The UK faces a snow “blitz” before the end of January with swathes of yellow and purple spreading across the country in the wake of Christmas. Live snow maps have turned yellow and purple as the south of England is hammered by an Arctic snow storm.
WX Charts maps and charts, which are projected using Met Desk data, shows yellow, purple and red patches sweeping over the Midlands and down through the south on 29 January. Manchester, Birmingham and Wales could be hit by as much as 5cm snow per hour.
The weather will be accompanied by strong winds. Exacta Weather’s James Madden said: “As the continuous and fairly fixed benign but foggy weather continues for now, unfortunately, so does the uncertainty within the main third-party computer models for around this time next week and during late January and early February as to what will actually happen next, particularly over the past 24 hours or so with some big discrepancies and changes to that expected easterly pattern.
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“However, despite these outputs currently making things suddenly less exciting from elsewhere, this is NOT how things are likely to pan out over the next 7-10 days. Firstly, it is still very early for what will happen in this part of the forecasting period next week for the third-party weather models to agree, and there is no real consensus among the main third-party computer models as to what will happen for this period as of yet, and despite the current output showing more southerly winds within certain models for this period, the easterly is still an option within other models.
“These types of day-to-day wobbles are to be expected from them and often happen within this range, and even if the projected easterly from elsewhere does begin to fade further over the coming days, this doesn’t necessarily narrow our options to tap into some good cold and snow in this exact same forecast period due to other unconsidered aspects and atmospheric disturbances that I have been covering.”
He said: “The outlook is still very good in going forward for cold and widespread snow returning for this same period, despite these recent changes from elsewhere…” He signed off by saying: “Watch this space! Additionally, it will also be cold enough for some sporadic snow showers to start returning across the far north of Scotland throughout Monday to Wednesday of next week to begin with.”