Is it going to snow?

3 Feb 2022 03:58 PM

There’s a lot of speculation in the media at the moment of snow blanketing the country in the coming days. But what is actually going to happen, and will you see snow where you live?

Met Office Chief Meteorologist, Steve Ramsdale, said:

“We have some fairly typical winter weather in store. After the recent mild spell, we are going to see a cold interlude. It will not last long and by the weekend milder air is once again starting to return from the west. It is not unusual for us to see snow in February, and there are no signals currently for anything out of the ordinary.”

The cold interlude is brought in by an active cold front. This pushes in from the northwest bringing wet and windy weather firstly to Scotland today (03/02/22) and then the rest of the UK as it moves south, with snow for some areas such as the mountains of Scotland, the Pennines and Wales later today.

By Friday morning there’s a chance we could see some sleet or snow flurries across central and southern England. Snow is unlikely to accumulate here, and there is little chance of any disruption.

Behind this front colder air spreads across the UK. A sharp fall in temperatures is expected with a fairly widespread frost across the north of the country tomorrow (04/02/22) morning. Wintry showers are likely to continue across Scotland, Northern Ireland, northwest England, and parts of Wales. Northern Scotland can expect snow to lower levels with some accumulations, particularly across the Highlands and Grampians.

As we go into the weekend we move from a cold north westerly air flow to milder westerly air, although, the weather will stay breezy for much of the UK and wet across northern areas.

As we look ahead at the rest of February indications are that this pattern of milder spells with short colder interludes will continue. Northern areas are likely to see more rain and strong winds, interspersed with wintry showers and overnight frosts. While further south, it looks like milder, drier, but still often fairly cloudy conditions will dominate.

Why do we see these temperature variations during the winter months? They are the result of the jet stream oscillating around the UK. When the jet stream lies to the north of us, as it has been for the last few days, we see milder conditions. But if it dips further south, as it is over the next couple of days, it allows colder air from the north to cross the country and temperatures fall.