend. Northerly winds would indicate below
09:20average temperatures and in fact that is what we're seeing from these graphics showing
09:24the temperature trend. For northern parts of the UK, initially these red boxes which
09:28show the daytime temperature, or the range of daytime temperatures, are above the red
09:33line here, which is the average for the time of year. Then on Sunday they drop below and
09:38as you can see they stay below. So the range of likely temperatures is below the average
09:43line throughout next week, although there are one or two spikes there, whiskers they're
09:48called, that just extend above the average, which gives a suggestion that not all of the
09:54model simulations have it cold for northern parts of the UK through next week. Similar
09:59for the overnight temperatures, coloured in blue. Southern parts of the UK show a lot
10:04more uncertainty. The boxes are bigger, the range of likely temperatures is much larger
10:08and some of these extend above the average line. And when we analyse what's happening
10:14for southern parts of the UK by looking at these individual model simulations of the
10:19temperature at 1.5km, so not exactly the temperature that you're going to experience on the surface
10:23but it gives an idea of the trend, there's this drop in temperatures over the weekend
10:28and then each of these dotted lines indicates the result of one simulation out of 52. Most
10:35of those 52 keep it cold for southern parts of the UK, but there are these spikes here
10:40which are where Atlantic, milder, wetter weather takes over instead of keeping it cold with
10:48winds from the north. So next week the main uncertainty actually is what happens with
10:54these Atlantic lows that contain milder air and wetter conditions. One plausible scenario
11:01is that these lows stay away and we keep the cold northerly winds with wintry showers around
11:06the coast, perhaps some more prolonged wintry weather coming through in little weather fronts
11:10that come in from the north, but many places actually crisp and clear. Another outcome
11:17which is coming through in a number of simulations is for these lows to approach from the south
11:22bringing spells of rain and then bumping into the cold air and in between somewhere across
11:28the UK likely to see some more prolonged snow, especially over hills but perhaps not exclusively.
11:36A slightly less likely outcome but still possible is for these lows to make more progress
11:42across the UK bringing more widespread wind and rain and bringing that mild air to most
11:48of the UK, so most of the UK ending up actually milder than average, wetter and windier. All
11:53of those outcomes are possible but some are more likely than others and it looks like
11:58the northerlies with some wintry weather in places are the more likely scenario, but of
12:04course at this range, 7, 8, 9, 10 days ahead you'd never rule out other scenarios taking
12:11place as well and as we get further into the next few days we will of course be able to
12:16update you with all the very latest information right here at the Met Office. Bye bye.