How the ‘pest from the west’ will beat the ‘Beast from the East’

There was much talk at the end of last week about the ‘Beast from the East’ being set to bring some cold and wintry conditions to the UK this week. However, the balance in the atmosphere has changed and the current cold weather looks set to be replaced by milder, wetter weather by the end of the week.

So what has happened in the atmosphere to bring such a dramatic change in the forecast?

As expected at the end of last week, we do have winds blowing from the northeast, tracking across the North Sea from Scandinavia and bringing scattered showers to eastern parts of the country as shown on the chart below. So, we can expect a couple of days of cold and mainly dry weather with a few showers in eastern counties, sharp frosts and some freezing fog at night.

The atmosphere is always finely balanced and for the ‘Beast from the East’ to really ‘bear’ its teeth the high pressure area over Greenland would need to develop and draw the wind in from Europe. It now looks like this is not going to happen and instead the depression to the west of the UK is going to win the atmospheric battle and bring heavy rain and strong winds to us all from Thursday.

Met Office forecasters will be monitoring this developing weather situation throughout the week and have already issued warnings to give advanced notice of the potential impacts from the heavy rain in some parts of the country.

The latest forecasts and warnings can be found on the Met Office website, on our mobile apps and through TV and radio broadcasts on the BBC and ITV.

Related articles

• The meteorology behind the ‘Beast from the East’ (metofficenews.wordpress.com)