This is an in-depth Met Office UK Weather forecast for the next week and beyond 28/01/2025 – A look back at Storm Éowyn and what’s to come. Bringing you this deep dive is Met Office meteorologist Alex Burkill.
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00:00Hello, very good day to you. Welcome to your latest Met Office Deep Dive. I'm Alex Burkill,
00:05presenter and meteorologist here at the Met Office, and I'm coming to you this Tuesday
00:09like we do every Tuesday, bringing you, well, a deep dive into the weather across the UK
00:15and a little bit of a look globally as well. I'll be talking for the next 20 or 30 minutes
00:21or so. Perhaps some recent deep dives have gone on a fair bit longer than that, but I
00:25think today I've got about 20 or 30 minutes worth of information to get through. If this
00:30is your first deep dive, where have you been? But welcome along. And if you're a regular
00:34viewer, then thanks for coming back. As always, if you enjoy anything that I've talked about
00:38today, do hit the like button, share it with anyone else who you think might be interested
00:43in it. And do leave a comment too. I will be answering some of the comments later. But
00:47let's get going. We've had a lot of weather recently. You'll have no doubt been aware
00:51of Storm Eowyn. It was a major feature that came through at the end of last week. And
00:56so I want to have a little look back at what it brought. So behind me, I have the satellite
01:00imagery from 5 o'clock last Friday morning. Now, I've picked 5 o'clock because this is
01:05when we saw some of the strongest winds. Now, Storm Eowyn, like I said, was a major feature.
01:11It brought very low pressure across the UK. In fact, we had a pressure reading in Tyree
01:16of 941.9 hectopascals. That's the lowest pressure recorded in the UK from any named
01:23storm since we started naming them 10 years ago. And as a result, it's no wonder that
01:28we saw such strong winds. In the UK, we had gusts of 90 to 100 miles per hour. In the
01:33Republic of Ireland, they had a gust of 114 miles per hour. That's their strongest gust
01:39ever recorded. And that was around 5 o'clock in the morning. And it may have been due to
01:44something called a sting jet. Now, if you watched the Weather Studio Live on Friday
01:48with Alex and Aidan, Alex talked a little bit about the sting jet. In case you don't
01:53know, you get sting jets in low pressure centres, storms like the one that Storm Eowyn was.
01:59And what it is is a small, intense burst of strong winds that come down and can lead to
02:05really strong damaging winds in excess of 100 miles per hour. And whilst we did have
02:09those kind of speeds, whether or not there was actually a sting jet hitting the UK, there
02:14is still some debate amongst meteorologists at the moment. And I want to have a little
02:17look at that. Just to try and describe, the sting jet happens because around, for instance,
02:24particularly near the low pressure centres, you have a warm conveyor belt of air and a
02:29cold conveyor. The cold is sinking. The warm's rising. And it's that sinking of the cold
02:34conveyor belt air that's pushing down. And as then the rain and the snow is falling and
02:41evaporating into that air as well, that cools it even further. And so then the air drops
02:45or descends even more quickly, really rapidly. And that leads to this burst of really strong
02:51winds. But they only usually last around two to three hours before they mature out. And
02:56so that's quite important. Because if we look at around five o'clock on Friday morning when
03:01we had that very strong wind on the west coast of Ireland, and you can see the telltale sign
03:09in the cloud of what would be a sting jet in as much as it's wrapping around. Looks
03:13a bit like a scorpion's tail, where it gets its name from. But actually, if we look a
03:18little bit closer, and in the centre of the low, you can see that the clouds actually
03:22started to wrap around and some cloud filling in in the centre of the low, which suggests
03:27actually by this point, if we had had a sting jet occurring, it started to mature by this
03:34stage. And so, well, we could have avoided the absolute worst of the strongest winds.
03:40Because if we just go back a couple of hours, if we go to say, this is the bit that I struggle
03:45with the most on these deep dives using this time bar. But if we go back to around midnight,
03:52and if we look at the same feature, there's a bit of cloud there, but not much really.
03:55I think probably if we look at this, this is about when the sting jet was occurring.
04:00And like I said, they only last a few hours before maturing out. So there was a sting
04:04jet, or likely to have been a sting jet here, leading to some very strong winds. And then
04:09it all headed towards the UK. Unfortunately, well, to some extent, it matured out. And
04:15so whilst we still had a really active cold conveyor bursting towards land and bringing
04:20some very strong winds, they perhaps weren't quite as intense maybe as we would have seen
04:26if the sting jet had developed just a little bit further east than it actually did. There
04:31is still some debate as to whether or not we saw a sting jet and where it did develop.
04:35But that's my take on it at the moment. Nonetheless, it did bring some very strong winds, damaging
04:40winds and cause many impacts. Now, storm Erwin, like I said, was a major feature. There were
04:46a couple of fatalities. There was a lot of disruption. We had over a million properties
04:51in Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland were without power for a time on Friday. And
04:55there was a lot of damage to property as well. And these are the kind of things that
05:00we want to make people aware of, that they could happen when we have a storm and a system
05:05like storm Erwin coming through. And it's these reasons that we issue our warnings.
05:11This is why we name the storms, to make people aware so that the public and the government
05:17and bodies responsible can take action ahead of the system arriving to prevent these kind
05:24of things occurring, to minimise the risk. We can't get rid of it entirely, but we can
05:29help minimise the risk of the impacts from the storms. And I want to have a little look
05:35at exactly how well we got the message across, because obviously we issued the warnings well
05:44in advance of the system coming through. We were talking about it a good four or five
05:48days before the system arrived. In the week ahead, we mentioned the potential track that
05:53the low pressure could take and the fact that it could come across the UK. And then
05:57on Tuesday, we actually named the storm and we had our warnings updated. And so that's
06:01quite a long lead time. And that no doubt helped with getting the message across. Additionally,
06:07a few other things and stats that we had pushed out. So obviously we had yellow, amber and
06:11then red warnings. And with these warnings, we can see that we had over two million people
06:17viewed our warnings page in the run up to and during storm Erwin. So that's a lot of
06:22people that we were able to reach out to and get the story across that there was going
06:26to be some strong damaging winds. Additionally, other facts. So we had 300 or almost 350,000
06:35people viewed our press release talking about the details regarding storm Erwin. We had
06:391,300 mentions from Met Office experts across the various media channels. And we had almost
06:4715 million impressions across all of our social media channels. So that is just evidence
06:53that the work that we do with these deep dives, our social content, the videos that we put
06:58out, the posts that we put out on Instagram, Twitter or X, and other places, TikTok, etc.
07:05And the press releases, it's all about making sure that the message is getting across and
07:09we're making sure people are as informed as they can be ahead of the storm arriving and
07:15during it so that they can take actions to keep themselves safe. So these are just some
07:19stats to prove that the work that we're doing is helping to get the story across. But let's
07:25look elsewhere. Back, let's move on from Erwin. So it was a very deep low like I mentioned
07:32across the UK. We had a reading of 941.9 hectopascals. But if we dart our minds back just to yesterday,
07:42we had another low pressure coming across the UK. And this one tracked a little bit
07:46further south. And it actually, well, it's still across us at the moment, but it moved
07:51eastwards across the central parts of the UK. And it did bring some severe weather.
07:55We had some intense thunderstorms, large hails, some strong winds, and also some heavy rain
08:01in association with it. In fact, we had a number of warnings, particularly across parts
08:04of the south and west. But it wasn't anywhere near as impactful as Storm Erwin. And so we
08:09didn't name it. Even though there were some impacts and the low itself was coming more
08:14across central parts, it wasn't as severe. And part of the reason being the position,
08:19but also the fact that it wasn't as deep an area of low pressure. It reached around 962
08:25hectopascals as it was reaching Ireland and about 966 as it made its way towards Wales.
08:31So significantly less intense of a feature compared to Storm Erwin. That being said,
08:36it was named, but this time by the Spanish Met Service. So they named it Armenia. And
08:42it's because they had some very strong winds, some heavy rain piling into western parts
08:46of France, but also to parts of Spain and Portugal as well.
08:51Now here's where things get a little bit confusing. And if we put the pressure sequence up, this
08:56is from midday today or one o'clock today. And this is the low. This is the low that
09:00is Armenia. It's still bringing some heavy rain, some heavy thundery downpours across
09:05parts of the UK through today, but it is clearing away towards the east. And as it
09:11does so, the free university in Berlin has actually named it Ivo. I'll come back to that
09:20in a second.
09:21So in Germany, they use their own naming system. Don't tie in with any of the naming groups
09:27across Europe, but they've named it Ivo, which is confusing because this feature has also
09:33been named Ivo. So if I just go back and if I get rid of the jet stream and put rain
09:37on instead. And as we go through the rest of today, I'm just going to put the UK over
09:43here so I'm not standing in the way. And as we go through the rest of today and overnight
09:48into Wednesday, there's another deep area of low pressure that's coming and it's going
09:52to push its way just to the south of the UK. And it's always worth bearing in mind that
09:57with these low pressure systems, the strongest winds are towards the south. If I put the
10:00winds on for a second, you can see those strong winds coming to the south. So really
10:04for the UK, we're not going to see much in the way of windy weather association with
10:07that. But it's pushing eastwards towards France and then as it goes, well, southeastwards
10:16across France. And now this feature has also been named, but this time it's been named
10:21by the Portuguese Met Service because it's bringing some very strong damaging winds to
10:25parts of Portugal, also to parts of Spain and France as well. But in Portugal, that's
10:29where they've named it. They've named this Ivo. So this area of low pressure is called
10:35Ivo. If you speak to many places, we do use the namings that Portuguese, Spanish, French,
10:44that they choose as well. So yes, this is technically storm Ivo, albeit not causing
10:48much in the way of strong winds for the UK, but it is. But so is this low pressure if
10:53you talk to Germany. So that's a little bit confusing. From our point of view, this is
10:58Armenia and this is Ivo. But yeah, there is a little bit of mixed messaging going on
11:03there at the moment. However, as we go forward, I do want to highlight, actually, let's go
11:08to the UK view because whilst I mentioned it's not bringing much in the way of strong
11:13winds for the UK, we are going to see some heavy rain pushing across southern parts as
11:18we go through well overnight tonight and into tomorrow. Now, there's always been a bit of
11:22uncertainty as to exactly how far north this rain is going to get. But I think we're getting
11:28a bit more confident in the idea that we're going to see some heavy rain pushing initially
11:32across parts of the southwest. But if I just pause it here, you can see it's really just
11:37southern most counties, just about staying to the south of London. But it could push
11:40a little bit further north as we go through Wednesday. And so a wet picture there, but
11:46elsewhere, actually a decent amount of fine weather, albeit some fairly frequent showers
11:50across parts of Northern Ireland and parts of Scotland. So this is in association with
11:54storm Ivo, albeit it's not really a storm from our point of view. But in case you hear
12:00that name being battered around, that's why, because the worst of it is staying way to
12:04the south. And that's why it's been named by the Portuguese Met Service. But in terms
12:08of this, I mentioned that there has been some uncertainty about rainfall amounts. And if
12:13we look at 24-hour rainfall totals from a couple of model runs, and we have the Met
12:17office on the left, ECMWF, the European model in the middle, and GFS, the American model
12:22on the right. And you can see the highest rain totals from our current model as it really
12:26just fringing the south coast of Devon and Cornwall, and then more towards Dorset, Hampshire
12:32and further east towards Sussex and Kent. Similar position from ECMWF. GFS, though,
12:38was ever so slightly different with its position, more keeping the heavy rain towards the southwest
12:42rather than the southeast. So some uncertainty, but as we've got nearer the time, greater
12:47agreement with the idea that something like this, a heavy rain across the far south, southeast,
12:52east. Rainfall totals will build up. They shouldn't cause too many issues, but we could
12:56see some localized issues, some flooding. Now, we also mentioned that we have some fairly
13:00frequent showers across, pardon me, across, I'll get there eventually, across parts of
13:06Scotland and Northern Ireland. But not only are they going to be rain, they're also going
13:11to bring some sleet and snow. And we can see that if we look at our freezing level, if
13:14I dart ahead to tomorrow at 6 a.m., and the freezing level is the height above sea level
13:20where we have the zero degrees, isotherm zero degrees. So anything above this is, well,
13:26below freezing. Anything below is above freezing. And you can see the freezing level over parts
13:32of Scotland and Northern Ireland is dropping to around four, 600 meters, a little bit lower
13:36perhaps in some places. And so that means above maybe two, 300 meters tomorrow, any
13:41of those showers are quite likely to be falling as sleet or snow. So a bit of snow, nothing
13:46unusual for the time of year. It's the middle of winter, but yeah, a bit of snow over the
13:50higher ground towards the north, much milder than this further south, freezing level around
13:541,200 meters, that kind of thing. Then let's look further ahead. And what else did I want
14:02to cover? Yes, let's go through the rest of this week then. And to do that, I'm going
14:06to use the pressure pattern. Let's dart ahead to, actually, let's go back to Wednesday.
14:13And I'm going to get rid of the jet stream and put the rain on instead because I find
14:16it easier. I'm just going to move the UK there just so you can see it better. And so yes,
14:21this is Storm Ivo bringing some wet weather towards the south as we go through Wednesday,
14:25but then eventually clears away, I think through Wednesday night into Friday, a couple of things
14:29that we need to be aware of. There will still be rain fringing far southeastern parts. That
14:34may take a little while to clear away. So it could be a bit of a damp start in the far
14:38southeast. And there are going to be quite a few showers around. But the bigger talking
14:42point is this high pressure that's building in. High pressure means things are going to
14:45settle down. So it looks like quite a quiet night Wednesday into Thursday. With that,
14:50we could get a touch of frost in places where we get any clear skies. There's going to be
14:54more cloud the closer you are to this system, this weather system, this rain towards south.
14:59So some southern parts clinging on to some cloudy skies. But yeah, there will be a touch
15:03of frost, maybe even a few pockets of fog, freezing fog, that kind of thing, first thing
15:08on Thursday morning. But otherwise, Thursday itself is looking like a largely decent day
15:13for many places. Just a few showers, though not a particularly large number of these,
15:18to be honest, for most places. Then we do get another weather system coming through.
15:22It's a front making its way eastwards as we go through overnight Thursday into Friday.
15:28It's going to bring some rain, but not a huge amount. If we actually look on the UK picture
15:33and I'm not a fan of the four ups, let's go with this view.
15:39And if we go through, so you can see some heavy rain pushing into parts of Scotland,
15:44but it moves through quite quickly. And as the system makes its way towards the southeast,
15:47as we go through towards Friday lunchtime, it kind of breaks up. So there will be some
15:52heavier bursts of rain, but it should move through fairly quickly. And so just to dart
15:57back to Thursday, like I said, Thursday looks pretty fine for many places, just a few showers
16:02around. And we keep with that towards the southeast until lunchtime on Friday when
16:07that system comes through. But then there's more fine weather falling in behind because
16:12we have another ridge of high pressure building. So if I go back to our pressure pattern, I've
16:16clicked the wrong button. And if I go back to Friday and you can see there's another
16:22ridge of high pressure coming in behind the front. And so that should settle the weather
16:25down again for a little period of time. But that doesn't last particularly long as we
16:30go into the weekend. And if I dart forward and we have two things. Well, so notice the
16:37jet stream is driving an area of low pressure quite far to the northwest of the UK, but
16:42driving an area of low pressure and that heads northwards. And so then the talking point
16:49is that we're going to end up kind of sandwiched in between low pressure towards the northwest
16:53of us and high pressure somewhere towards the south. As we go through the weekend, we're
16:57going to have another area of high pressure building from the southwest. So that's going
17:02to be dominating the story as we go into Sunday across parts of the southwest. But meanwhile,
17:08the jet stream is then driving an another area of low pressure. And this one looks like
17:11it's going to track a little bit closer to the UK. And so it looks like we're going to
17:17have low pressure to the north, high pressure to the south. And that is the perfect ingredients
17:22or the perfect ingredients for us to get quite a westerly flow coming across the UK.
17:28And so a westerly flow brings a lot of unsettled weather, mainly towards northern northwestern
17:32parts. I think that's where we're going to see the wettest weather as we go through next
17:36week. Meanwhile, towards the south southeast, a greater chance of seeing the higher pressure
17:40being more dominant. So drier here. That does bring other hazards with it. We're talking
17:44some more frosts and more fog as we go through the next two weeks or so. But it's towards
17:49the north northwest where we're going to have a wet picture. And really, with low pressure
17:53to north, high pressure to the south, this westerly flow, well, that's quite a talking
17:58point. That's what we're likely to see quite a lot of as we go through the next three months.
18:04Now, we have just issued our three month outlook. Remember, our three month outlooks give an
18:10idea of what is most likely to happen weather wise as we go through the next three months.
18:16So I have the most recent one here. This looks at February, March and April, and it
18:20highlights a couple of things. To look at this in a little bit more detail and to understand
18:26how we came up with this, I'm joined now by Deputy Chief Meteorologist Chris Balmer. Thanks
18:31Chris for joining me. For those of you who are regular Deep Dive viewers, you may remember
18:36Chris, we had a look at the winter outlook when it came out at the end of November. But
18:41now we're talking February, March and April. And what does it show? We have a lot of statistics
18:46behind us. Yeah, okay, so this is the latest three month outlook which we've issued. So
18:50this is, these probabilities are for February, March and April. And just to kind of remind
18:56you what this is showing, so we compare our seasonal forecast to climate and we put that
19:01into kind of five bins, quintiles we call them. And so we look at the forecast and work
19:06out kind of how the distribution of forecast compares to the distribution of climate. So
19:11in simple terms, in these numbers here, if we've got a forecast which is just mimicking
19:15climatology so there's not really any signal, for all these boxes we would see 20, 60, 20%.
19:22So in an average three month period we'd be looking at 20% colder than average, 60% warmer
19:29than average, 20% milder than average for the forecast. Yeah, if there wasn't really
19:34any signal. Yeah, I get you. If there was no signal. And that's the same for both temperature,
19:38rainfall and strength of wind. But these numbers are very different to that. Yes. On this column
19:45they're a lot higher, so there's a fairly strong signal for milder, wetter and windier.
19:51Yeah, so we can see there's definitely a shift towards mild, wet and windy. It's quite normal
19:56with background climate change that we see a shift towards mild. But actually for this
20:00seasonal forecast probably what is more notable is we've got quite a strong shift towards
20:05wet and windy. So that kind of signal is stronger than we would normally see. So that suggests
20:11for the UK for this three month period, February, March and April, there's a greater likelihood
20:16of conditions being wetter than average and windier than average. In fact, wetter and
20:20windier, the chance of that is they're both higher than near average, which is quite unusual
20:25for these three month outlooks, isn't it? It is, yeah. That's a kind of stronger signal
20:29than we normally see when we're doing these. So why is this happening? You've sent me a
20:33couple of charts, let's look at this one. So these are sea surface temperature anomalies.
20:39Yeah, so just to gather it, so this is a map obviously of the world. We have Australia
20:42here, Asia, North and South America. We're here, but what are we drawing from this? Well,
20:50just kind of before we talk about this, I guess putting the forecast together, we use
20:53models, we use our seasonal models like we do for kind of shorter range weather predictions.
20:57But with that, we also know, we look at things called teleconnections. There's a range of
21:02teleconnections, so remote influences from different parts of the globe that can influence
21:05the distribution of weather patterns for areas like the UK and across the North Atlantic.
21:10One that many people are aware of is the El Niño-Southern Oscillation. One of the key
21:16things about that is it has two key phases, El Niño and La Niña. El Niño, what we had
21:22last winter, that's kind of what is known as the warm phase of the Pacific, and La Niña,
21:27which we've kind of currently got more than a second, is the cool phase of the Pacific.
21:31So if we look at, as you pointed out, the map which we've got on here, this is a map
21:35of sea surface temperature anomalies. And so we can see across the central parts of
21:39the Pacific, these blues are showing us that we're around about a degree or so, or maybe
21:43a little bit less than that on average, but there's temperatures around kind of a half
21:48a degree to a degree below average in these areas. And you've got these boxes drawn on,
21:53so this box called Niño 3.4, this is where we kind of track the index. So when you get
21:58a certain strength of anomaly, that's when you kind of can suggest that this has got
22:03a La Niña pattern. And one thing that's important is we've got colder than average
22:06sea surface temperatures in this area, and then kind of around Indonesia, what we call
22:11the maritime continent, it's warmer than average. And in the tropical areas, higher than average
22:18sea surface temperature tends to mean more showers and thunderstorm activity. And this
22:22pattern will persist for the next few months, which means we'll see more showers and thunderstorms
22:27across this area, and fewer across this area. And why that's important is we know that
22:33that has a remote influence on the weather patterns across the North Atlantic. And what
22:38that means for the UK is, while it doesn't give us a kind of definite answer about the
22:41seasonal forecast, we know when we've got a La Niña state, during late winter research
22:46has shown that that favours wetter and windier, milder than average conditions. So that's
22:50consistent with what the models are showing us at the moment.
22:53And this is a similar idea to what we did discuss when we were looking at the three
22:57month winter outlook before. We suggested that towards the end of winter, which we're
23:01now heading towards, this kind of set up would be. So it's going relatively to plan.
23:07What does this chart show?
23:09Yeah, well so ENSO, the Amnesia Southern Oscillation Index, is just one thing that we're looking
23:13at. There's lots of different variables which influence the seasonal forecast. Another big
23:18topic, hot topic if you like, in the winter is what's going on in the stratosphere. So
23:23some viewers will be aware of the term sudden stratospheric warmings. And once those occur,
23:28they're often associated with potentially severe cold outbreaks across Northern Europe.
23:34So this chart we're looking at here at the moment is a measure of winds in the stratosphere.
23:38So the stratosphere is the layer of the atmosphere above the troposphere where we live and where
23:42our weather is. And these lines, so the red line is the forecast strength of the stratospheric
23:48polar vortex. This is the strength of the winds in the layer at our latitudes above
23:52the troposphere. And at the moment, they're much stronger in a westerly phase, much stronger
23:58than the climatological average.
24:01So the blue line's climatological average and the red line's the forecast for February
24:05and March.
24:06Exactly.
24:07And the winds are, particularly to start with, are much higher. And so that signals that
24:11an SSW's unlikely.
24:13Yeah, so that interacts with the jet stream, which is at the top of the troposphere. And
24:19what that means is that that's favouring a stronger than average jet stream. And as you
24:23pointed to, there's the odd projection from our ensembles, and we've run the forecast
24:27many times, that shows a significant weakening of these westerly winds. But really the main
24:32signal is that we're going to see stronger than average westerly winds within the stratosphere
24:36as we go through the late winter. So a very low chance of a sudden stratospheric warming
24:41at this stage.
24:42And then the winds kind of, well, they drop as we go deeper into spring. And that's normal,
24:50right?
24:51Yeah, that's typical. Within the stratosphere, the stratospheric polar vortex is a winter
24:55phenomenon. So it spins up in the winter. And then once you get into the summer, that
25:00actually completely breaks down and you get a reversal of the winds in the stratosphere.
25:04So we always see a final warming and a reversal of the stratospheric winds at some point in
25:09the spring. But that doesn't tend to have anywhere near the kind of influences, the
25:13sudden stratospheric warming, which is something we watch out for during the winter.
25:17So back to the UK. And this is mean sea level pressure anomaly, pressure at mean sea level
25:26anomaly. And we're looking at higher than average pressure towards the south and lower
25:32than average pressure towards the north. This is for February, March and April. And so westerlies.
25:38Yeah, it's important how we interpret this chart. So we have to think about where there
25:42is skill in these models at this kind of lead time. Trying to work out exactly where low
25:46pressures are going to track, where we're going to track across the UK or whether they're
25:49going to be up to the north of the UK. We don't really have that skill. But one thing
25:53we have, we do know, is that seasonal models do have skill in predicting the phase of the
25:57North Atlantic Oscillation. So that's the pressure gradient between Iceland and the
26:01Azores down here. So typically, or normally, we have lower pressure up here and higher
26:07pressure down here. So we normally have westerly winds in the UK. What this is telling us is
26:11we're going to have, well, this forecast suggests we'll have, for the full three month period,
26:15we'll have lower than average pressure across or near Iceland and higher than average pressure
26:19across the Azores. So that's pointing to, for that three month period, favouring a positive
26:24phase of the North Atlantic Oscillation. So even stronger westerlies. So even stronger
26:28westerlies or more persistent westerlies. And so that means, again, consistent what
26:32we talk about. There's an increased likelihood of spells of wetter and windier weather and
26:36generally milder than average conditions. But one thing that is really difficult to
26:39pull out of these charts, because this is for the full February, March and April, is
26:43whether those low pressure systems will be the kind of severe lows which track across
26:46the UK or whether they track to the north. So still being bouts of kind of wet and windy
26:51weather, but kind of more typical and less severe than some of the weather we've seen recently.
26:56So whilst it is going to be, or it's likely to be, wet and windy through a large chunk
27:01of the next three months, doesn't necessarily mean we're going to see many storms, doesn't
27:06necessarily mean we'll see the repeat of anything like storm Erwin. But we could have something
27:10called storm clustering. What's that? Well, yeah, so we've certainly, I think based on
27:15this pattern, it means compared to the normal risk, the risk of disruptive windstorms is
27:20higher than normal for the next three months. That's what we can tell from this chart. But
27:23yeah, weather and you mentioned there, this kind of idea, once we get into patterns, you
27:28can see these low pressure systems repeatedly move over the UK. So there is an increased
27:33risk of that as we go through, particularly February, March. But it's very difficult at
27:38this stage to kind of pin down on that. So storm clustering is when you get like a couple
27:42or a few storms coming one after the other over just like a few days, a week or so, which
27:47is kind of similar to what we've had recently. I know we didn't name two of them, but with
27:51storm Erwin, then followed by Armenia and then Ivo, quite close to the UK, that's the
27:58storm clustering. Yeah, exactly. So, I mean, people that live in the UK know that our weather
28:02patterns are forever changing, but they often get stuck in a rut for a week or two. So once
28:07they're in a strong, positive NAO phase, it does mean that there's a chance that we'll
28:11see kind of repeated low pressure systems run across the UK, kind of, yeah, repeated
28:16after themselves. I mean, we're not saying that will definitely happen, but there's a
28:18greater chance of that happening in the next couple of months. And I think one final thing
28:23that we do need to point out, whilst wetter, windier, milder than average is significantly
28:28more likely, that definitely doesn't mean that we won't get any colder spells. We could
28:32have some wintry weather, there could be some colder periods as well mixed in with that.
28:36But just the general trend, when we look back at the three months that are coming up,
28:40that's what we're going to see, wetter, windier, milder. Absolutely. It's still late winter,
28:44so we don't rule out any colder spells. And also, this chart we've not really talked about,
28:48it's got higher than average pressure kind of across and to the south of the UK. So,
28:53if we kind of read this pattern, it suggests that the wet weather will probably be more
28:57focused on the north and northwest of the country. So there will very likely be still
29:01some periods of dry weather, especially across the south. So as ever with the UK weather,
29:05we'll see variability through the next three months.
29:07But this pattern, that's very much how it's looking for the next, well, as we go through
29:11much of next week, to be honest. I'll be doing the 14-day outlook shortly, which will go
29:15on the app. And so I'll be updating that, talking about basically this kind of pattern.
29:19But do check that out later on this evening, if you'd like to know more about the 14 days.
29:24Thanks so much for joining me, Chris. I did say I'd get you back, and I did. But I'm looking
29:29forward to you joining me once more. We can talk three-month outlook or another topic,
29:33you can choose. Now, as well as the influence on the UK, these teleconnections that Chris
29:40mentioned do have an influence on other parts of the world. He mentioned the fact that there
29:45are some higher-than-average sea surface temperatures at the moment across parts of Asia. And that
29:50has caused some major problems with regards to rainfall. So in Indonesia, Malaysia, and
29:59Brunei, they're having some intense thundery downpours. They've seen rainfall totals really
30:04building up. I'm just going to get there. Here we go. Rainfall totals building up, and
30:08they're going to see more heavy thundery rain through the next few days. We're talking 100
30:13to 150 millimetres in just a day. Some places seeing 350, 400 millimetres building up. There
30:19have already been some major landslides with a number of fatalities. There's been some
30:24significant flooding, and there is more of this to come. And as Chris highlighted, we
30:29could see more of this as we go through the next few weeks really because of the setup
30:33that we have going on. And it's just interesting how the weather going on around the world
30:38can influence the UK in one way and then influence a different part of the world in a completely
30:42different way. And so it's just fascinating looking at all this. Now, thanks very much
30:47for joining me for this deep dive. I think that's everything that I wanted to cover for
30:50you. Like I said, the 14-day outlook will be updated on our app later on this evening.
30:55So do check that out. Honor will be here with the 10-day trend tomorrow. Otherwise, I'll
30:59see you again soon. But don't forget to hit like, share and leave a comment as well. Bye-bye.