Cold Spell January 9th to 16th 2016

After some slight disagreement yesterday, the Numerical Weather Models in the last 24 hours have become increasingly aligned and all signal at a significant cold spell, the first of the winter, and perhaps the most substantial cold incursion for a few years.

This evenings EC suite is mouth-watering and builds on strong Ensemble support on the 00z output.

There is now cross-model support for a cold spell, with the key building blocks taking place from around 120hrs.

All major global NWP models are aligned..

GFS


UKM


ECMWF



Further ahead

It seems nailed on we will enter a spell of around 5 days of cold weather with wintry showers and harsh frosts.

Some models want to prolong the cold incursion further and feed in an unstable north-easterly flow, extending the cold spell into what could be a potentially major mid-winter freeze.

EC @ 240hrs




To conclude:

So a major change on the way, time to get your winter clothing sorted and ensure fuel supplies are plentiful.

The good news is it will be much drier and generally much brighter with good periods of sunshine likely. But as the cold spell extends there is the increasing chance of a widespread snow-event.

Snow-fall distribution, heights etc, to be ironed out in the coming days, as the synoptic will evolve in the coming days.