UK Weather - Spring 2023

[Simon Culling]

A change of month and a change of season, but the weather is not quite catching up. Here in Tiverton, the first five days of March have been dull and overcast apart from Thursday (2nd March) when the cloud broke up and we did have plenty of sunshine. It has also got progressively colder with a maximum today and yesterday (Sun + Sat) of just 5°C which is colder than any day in February. This has occurred without a change of airmass as the high pressure has only drifted a little to the NW.

The Met Office are going for a sharp cold spell this week as cold northerly winds spread south today and tomorrow, but the worst of the weather appears to be for more northern parts with mostly just cold rain for us in the south. There could be quite a bit of snow over Scotland, but that is not unusual in March and I think a level 3 cold weather alert may be a bit over the top for England + Wales. We shall see.

There were initial reports of another earthquake in the English Midlands on Saturday, but it turned out to be a sonic boom from RAF jets assisting a civilian plane that was having communications problems.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-l ... ium=social

[Simon Culling]

The cold snap duly arrived towards the end of last weekend and has given Scotland and N Ireland and the far north of England some decent wintry weather. The clear cold air struggled to get into the south and got mixed in with fronts pushing NE into it and we have had a lot of cloud down here with some rain + snow.

Here in Tiverton we had snow overnight into Tuesday and I measured 2cm in the morning with a near full cover. The photo below does not show any roads which were only partially covered in the town. As the front approached SW England, it introduced a warmer slot of air just above the ground and as a result we had a couple of hours with ice pellets mixed in with the sleet + snow into mid-morning. We do not see this form of precipitation very often in the UK and they were very small (1-2mm) clear balls of ice - just like frozen raindrops, and they make a lovely clicking noise when they fall. Today, Thursday 9th March, it has turned much milder here in the south (up to 12°C in Tiverton), but the cold air has not been displaced further north and there has been quite a bit of snow in the middle of the UK with 20-25cm on the higher ground of northern England + Wales (above about 150m amsl) - see BBC article.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-64904704

With regard to the low temperatures, these have been in northern Scotland over snowfields of 10-20cm of snow on the ground. These are the lowest figures on the last two nights:

Wednesday 8th March, -15.4°C at Kinbrace (Caithness), -14.7°C at Loch Glascarnoch (Highland) and -14.4°C at Braemar (Aberdeenshire)
Thursday 9th March, -16.0°C at Altnaharra (Sutherland) and -15.8°C at Kinbrace

[Nev]

Nice 'snownado' or 'snow devil' in the Shetlands on Wednesday...

https://news.sky.com/video/rare-snow-to ... d-12829041

[Simon Culling]

Thanks Nev for posting the link to the tornado that was observed near Sandness of Shetland - which is to the NNE of the Scottish mainland and much closer than me to the source of the cold air. I cannot recall ever seeing a tornado over snow in the UK.

The snow duly moved into northern England on Thurs/Fri and gave some very deep falls in this area with many places seeing 10-25cm of level snow and some up to around 40cm. The attached photos are from the higher parts of the city of Sheffield (around 150-250m amsl) and show at least 30cm of level snow. The pictures are copied from the Twitter feeds of Laurie Smith/Paul Haigh.

Over this weekend it has turned much milder (up to 13°C in Tiverton today, and yes, it is raining), but the colder weather will return into next week with further snow in the north. Then back to much milder weather by next weekend.

The CET for March was 3.4°C (-2.3°C) up to the 11th and the EWR was 34mm up to the 10th, which is 52% of the monthly average of 65mm.

[Simon Culling]

The mild weather has remained in place and it has become more unsettled with a SW flow and plenty of rain and showers. This looks like continuing for the foreseeable future. A couple of days last week (and today Sat 18th) saw 16°C reached in a few places.

Quite a significant tornado occurred last Monday (13th March) around 6am in the morning in a village in the Derbyshire Peak District which caused quite a bit of damage. Attached is TORRO's initial thoughts (from their Facebook page) - we will probably lift the rating to T4 when all data is collected.

Today (Sat 18th) three funnel clouds were seen in England on what was a showery day. Here in Tiverton, most of the showers were in the morning and we managed a bit of Spring sunshine this afternoon - in what has been a very dull March so far.

The CET for March up to the 17th was 4.9°C (-0.8°C) and the EWR up to the 16th was 61mm which is 93% of the monthly average.

[Simon Culling]

It has been quite mild in the last few days but also on the wet side with rain or showers on all days. We seem to be catching up for the dry weather in February.

The unsettled weather looks set to continue for a while and it will turn quite a bit colder from Sunday as the wind switches round to north behind the next low pressure crossing the UK tonight and into Sunday.

Yesterday (Friday 24th March) was a showery day across most of the UK with discrete lines of showers being seen on the radar - the one across southern England shown below was probably triggered over Dartmoor (SW England) in the morning and propagated NE in the general WSW flow along a convergence line - see tweet attached below. A reply to the tweet gives a radar derived rainfall total map for the UK and clearly shows the bands of showers - some places got up to 30mm or so during Friday whilst others had no more than a few light showers.

https://twitter.com/simon_culling/statu ... 1408976907