UK Weather - Winter 2023/24

[Simon Culling]

The first day of winter is a cold one for the UK with further snow showers close to the east coast, but generally sunny + frosty for most. This morning was the coldest so far this autumn/winter season with the temperature falling to -9.4°C at Shap Fell in Cumbria in NW England. Tonight and into Saturday morning is likely to be even colder with many sites falling below -5°C across the country and we may well see the first -10°C or lower of the season. Here in Tiverton we have a mostly clear blue sky (just a few Cu) and plenty of sunshine, but the temperature is only 2°C at midday on Friday.

A few snow pictures in this BBC piece - as can be seen, amounts are very small in most places.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-67576844

The forecast for the next few days is for a push of milder air from the Atlantic from Sunday onwards, but its progress is not clear and may be rather slow. Quite a few model solutions keep the weather generally on the cold side with rain and/or snow at times. It looks like one of those messy setups that will only shift when the jet stream gets re-invigorated and the models will flip-flop daily.

[Simon Culling]

As expected, the mercury fell well below -10°C in Scotland on both Friday and Saturday night - these are the lows at official sites:

Saturday 2nd December, -11.0°C at Aviemore
Sunday 3rd December, -12.5°C at Altnaharra

Local PWS reported lows down to -15°C on both nights and the daytime maximum on Saturday at many sites in the Scottish Highlands was in the range of -3°C to -5°C.

Further south the weather has been very mixed with sharp frosts and areas of rain and/or snow moving eastwards across England + Wales. Many places in England (including London) had an 'ice day' on Saturday (2nd Dec) due to persistent fog and low cloud, but the temperature rose overnight above 0°C into Sunday as rain and snow (and some freezing rain) moved eastwards. A very messy weather set-up and not easy for the forecasters - rain in the south (due to warmer air aloft) but snow further north. BBC story has a few good pictures:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-67604834

Here in Tiverton we had a sharp frost on Saturday morning with the temperature down to -6°C in the town and as low as -8°C out in the sticks. After an early frost soon after sunset, it clouded over and we have had quite a bit of cold rain overnight into Sunday, but it is now (lunchtime, Sunday) much milder at 7°C with more showers + rain to come this afternoon + evening.

[Simon Culling]

Milder and much wetter weather has spread into much of the UK in the past day or so with a lot of rain down here in the south - Tiverton had around 35mm of rain yesterday (Mon 4th Dec). The cold weather is hanging on in the far north of Scotland and Altnaharra had another severe frost this morning with a low of -10.4°C.

The CET for December was 1.3°C (-3.2°C) up to the 4th and the EWR was 19mm up to the 3rd which is 18% of the monthly average of 104mm. The CET will rise significantly over the next week.

There was a significant, albeit localised, snow event in southern Cumbria on Saturday 2nd December when a shower 'streamer' became established off the SW coast of Cumbria and moved inland (in a NE direction) and just got stuck in the same place from late morning to well into the evening. The line of showers kept being fed by new cells off the Irish Sea (where there were quite a few sferics) and dumped over a foot of snow on more inland parts of the southern Lake District around Coniston Water and Lake Windemere. The BBC article and attached photos (Coniston + Hawkshead) give a flavour - and you can imagine the local traffic chaos.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cumbria-67605553

[Simon Culling]

The cold spell has petered out in the last couple of days and we are now firmly in a regime of wet and windy weather. Here in Tiverton we have had the thick end of 2" of rain in the last 3 days and it has become much milder - up to 10°C today (Thurs 7th Dec). Thankfully, the forecast is for a build of pressure by the weekend and a much drier albeit still mild outlook.

The linked tweet has a map of the snow depth in southern Cumbria by late evening last Saturday (2nd Dec) and I have copied + attached said map. It was compiled from radar estimates but also numerous snow depth reports from the public following an appeal on social media. The Met Office only has one automatic site in the area concerned on Walney Island and this reported around 35mm of rain/snow from this event.

https://twitter.com/weatherquest_uk/sta ... 5410389454

[Simon Culling]

The build of pressure has been put back a few days and we have two named storms here in the UK. Firstly, Storm Elin arrived today (Saturday 9th Dec) and was named by Met Eireann as it arrived - seems to have caught the various met offices on the hop. The strongest winds affected Eire + the centre of the UK, but the highest gusts I can find were only 65-75mph, so not sure why this was named. Here in Tiverton, we had another inch of rain overnight and a blustery Saturday with wind gusts of around 40mph - but only a few light showers during the day.

The next named system, Storm Fergus is due to arrive late on Sunday, but looks a repeat of Elin in many ways with the strongest winds again in Eire and the parts of the UK bordering the Irish Sea. Again, not sure why there has been a rush to name this system as it appears to have much less rain associated with it compared to Elin. A few more blustery days into next week and then a build of pressure from the SW looks on the cards - with some models putting a big high over the south of the UK by next weekend.

CET for December was 2.9°C (-1.7°C) up to the 8th and the EWR was 48mm up to the 7th which is 46% of the monthly average.

[Simon Culling]

Storm Fergus crossed the UK on Sunday and out into the North Sea by early on Monday (11th Dec) giving a brief run of strong westerly winds, but nothing that should warrant a naming of this system. However, in advance of the strong winds, a showery trough crossing Eire gave a significant tornado to the small town of Leitrim at lunchtime on Sunday. Leitrim is in the north of the country - about 15 miles south of the border. A preliminary look at the damage suggests T4/T5 damage on the TORRO scale, or roughly EF2 on the American scale. Thankfully, no-one was seriously hurt and only two people sustained minor injuries.

The video on the attached tweet clearly shows the vortex - including a couple of electrical flashes/shortings.

https://twitter.com/KildareMet/status/1 ... 4227304588

[Simon Culling]

Yet another probable tornado has been reported in the UK - this time in the county of Surrey and only a few km from London Gatwick, the second busiest airport in the UK. This occurred early afternoon on Tuesday 12th December as a showery trough crossed southern England with a few embedded thunderstorms. A TORRO site investigator is visiting today to determine the cause of the reported damage.

The weather is calming down for the southern half of the UK with a big high pressure system now situated over Biscay/western France - this has a nickname of a 'Bartlett High' and can become a persistent feature in some winters. It has brought quiet, mild + cloudy weather to the us in the south, but active fronts crossing the north (and particularly the north west) of the UK will give copious amounts of rain to the hills + mountains of NW Scotland - indeed, the Met Office have an Amber Warning in force for up to 175mm of rain over the weekend in NW Scotland.

Attached map is for 12 noon today, Friday 15th December 2023.

The post contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v1.0

[Simon Culling]

The heavy rainfall in the NW of Scotland lived up to the warnings with around 175mm falling in a few places on low ground in the three days to 9am on Monday 18th December, but I have not seen any reports of flooding or landslides. Just a normal weekend rainfall for the tough Scots.

It has remained mild in most of the UK as we are stuck in a SW to W regime with cloudy skies and patchy rain at times - all very boring and reminiscent of John's Geraldine Clag - we have had very little sunshine here in Tiverton in the last week and there is not much on offer for the coming 5-7 days. No white Christmas either as the mild theme generally prevails except for the far north of Scotland.

A deep low (around 965mb) will move ESE from Iceland to Denmark (and then on to western Russia) over the next couple of days and this will introduce a chillier NW flow and bring 2-3 days of very windy weather for all of the UK. The strongest of the winds will be in the north, but there is some concern of a rotor effect occurring as the wind passes over the Scottish Highlands and the Pennines (in particular) and that this could mean some very strong gusts on the eastern side of these areas of high ground. Gusts to 80mph might be possible if the wind is in just the right direction for funnelling to occur.

The CET for December was 5.6°C (+1.1°C) up to the 18th and the EWR was 95mm also up to the 18th, which is 91% of the monthly average.

[Simon Culling]

The low pressure duly moved ESE through the North Sea last Wednesday bringing a windy day to much of NW Europe - the storm was named Pia by the Danish Meteorological Institute. It gave winds to around 80mph in Scotland, but some of the oil rigs in the North Sea recorded gusts approaching 100mph as did one site on the Danish coast. Thankfully it occurred outside a spring tide period, so the storm surge down the North Sea (of about 1-2m) had minimal impact.

Since the passing of Storm Pia, the UK has remained in a strong westerly flow with a lot of cloud with areas of rain + showers, particularly on the western side of our islands. Here in Tiverton we have had a run of five cloudy and windy days since Wednesday with constant light rain and/or drizzle making for a very dull run up to Christmas. The big day is going to be wet and windy over most of the UK and the unsettled weather will continue well into the coming week. On the plus side it was very mild today (Sunday 24th Dec) with 15°C reached quite widely in eastern England despite very little sunshine.

Many good example of nacreous clouds (or mother of pearl clouds) were photographed over much of the UK on Thursday, Friday + Saturday of this week and these are quite rare visitors to us. They are clouds in the lower stratosphere and require a temperature of -80°C or lower to form and this has been the case over the UK in the last few days as the Polar Vortex has been slightly displaced towards western Europe - see attached 10hPa chart for 06Z on 21st December and an example photograph from Yorkshire (taken from Twitter). Too cloudy here in Tiverton to see them.

[Simon Culling]

We have had very miserable weather over the Christmas period with low cloud, mist + persistent drizzle on both Christmas Eve + the day itself. Here in Tiverton we managed about 12mm of rain + drizzle over both days with the temperature varying between only 10°C and 12°C. At least it was mild and we required the minimum of central heating usage.

The very unsettled weather looks like continuing until New Year with yet another named storm (Gerrit) due tomorrow with more wind and rain countrywide. Even though it was cold enough for a sprinkling of snow on Christmas Day in the far NE of Scotland, the much milder weather being enjoyed by the rest of us has now reached these parts and this mild theme also looks like continuing this week. However, there is much excitement about a possible SSW early in January, but we should remember that such events are not a guarantee of cold weather in any one area and recent history has shown that the lobe of polar cold tends to fall over North America or Russia rather than Europe.

For those taking the traditional dip in the sea on Boxing Day morning, the SST's are still a little above average here in the UK. Met Office map for today is attached.

[TonyT]

You have to ask, what's the point in naming storms in this way if they come along every week or two? Surely the idea was to name them so they could be unambiguously referred to (post-event) in the historical record? Yet if there are many such storms in a year then naming them offers no real advantage as the names fade into a mass of named storms, no different to trying to recall "that nasty depression which came across Scotland in early spring"?

[NZ Thunderstorm Soc]

We have had very miserable weather over the Christmas period with low cloud, mist + persistent drizzle on both Christmas Eve + the day itself. Here in Tiverton we managed about 12mm of rain + drizzle on both days with the temperature varying between only 10°C and 12°C. At least it was mild and we required the minimum of central heating usage.

Bit like that here, Simon. Just low cloud and clagg for most of the time. Had the heater going here last night.
Today is not much improvement with it being only 13C outside here at the moment.

[Simon Culling]

TonyT, I tend to agree with you on this. The Met Office guidance on the naming of storms states "a storm will be named when it has the potential to cause disruption or damage which could result in an Amber or Red warning". They use a standard impacts/likelihood matrix to determine whether a Yellow, Amber or Red warning should be issued. Gerrit and the last two storms have only had Yellow warnings for wind and/or rain for the UK, so it is not always clear as to why they have been named. We should remember that Met Eireann can also name the storms if they issue Amber or Red warnings and this was the case with both Elin + Fergus which subsequently only had Yellow warnings for the UK. It appears that the thinking is that a name will make people relate more to the likely dangers more so than by just issuing warnings, but the danger is that this will in practice reduce the impact of the warnings when not much actually happens. The nuances of whether the naming was initiated by Met Eireann or the Met Office may just be too subtle.

John, after a brighter day on Boxing Day for much of the UK, with some hazy sunshine, we are back to the stratus sheet and increasingly heavy rain here in Tiverton on the morning of the 27th of December and this will stick until late afternoon. Despite the hazy sunshine yesterday, most of the recording sites here in the SW did not actually record any sunshine as it was not bright enough (due to high cloud + the suns low elevation) to actually register on the recorder!!

[Orion]

Roofs were torn off houses, trees blew down and walls collapsed as a small "tornado" tore through Greater Manchester during Storm Gerrit.

Police declared a major incident in Tameside at about 23:45 GMT on Wednesday "due to the severity of the damage caused and potential risk to public safety".

About 100 homes were damaged in the storm and people have been asked to avoid the area.

There have been no reported injuries.

Elsewhere in the UK Storm Gerrit has brought flooding and disrupted travel, with Scotland worst affected.

The north-west of England, the southern coast, Wales and Northern Ireland were also covered by Met Office yellow weather warnings on Wednesday, with heavy rain and wind battering them. ...

More, and photos, at BBC link:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-m ... r-67831843

[Simon Culling]

Thanks for posting the BBC report, Orion. The UK (and Eire) is certainly getting its fair share of tornadoes this autumn/winter - and unusually strong ones at that. The Stalybridge tornado has tentatively been rated at T5 by TORRO, but further investigations are in hand. Storm Gerrit certainly had a sting in its tail and also gave wind gusts up to close to 90mph in the far NE of Scotland + the Northern Isles (particularly Shetland) on Wednesday afternoon and evening.

Thankfully there were no reported injuries from the tornado - occurring at half past eleven in the evening meant most people were in bed.

[NZ Thunderstorm Soc]

I noticed a line of thunderstorms over central England and around Wales and the south of Ireland.
It's winter over there and I find it unusual for thunderstorms to occur there in winter, especially with tornadoes occurring from these thunderstorms?

[Simon Culling]

Hello John - it is not unusual for there to be a few thunderstorms on a winters day in the UK and for the same reason you see them in winter in NZ. When the air is colder than the sea and the air is unstable as well, the sea will provide both the warmth and the moisture for Cb's to develop and this is quite a common occurrence in the UK in winter when we have any polar air over the country - both directly from NW to NE or if we get what is termed 'returning polar air' which is derived originally from the north but has travelled over the Atlantic behind a low and now returns into the UK from the SW or W.

On Wednesday 27th December a number of persistent shower bands formed and aligned SW-NE in the general flow, but by far the strongest moved along the south coast of Eire and where it just clipped the SE of the land it gave hail to over 30mm diameter in Co Wexford. This cell moved across the Irish Sea and formed what looked like a bow echo on the rain radar and ran into NW England, although the lightning seems to have died not long after crossing onto land. There were some very strong wind gusts associated with this convective system, including one to 89mph at RAF Mona on the island of Anglesey just off the NW coast of Wales. The Stalybridge tornado was part of this system as it moved further inland over Greater Manchester.

Attached map (from Blitzortung) shows the lightning strikes on 27th December between 15:00 and 23:30.

[Simon Culling]

The Met Office named a storm at very short notice this morning at around 9am and issued an Amber wind warning for parts of southern England + Wales at the same time. The storm was named Hank and developed quickly on a waving front - these are notoriously difficult to predict strength wise. There were some strong winds reported across the affected area with gusts inland to 70-75mph in places with resulting tree + building damage. There was a gust to 69mph at London Heathrow and 67mph at London City Airport, and these are relatively high for the London area.

Here in Tiverton we had rain or showers all day, but the strong winds passed over us very quickly around 12:45 as the rain ended and the cloud began to break up - we had gusts to around 60mph in and around the town for about 10 minutes.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-67861206

This should be the last of the named storms for a while as towards the end of this week high pressure begins to take over and brings us drier but colder weather - we should see some sunshine and have frosts at night. The charts at the end of the model runs are showing the high pressure retreating a little to the NW and this will let very cold air arrive in the UK from the NE. At the moment it is notably cold over Scandinavia with the first temperature of -40°C or lower being recorded in Lapland this morning.

[Simon Culling]

One final low pressure crossed southern England on Thursday and gave 20-40mm over a wide area (most of the southern half of England + Wales) with inevitably more flooding - the ground is saturated at the moment. The flooding was the worst and most widespread of the winter so far, but thankfully we should have a week or so of drier and colder weather to help with the recovery. See BBC article for more details.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-67878565

The CET for January was 8.2°C (+4.4°C) up to the 5th and the EWR was 51mm also up to the 5th, which is 54% of the monthly average of 94mm.

The final CET for December was 7.0°C (+2.5°C) and the final EWR was 102mm which is 99% of the monthly average - virtually all the rain came in the second half of the month. 2023 was the second warmest year on the 364 year CET series, only a fraction of a degree cooler than 2022.

[Simon Culling]

It has turned a lot colder here in the UK in the last few days as we have picked up a feed of continental air from northern Europe. A cold pool in the easterly flow crossed east to west over southern England yesterday (Monday 8th Jan) and gave a sprinkling of snow to quite a few places. We even had a dusting of snow here in Tiverton during the evening, although it quickly sublimated during Tuesday despite a high of only 2°C in some watery sunshine.

The cold will slowly relent this week as the high, which is currently just north of Scotland, drifts a little SW and allows slightly milder air to move south around the high across the UK from the north - this is air sourced in the Atlantic rather than the Arctic and moving around the high. Whilst I am saying it will be milder, the temperatures will only just return to close to average.

Looking further ahead, the high will probably retrogress further to the NW and as a low moves SE across Scandinavia, a strong northerly flow will push south into the UK later in the coming weekend to give us another cold snap. How long it will last is unclear, but there is the potential for some heavy snow across more central parts of the UK next week.

[Simon Culling]

The first cold spell of the new year never really ended, but a cold front moving south across the UK on Sunday (14th Jan) has introduced a colder Arctic airmass and it is pretty nippy - especially so in Scotland where frequent snow showers have given a decent covering to northern + eastern parts of this country. For England + Wales it has been generally dry + sunny today (Mon 15th Jan) but chilly in the northerly breeze - as this dies down tonight we will see a locally severe frost developing. A few details/photos on this BBC link:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-67980106

It is likely to remain cold for much of the coming week, but any further snow looks confined to more northern parts - just sunny days and frosty nights for us down here in the south. Makes a pleasant change from all the rain, though. However, the 7-10 day range forecasts show a return to Atlantic dominated weather with a number of impactful storms for early next week.

The CET for January was 4.1°C (+0.3°C) up to the 15th and the EWR was 53mm up to the 14th which is 56% of the monthly average.

[Simon Culling]

It continues to be cold here in the UK and especially so further north. Another blast of very cold (and in depth) arctic air has moved south today with frequent heavy snow showers to Northern Ireland and particularly Northern Scotland - there is an Amber Warning for the latter with up to another 20cm of snow possible by Thursday. It was the coldest night of the winter last night with a minimum of -14.0°C at Dalwhinnie in the Highlands on Wednesday morning (17th Jan) and it could be colder still tonight.

Some great pictures from Scotland in this BBC link, but they are mostly from Tuesday and more snow has since fallen.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cw80qpwv1nno

It will remain cold for the rest of the working week, but much milder (and wetter) weather will arrive this weekend. Could be another named storm as the jet stream coming out of North America is very strong at the moment.

[Simon Culling]

The abrupt change in the weather is underway here in the UK with much milder air now over the country - the temperature reached 13°C this afternoon (Sunday 21st Jan) in Tiverton. It is also getting rather windy as Storm Isha begins to approach the UK - at 12Z today it was over 500nm to the west of Eire at 957mb, but is expected to be close to the Shetlands by 06Z on Monday and then at 948mb. The Met Office have issued multiple wind and rain warnings for this storm, with gusts expected to 90mph+ in NW Eire and NW Scotland. They will also be plenty of strong convective gusts in the showery airstream following the main frontal rain + these will persist well into Monday. Graphic attached is the current (15Z Sunday) Met Office warning levels for the whole of the UK.

After another deep low passes to the north of Scotland on Tuesday, high pressure will build from the south west and the weather will change again to more settled conditions with some sunshine and frosts at night, particularly for those of us in the south.

[Simon Culling]

Storm Isha brought the strongest winds of the winter so far with a lot of disruption to transport and sadly, a couple of related deaths.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-68055640

The storm was analysed at 947mb at midnight 21/22 January (see attached Met Office synoptic chart) and the strongest recorded winds were:

99mph at Brizlee Wood (an exposed site in Northumberland)
90mph at Capel Curig (NW Wales)
89mph at Aberdaron (NW Wales)
86mph at Sligo Airport (NW Eire)
85mph at Mace Head (W Eire)
84mph at Salsburgh (central Scotland)

Right on its heals is Storm Jocelyn which will give a wet and windy night in the northern half of the UK overnight into Wednesday. Should be calmer after that.

[Simon Culling]

Storm Jocelyn was not quite as strong as Isha and thankfully far less damage was reported from this storm, although it did hamper repairs and especially to the electricity network. The Met Office have produced a pdf report on both of these storms + it is well worth a read.

https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/binaries/c ... ocelyn.pdf

It has been much quieter since these two storms moved away and rather mild as well, although we did have a frost this morning down here in the south. This rather benign weather will continue for a few more days and possibly through the coming week.

The CET for January was 4.3°C (+0.5°C) up to the 26th and the EWR was 86mm up to the 25th which is 91% of the monthly average.