Watch: 10 day weather forecast for February
Courtesy: Met Office
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00:00 Hello and welcome to the Met Office 10-day trend. This has been recorded on the final
00:04 day of January so I thought it would be interesting not just to cover the next 10 days but to
00:08 look at some of the signals that are emerging for how weather patterns may evolve throughout
00:13 February. More on that in a moment but it's certainly been an interesting winter so far.
00:17 We've had some stormy spells and we've also had some cold spells. And at the moment a
00:22 very powerful jet stream is running across the Atlantic and this has explosively deepened
00:27 an area of low pressure which through Wednesday night will run into Norway. Now Norway is
00:33 used to windy weather and deep lows but this is something else. Red warnings in force for
00:38 Norway and they've named it Storm Ingen. Now the UK has been spared the worst of this although
00:45 yellow warnings were in force for the strong winds for northern parts of the country earlier
00:49 on. But the storm track has shifted north compared with how it was throughout much of
00:55 autumn and the first half of winter. And we'll continue to see that north shifted storm track
01:00 through the coming days. Now that means a couple of things. First of all we've got higher
01:04 pressure to the south so generally drier towards the south, wetter towards the north. Secondly
01:09 this tight pressure gradient remains although the lows are moving towards Iceland and Norway
01:13 and so on we've still got tightly packed isobars because of this pressure gradient across the
01:18 country so still blustery. And we've still got some very mild air being moved into the
01:26 UK from the Atlantic and that's certainly the case on Friday, an exceptionally mild
01:31 day and even more so overnight. We start the day with those gusty winds, nothing compared
01:38 to the storms that we saw last week but still the potential 50 mph wind gusts in places,
01:43 55 perhaps in one or two spots. The winds will be bouncing over the hills, the Pennines
01:48 and the Scottish mountains, could be troublesome crosswind for example for the A1 and the M1
01:54 and so on. So tricky driving conditions perhaps first thing Friday because of that blustery
01:58 weather. A lot of places because of that westerly or southwesterly influence will be covered
02:03 in clouds so a grey start to the day, best of any brightness towards the east and south-east
02:08 but it will be a very mild start to the day. And as the day unfolds we're going to see
02:12 plenty of damp weather especially over western hills where there will be a covering of hill
02:16 fog and more especially the north-west of Scotland where the rain will be persistent
02:20 although not particularly heavy, it's going to be mostly light to moderate rain and drizzle
02:25 through the day. Always drier towards the south-east and very mild across the country
02:29 particularly where the wind warms up on its passage over higher ground so 14 Celsius there
02:34 for Aberdeen, 13 in the south and so on. Most places in the double figures on Friday afternoon
02:40 but it will be grey, it will be breezy and damp. Fast forward to Saturday morning and
02:45 it's a mild start for many with double figures, perhaps even 11 or 12 Celsius first thing
02:50 in some spots but it is a cloudy and damp start for parts of England and Wales particularly
02:54 towards the west. Now brighter skies will emerge across Scotland with some showers and
02:59 these showers will be falling as snow over the mountains and it will be a bit colder
03:03 in the north and north-east of Scotland as well because we've seen the front that is
03:08 marking the boundary between mild air to the south and cold air further north that's shifting
03:13 south. So some persistent rain along that frontal boundary emerging into the northern
03:19 part of England there, north Wales for example through Saturday afternoon but that front
03:23 really just wriggling across central parts of the UK before on Sunday it shifts north
03:29 again and as you can see having seen some cold air into the north the mild air returns
03:34 and Sunday looks very similar to Friday, this west to south-westerly influence, high pressure
03:38 to the south, lower pressure to the north and it's grey, it's damp in places but the
03:43 more persistent rain will be across Northern Ireland, Western Scotland first thing into
03:47 north and parts of England, parts of Wales as well seeing some wet weather but increasingly
03:52 it is wetter across Western Scotland and it's drier towards the south as the afternoon gets
03:59 going. A lot of cloud, again a blustery breeze but it is mild, temperatures of 12, 13, perhaps
04:06 14 Celsius apart from the north east of Scotland where it will be much colder, 5 to 8 Celsius
04:11 although not far from average here. So a weekend of grey skies, gusty winds but also relatively
04:20 high temperatures for the time of year. Then into Sunday night that front just wriggles
04:25 across parts of northern UK bringing further spells of rain before starting to slide south
04:32 however for Monday midday, well some computer models have it so across central parts of
04:38 the UK but I wouldn't take the position from this graphic to literally because there's
04:42 a lot of uncertainty in terms of its position. Some computer models have it further north,
04:48 some computer models have it further south and that uncertainty in the position of that
04:53 boundary between very mild grey damp weather to the south and much colder but brighter
04:59 weather to the north. Well that boundary uncertainty really continues throughout next week. In
05:05 fact next week becomes very uncertain as far as the forecast is concerned, more than usual.
05:11 This graphic tries to illustrate the confidence or the amount of uncertainty, certainty we
05:16 have in the forecast and it basically looks at the variation in computer models when you
05:20 run the computer models dozens of times when they are all saying the same thing. You can
05:25 say you're confident in the weather forecast and that's where these numbers come in. So
05:30 one would mean a lot of confidence in the computer models, zero would be virtually no
05:34 confidence and on average over time the confidence obviously decreases because you're getting
05:40 further ahead and the computer model output tends to diverge. That's the average line
05:44 in the middle, the dotted line but this is the current forecast, this is that line and
05:48 so much higher confidence than usual for the weekend. Computer models are all saying the
05:53 same thing basically, that westerly breeze from the Atlantic bringing cloud and some
05:58 outbreaks of rain. But from Monday onwards the confidence level drops off a cliff and
06:03 by Wednesday, Thursday it really is about as least confident as you can get and that
06:10 means that all the computer models are saying all sorts of different things. And that is
06:15 illustrated by this. So this shows the kinds of weather patterns we can expect on each
06:19 day going out to the next two weeks. They're colour coded but they basically show different
06:24 themes for the UK's weather. And westerlies are illustrated by the dark blue here, high
06:30 confidence, they're all saying westerlies up until the end of the weekend. Then into
06:35 next week you get all sorts of different colours indicating that all sorts of different weather
06:38 patterns could occur. So does that mean we don't have a clue? Well no, not really, there
06:44 are some common themes emerging and this is one type of theme that's starting to emerge
06:51 for the second half of next week. This looks at Saturday and it shows low pressure sitting
06:55 further south across the UK than how we start the week and that would allow colder air but
07:02 it would remain unsettled. And with colder air in place you'd see more wintry hazards
07:05 across northern parts of the UK, some hill snow, perhaps some snow at lower levels and
07:10 some icy patches and so on if this were to occur. This is slightly more likely as a solution
07:17 for the end of next week. But this is also possible, see there's not much difference,
07:22 we've still got low pressure, it's just in a slightly different place, it allows more
07:26 of a south-westerly influence, so milder air continuing across the UK and generally wet
07:31 and breezy conditions. So what we can say through next week is that low pressure is
07:36 the common theme, it's just about the track of that low and what we're seeing through
07:41 next week is this uncertain transition period because the computer models kind of know where
07:47 they want to end up in the middle of February, it's how they get there. And through next
07:52 week one of the themes that is starting to emerge is that the jet stream is starting
07:58 to sink south, that boundary between mild and cold is starting to sink south and so
08:03 there are more and more models that suggest colder air appearing later next week but not
08:08 all of them are suggesting that. Here's a temperature trend for southern parts of the
08:13 UK just to indicate that, northern parts of the UK are very similar but there's more uncertainty
08:17 for southern parts of the UK so it's more interesting to look at this one and what it's
08:20 basically suggesting is very mild conditions, temperatures in the double figures both by
08:25 day and by night through the weekend, not much uncertainty, the temperature range is
08:29 quite small from the different computer models. Then latter half of next week these boxes
08:33 get very large, that means that basically there is a large number of computer models
08:40 that keep things mild but also an increasing number that start to turn things much colder.
08:46 So more and more uncertainty next week about the storm track basically, where those lows
08:52 are going to be moving and only small differences, 100 to 500 miles or so of the storm track
08:59 would of course make a big difference in terms of how cold or how mild it is. But here's
09:04 a look at the confidence graph again but this time out to 45 days. There's the uncertainty
09:09 for next week but then mid-February this big peak in confidence and actually what this
09:17 would just suggest is that there's more confidence in the forecast for the middle of February
09:23 compared with next week. So the computer models are transitioning next week to something and
09:29 they're more confident about what that something is than the transition period. And what are
09:34 they transitioning to? Well these solid reds that quite confidently appear around the 16th,
09:40 17th, 18th of February. What does that look like? This kind of thing, higher pressure
09:47 close to the UK, what we call a block set up because it's blocking low pressure coming
09:51 from the Atlantic. Now higher pressure close to the UK would lead to colder weather because
09:55 you get more overnight frosts and so on but you'd also get drier conditions. This is one
09:59 possibility, another possibility is that higher pressure is further west for the middle of
10:04 February and you get more of a northerly influence so even colder. But we're talking 18 days
10:11 away so even though confidence is higher for the middle of February than you'd typically
10:18 see 18 days away, it's still 18 days away so this is by no means certain. It's just
10:26 the slightly favoured outcome at the moment. So what does all that mean? February starts
10:32 mild and blustery with a lot of cloud cover through the weekend and some outbreaks around
10:37 particularly in the west and the north west. Then through next week there's this uncertain
10:41 transition period as the jet stream wobbles. Will it wobble to the south of the UK or stay
10:46 to the north? That's the big question mark. But eventually there is this emerging signal
10:52 for it to turn drier and colder later, certainly for the second half of February. That's what
10:58 the signals are telling us at the moment. But of course we'll keep you updated right
11:01 here at the Met Office as and when anything changes and make sure you subscribe to our
11:06 YouTube channel so you never miss our updates. Bye-bye.
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