Yet again our resilient network stood up to the challenge with minimal impact or damage due to high winds and rain. Despite minimal impact our customers were still continually updated with key information, including vital safety messages.
Let’s find out if we have seen the last of the bad weather with MeteoGroup senior meteorologist, Matthew Dobson.
A look back
The month opened with a barrage of fast moving and rapidly deepening low pressure areas, sweeping eastwards overhead the UK. These brought widespread heavy rain, or scattered squally showers. It was very mild on 2nd, 3rd and 4th January, but as a vast low pressure zone slipped away to the South East and high pressure built overhead by the end of the first week, the temperatures tumbled, with some frost overnight.
The second week in January brought some respite from the Atlantic onslaught, with an intense high pressure ridge developing over the North Sea and Scandinavia, deflecting the frontal zones away from the UK.
However, the drier and more settled weather did not last, and a reload of the north Atlantic jet stream and conveyor belt of deep low pressure areas was the driving pattern through the second half of the month. The period between Monday 15th and Friday 19th January was particularly disturbed, with a cold north-westerly airflow arriving from Greenland and Canada, feeding in plenty of heavy hail, sleet and snow showers. Some heavy snowfall over the Pennines and Cumbria, accompanied by strong/gale force winds. However, most low level locations avoided snow cover. A small but intense low pressure area raced eastwards overhead the region during the night of 18th and 19th January, bringing severe gales across the southern half of the UK, and briefly strong winds to the southern parts of the North West.
A look forward
Similar to what we saw in the second week in January, high pressure is once again developing over Scandinavia. However, we are also seeing more intense high pressure areas expanding over the UK as well. This is allowing a pool of cold air over the near continent to extend westwards, particularly into southern and eastern parts of the UK.
The North West will see a few interruptions to the cold and dry weather during this week, with several fronts pushing south-east. Some sleet and snow falling initially, as the fronts push into the colder air. However, increasingly through this weekend and especially next week, we will see milder air displacing the cold, and rain will fall over all areas.
One thing that MeteoGroup meteorologists are watching closely is something called the Stratospheric Polar Vortex. This is a ring of strong, high altitude winds that circulate the North Pole in the winter half of the year. Often in January and February, global weather systems can sometimes trigger vertically moving waves in the atmosphere, which travel up and disrupt this ‘vortex’. A dramatic disruption is likely to occur during next week, causing a sudden weakening and collapse of the ‘vortex’.
What does that mean for us? Well, research has shown that two to three weeks after such an event in the stratosphere, UK and northern European weather patterns have an increased chance of cold weather patterns.
So, after a milder, windier mid-February, we should be mindful that late February and early March could have a (cold) sting in the tail!
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