Friday 9th February 2024

Fairly unsettled ahead.

No suitable photograph so you’ll have to cope with one of mine from cloudy Croydon.

Today will see plenty of heavy showers throughout the day – mostly cloudy at first but there will be some sunny breaks at times as the day goes on. Winds easing and staying mild, around 12’C or so. Still some showers around in the evening but they will fade overnight, some clear spells and getting down to around 6’C.

The general picture into the weekend sees a fairly complex area of low pressure over most of western Europe, including the UK.

However, for Saturday there will be no weather fronts close by, and with little in the way of land convection until spring arrives, it will be fairly dry, despite low pressure in control. That said, there will be a few light/moderate showers dotted around over the lunchtime period, and perhaps first thing. Otherwise not too bad a day, sunny spells, some cloud at times, and mild again – 11’C or so. Cloudier overnight, one or two showers later in the night, and down to around 4’C.

Sunday will be rather cloudy with plenty of showers – some on the heavy side, as low pressure slowly pulls away to the east. A bit of sunshine at times though, around 9’C and breezy. Fairly clear skies overnight, and a chilly night – down to around 2’C, a frost possible in more sheltered spots.

Monday starts sunny. Some fair weather cloud bubbling up, with one or two showers around during the middle part of the day, in the westerly breeze. Probably squeezing 10’C. Uncertain overnight – more likely another chilly night, but a chance of some rain spreading across the south instead.

Fairly low confidence for Tuesday, but the slightly more likely outcome sees cloud and some rain spread across.

Again details a bit uncertain, but more likely for Wednesday and Thursday we see low pressure close by, some rain at times, some wind too – but perhaps the mildness will be the more notable feature – with yet more unusually warm air spreading into Spain, some of this potentially filtering our way, so something between 11’C and 15’C possible.

A lot of uncertainty about the road ahead – I had thought February would be colder and drier than normal, but clearly it is so far milder and wetter than normal! Starting to assume something has changed, but I’m not entirely sure what – so whilst the background signals point to February being colder and drier than normal, this is being over-ridden by some other factor.

So I’m no longer willing to say that colder and drier is the more likely outcome for the rest of February. I’ll try to do some more research over the weekend…perhaps whatever is driving the possible sudden stratospheric warming event that could happen in a week’s time, is also causing the unsettled spell. Or perhaps it is the record warm North Atlantic sea surface temperatures?

Have a good weekend. I better do some work.

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