00:00Welcome to the Met Office 10-day trend.
00:02It's been a very wet first half of winter
00:06and a very wet and very windy first half of this week.
00:09So it is going to be quite a change that we see over the next 10 days,
00:14particularly through the weekend and beyond as the weather calms down.
00:18The winds will be lighter.
00:19It is going to turn colder and crucially a lot drier.
00:23For how long?
00:24And with it turning colder, any sign of any snow?
00:26Well, we'll deal with that in just a moment
00:29because let's deal with the transition first of all,
00:31because we're talking calmer weather, but that's to come from the weekend.
00:34The next couple of days still see low pressure, lots of isobars around.
00:38So another spell of wet and windy weather to come,
00:40particularly so on Thursday afternoon and evening.
00:43But here comes the area of high pressure,
00:45settling things down and arriving into the weekend.
00:48And it is set to stick around well into next week.
00:52Why are we seeing this shift?
00:54Well, for the reasons behind that,
00:55we need to take a look at the broader picture and rewind the clock
01:00and head across the pond.
01:01Across North America at the moment, a couple of really cold plunges of air,
01:05one in the west of Canada and this one in the east,
01:07setting up through Thursday and Friday is crucial to our weather.
01:11Cold air driving south across the eastern seaboard of the US,
01:15hitting the warmer air further south.
01:18And it's that contrast between the cold and the warm that drives
01:22and peps up the jet stream,
01:24that fast moving ribbon of air high up in the atmosphere.
01:27So the jet stream is getting supercharged later this week
01:31and that in turn then will spin up this area of low pressure.
01:34But so much energy going into this low that actually the low itself
01:39will then start to influence the jet stream.
01:41Instead of driving straight across the Atlantic,
01:43this intense low gives a bit of a kink to the jet stream.
01:47The jet stream pushes to the north and arches over the UK.
01:50So whereas for most of winter,
01:52the jet's been coming in across or to the south of the UK,
01:55come the weekend into Monday, the jet stream is to the north,
01:59allowing high pressure to establish itself across the United Kingdom.
02:04So, yes, we are going to see a big change next couple of days.
02:07Yes, there is more strong winds, heavy rain to come, but staying fairly mild.
02:11All change for the weekend.
02:13It turns calmer.
02:14The winds will be lighter.
02:15It'll be a lot drier.
02:17It will be colder with those frosty mornings, particularly noticeable.
02:20Haven't seen much of those so far this year.
02:24How long will it last?
02:25Well, the high pressure still in control, as we saw through Monday,
02:28probably Tuesday as well.
02:30There is this weather front to the north, which will bring maybe some cloud
02:33and rain across northern Scotland on Monday.
02:35We'll try and push further south, squeezing against that area of high pressure.
02:39But remember, now the jet stream is to the north.
02:43So there's not a lot of what we call forcing.
02:45There's not a lot of oomph to this weather front as it sinks south.
02:48It'll probably just bring a bit more cloud and the rain will tend to fizzle out
02:52as it drifts southwards and it'll just tend to shift the area of high pressure
02:56and maybe morph it around.
02:57But the general trend through next week is that high pressure is set to stick around.
03:02And that is shown on this chart here.
03:04It's a projection from the European model of the pressure anomaly for next week.
03:08Anomaly. So how far removed from the average is it?
03:12And the red colours are when the pressure is higher than average.
03:15Those dark reds, that dark red smudge sitting across the UK,
03:19suggesting that the pressure will be 10 to 20 millibars or hectopascals
03:24above average throughout next week.
03:27So yes, we are expecting high pressure to stick around next week,
03:30which means dry weather generally.
03:33But of course, the position of the high will be crucial to the feel of the weather.
03:37Now, the most likely scenario for much of next week is that the high pressure
03:41will rebuild in from the west, meaning that at times we could see the breeze
03:47picking up down the east coast, maybe a few showers here.
03:49But for much of the UK, it will be dry with more of an Atlantic influence
03:53after frosty conditions through the weekend and quite a drop in temperatures.
03:57Slowly in this scenario, temperatures could start to pick up.
04:01Certainly it won't be perhaps quite as cold at night.
04:04We could see some mist and fog and perhaps a lot of cloud around with that increased moisture.
04:09Another scenario is that the high pressure is a little bit further south.
04:13And at times if this happens, well, we'll start to see the Atlantic
04:18influencing the weather across Scotland and Northern Ireland.
04:20So there could be some weather fronts here, a bit of cloud and a bit of rain,
04:22whereas the bulk of England and Wales will stay dry in this scenario.
04:26That's a possible scenario.
04:27And we may switch between those first two.
04:30Now, if you're a big snow fan and you remember the beast from the east
04:34a couple of years ago and you're thinking, well, high pressure could allow that to happen.
04:38For that, we need the high pressure to be sitting further north
04:41and the winds would then start to come in from the east.
04:44But this doesn't look like happening at this stage.
04:47There's no signal from the computer models for the high to be shifted further north.
04:52Of course, it's something we'll be keeping a very close eye on.
04:54But for much of next week, it looks like large chunks of the UK will be dry,
04:59certainly a lot drier than the current week.
05:01It will be a bit colder and crucially, after some very strong gusts,
05:05the winds will be a little bit lighter as well.
05:08Make sure you stay up to date with the very latest day on day variations
05:11by following the Met Office on social media.
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