Weather Eye

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BY PAUL SIMONS

“The frost performs its secret ministry,

Unhelped by any wind” Samuel Taylor

Coleridge, Frost at Midnight

MUCH of Britain is waking up to the sound of car windscreens being scraped clean, thanks to the arrival of frost during the night.

The story of frost begins once the sun sets. Without sunshine to warm the ground, it cools down rapidly at night — especially if the skies are clear, because this allows the heat to shoot right out into space.

The ground then behaves rather like a refrigerator, cooling the air lying on top of it until eventually it dips below freezing, and any water droplets that are condensing on the ground turn to ice.

But that is not quite the whole story.

Coleridge was right when he described the lack of wind. A calm night helps frosty conditions by preventing the cold air on the ground getting stirred up with slightly warmer air higher up.

The air just a few feet off the ground can be several degrees Celsius warmer than that on the ground. Weather stations take their measurements at about 1.5 metres (5ft) above the ground, which can give a misleading impression because the ground can be much colder.

For gardeners, if a weather forecast talks of temperatures close to freezing overnight, be warned that tender plants are going to have a tough time.

Link to Weather Eye source

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BY PAUL SIMONS

BRITAIN has a long history of ice skating, and as far back as the 12th century a chronicle mentions men on iced-over fens using bones tied to their feet who “shoving themselves by a little picked staff, do slide as swiftly as a bird flyeth.”

Ice skating became particularly popular in the Netherlands. In fact, Dutch soldiers on skates and firing muskets scored a stunning victory over a superior Spanish force in December 1572, when the Spaniards attacked a fleet of armed vessels frozen in the sea near Amsterdam.

The British monarchy learnt ice skating in the Netherlands during their exile after the Cromwell revolution, and when Charles II was restored to the throne in 1660 he brought the sport to England, just in time for a particularly savage run of cold winters.

The winter of 1662-63 was so bitter a great frost fair was held on the frozen Thames, and Samuel Pepys watched people skating on the ice in St James’s Park: “I first in my life, it being a great frost, did see people sliding with their skeates . . . which is a very pretty art.”

As cold winters struck repeatedly, ice skating in Britain grew more popular. The world’s first skating club was formed in Edinburgh in 1742, and the first recorded ice-skating competition was a 15-mile race on frozen canals in East Anglia in 1763.

Link to Weather Eye source

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BY PAUL SIMONS

TOMORROW is the 80th anniversary of an extraordinary blunder during the First World War. On December 8, 1914, a German squadron approached the Falkland Islands to attack Port Stanley without realising that a far superior British naval force was in harbour.

The British gave chase and opened fire, but their shells kept falling to the left of their targets. After dozens of wasted rounds the gunners recalculated their aim and blew up the German ships.

The problem was the Coriolis effect, the apparent deflection of airborne items, that is created by the Earth spinning eastwards. Imagine throwing a ball at someone on a playground roundabout — by the time you have thrown the ball, the roundabout has moved on, and so the person on the roundabout sees the ball swerve to one side.

On Earth, that effect means that someone on the ground sees an object that is flying straight from the equator to the North Pole apparently deflect to the right; in the southern hemisphere it is in the opposite direction.

And this is what the gunners on the British ships got wrong — they had calculated their aim for the northern instead of southern hemisphere, sending their shells off course.

The Coriolis effect is greatest in large-scale weather systems, such as winds and storms swerving across the globe. The effect explains why they spin in different directions in the northern and southern hemispheres.

Link to Weather Eye source

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BY PAUL SIMONS

ON THIS day 50 years ago, London was hit by one of the fiercest tornados recorded in Britain. A huge thunderstorm drove in from the South Coast, the sky turned ink-black and a tornado touched down at Bushy Park, near Hampton Court, smashing down trees.

By the time the storm reached Chiswick, West London, at about 5pm, reports spoke of a huge conical cloud hanging down from the sky, green lightning flashing from its sides and a deafening roar that sounded like an express train. The tornado ripped Gunnersbury station apart before tearing into two nearby factories and on through Acton, not far from BBC Television Centre.

Roofs were ripped off houses, chimneys crashed down and walls collapsed.

A car was reported hurled through the air while terrified people caught outside ran for cover as a barrage of bricks, glass and wood shot through the air like missiles. Even up to a mile away, windows were shaken violently.

Afterwards, newsreels of the day showed a scene of devastation that was described as looking like something from the Blitz.

Winds in the tornado’s vortex reached an estimated 160 kph (100 mph) as it cut a swathe of devastation for several miles, finally petering out around Golders Green and Southgate in North London. Amid all this mayhem, there few casualties.

Link to Weather Eye source

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BY PAUL SIMONS

HOLLY and rowan bushes are full of berries, waxwings are flocking into the country from Scandinavia, and Siberia is experiencing savage cold. According to speculation in much of the press, these are some of the warning signs that the coming winter is going to be bitterly cold in Britain, although the Met Office and other reputable organisations insist there is no sign of anything out of the ordinary. True, there will be some cold snaps, they say, but it looks like being a similar replay of last year’s fairly timid affair.

Now the hype is being ratcheted up about a snowy Christmas, and the bookies are responding by shortening their odds for snow falling on December 25, their definition of a white Christmas.

Actually, there are some signs of colder weather head-ing our way towards the end of December. Conditions may change next week with wind and rain sweeping in, opening the way for cold air to flood in and crash into warmer air, possibly triggering off snow — but whether it hits on Christmas Day is too difficult to tell at the moment.

Piers Corbyn, the weather forecaster who makes controversial long-range predictions using solar activity, has quite a good record on predicting snow at Christmas, and his forecast this year is a 40 per cent chance of snow in London and 50 per cent in Aberdeen.

Link to Weather Eye source

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BY PAUL SIMONS

TODAY marks the start of the halcyon days.

Halcyon days now means a spell of quiet, peaceful bliss in otherwise turbulent and difficult times, but in Greek mythology this was a fortnight of unseasonally mild weather centred around the winter solstice, when Aeolus, keeper of the winds, commanded the sea and wind to be calm.

In the Mediterranean, this sunny and nearly windless period was particularly welcome for the halcyon, an ancient name for the kingfisher of the Mediterranean that breeds in late December in nests tunnelled into waterside banks.

The Ancient Greeks believed that these kingfishers built floating nests, and wherever these drifted, the seas and winds were becalmed. As John Milton wrote in On the Morning of Christ’s Nativity.

“Who now hath quite forgot to rave While Birds of Calm sit brooding on the charmed wave.”

But in Britain this week there is no sign at all of the halcyon days.

The amazing run of calm, dry weather we have had for the past few weeks was delivered by anticyclones trapped by the jet stream, the ribbon of high- altitude winds, which meander about in a very uncertain path, wobbling north and south.

Now, however, the jet stream is surging with a powerful west to east blast, steering depressions across the Atlantic, which means plenty of wet and windy weather to come in the next few days.

Link to Weather Eye source

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BY PAUL SIMONS

TODAY is the 60th anniversary of the Battle of the Ardennes in the Second World War, when the weather played a crucial part in the last big German counter-attack on the Western Front.

On December 16, 1944, fog and drizzle shrouded the heavily wooded Ardennes region of Belgium and gave concealed tanks cover to break out and launch a two-pronged attack.

The counter-offensive took the Allies by surprise and left ground troops heavily outnumbered. To make matters worse, the overwhelming superiority of the Allied air force could not brought to the rescue as aircraft were grounded by the low cloud. In what became known as the Battle of the Bulge, the Germans drove a bulge-shaped wedge into the Allied lines and inflicted heavy casualties, particularly on the Americans.

The fog only lifted only on Christmas Eve, when American and British planes were able to drop supplies to besieged troops and attack the Germans. By December 26, General Patton reached the American troops trapped in Bastogne, and by January 16 the Germans were a spent force, completely wrecked and starved of supplies.

Even though the Battle of the Bulge inflicted heavy damage on the Allies, it helped to shorten the war by exhausting the German forces of their last resources, leaving the way open for the Allied invasion of Germany across the Rhine.

Link to Weather Eye source

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BY PAUL SIMONS

THE OMENS for England’s first Test match against South Africa in Port Elizabeth today look rather dodgy.

On Monday, the England team were defeated by a South Africa A team in a warm-up match in Potchefstroom, in the north of the country. Their only real chance of avoiding defeat, however, rested with the weather, when a bolt of lightning crashed into an adjoining field with a deafening clap of thunder, throwing some of the players to the ground. The umpires ordered a retreat, and although play resumed several minutes later, thunder still rumbled in the distance and a torrential downpour fell later.

The teams were fortunate to escape injury. Over the past two weeks, thunderstorms have swept the country and left 17 people dead from lightning strikes.

This is the southern hemisphere’s summer, and although the climate in Port Elizabeth on the south coast of South Africa is much hotter than in Britain, this region does share a typical British feature of summer — sunshine and showers, sometimes torrential. Further along the coast from Port Elizabeth, the city of East London received its average December rainfall in one huge thunderstorm last week.

With so much thundery activity, the umpires today need to keep an eye on the sky and clear the field long before any thunder is heard.

Link to Weather Eye source

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BY PAUL SIMONS

SIXTY years ago today, the US Navy suffered one of its worst disasters of the Second World War, caused by the weather.

The US 3rd Fleet under Admiral Halsey had just defeated the Japanese off the Philippines. Desperate to refuel his ships, Halsey ordered the fleet to sail far out to sea, well out of range of enemy aircraft, despite the area being notorious for typhoons.

The fleet relied on spotter planes for weather forecasts, and reported no signs of bad weather. But the sea swell rapidly grew so strong that refuelling was abandoned, and as the fleet sailed further out in search of calmer waters, the ships accidentally steamed straight into a typhoon.

Waves the size of hills threw the ships around like toys. Aircraft broke their moorings onboard the carriers, colliding and bursting into flames; 146 planes were lost.

The situation was even worse for the destroyers. Many had fuel tanks that were unevenly balanced and in the heavy seas they simply rolled over.

In all, three destroyers sank, seven other ships were seriously damaged and almost 800 men were lost.

The typhoon, although intense, was so compact that it evaded all the fleet’s weather monitoring — some of the ships scattered out on to the flanks of the fleet missed the storm altogether. It was the greatest loss to the US Navy from any storm since 1889.

Link to Weather Eye source

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BY PAUL SIMONS

THIS year’s rainfall has been something of a rollercoaster ride. We were left soaking in January, April, August and October, and stayed remarkably dry in February, March, May and November in most places.

But, despite the wild weather, the amazing thing is that these deluges and droughts balance out so that 2004’s total rainfall will be largely normal.

In contrast, 50 years ago the UK’s heaviest annual rainfall on record fell on the aptly named Sprinkling Tarn in Cumbria, in the Lake District. That year’s total rainfall was 6.53m (21.42ft), enough to engulf a bungalow, compared to the average at nearby Sty Head with 4.3m (14.1ft) precipitation a year.

In fact, the summer of 1954 was one of the worst on record, and apart from appalling rain it was also decidedly cold — there were only 28 days above 21C (70F) in London, and only one day in Belfast, Edinburgh and Plymouth.

Sprinkling Tarn bore the brunt of the rain because it lies at the heart of the Lake District, where it got battered by a procession of wet westerlies rolling off the Atlantic.

The mountains lift the warm, wet air, condensing it into clouds which pour with rain, and because the valleys of the Lake District are arranged like the spokes of a wheel, they help funnel the damp air up over the central uplands.

Link to Weather Eye source

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BY PAUL SIMONS

THE bumps and troughs on the graph of this year’s rainfall are in all the wrong places. Most of us were soaked in January, April, August and October, and we were left remarkably dry in February, March, May and November.

But despite the peculiarity of the weather, the surprising thing is that these deluges and droughts balance out and the total rainfall for 2004 is generally close to normal.

Fifty years ago the picture was quite different. In 1954 the aptly named Sprinkling Tarn in Cumbria received the UK’s heaviest annual rainfall on record. That year’s total rainfall was 6.53m (21.42ft), enough to engulf a bungalow; compare that with the average annual rainfall at the nearby Sty Head, 4.3m (14.1ft).

In fact, the summer of 1954 was one of the worst on record, and apart from appalling rain it was also decidedly cold — there were only 28 days above 21C (70F) in London, and only one day in Belfast, Edinburgh and Plymouth.

Sprinkling Tarn bore the brunt of the rain because it lies at the heart of the Lake District where it was battered by a procession of wet westerlies rolling off the Atlantic. The mountains lift the warm, wet air and so condense it into clouds which pour with rain, and because the valleys of the Lake District are arranged somewhat like the spokes of a wheel, they help to funnel the damp air up over the central uplands.

Link to Weather Eye source

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BY PAUL SIMONS

FOR anyone going skiing this Christmas, conditions could be stunning. Heavy snow fell across the Alps and most other European mountain ranges last weekend, much needed after the long drought which had gripped most of Europe for the past few weeks. The outlook is for bright skies this week with more snow on the way, quite possibly on Christmas Day.

Skiing in North America also looks promising as temperatures have nosedived across much of the continent, and ski resorts in the US and Canada are looking forward to heavy snowfalls this week. But much of Western Europe, including the Mediterranean, could be wet and windy over Christmas as a huge depression crashes through with a weather front reaching as far south as Tunisia. The Mediterranean has had a stormy time recently, with one depression soaking Sardinia, Italy and Croatia and another storm hitting Cyprus and southern Turkey.

Meanwhile, the Middle East has shivered in severe cold with temperatures in some areas falling to their lowest for 50 years for this time of year, due to a large anti-cyclone over Iraq.

Here, forecasts point to snow on Christmas Day, especially in the North. This would be quite remarkable because there have been only four white Christmases since 1990 in Britain — and global warming will make them even rarer in the future.

Link to Weather Eye source

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BY PAUL SIMONS

MANY Britons had their dream of a white Christmas come true this year. By the end of last week a large area of low pressure in the Norwegian Sea had become slow-moving and started to draw down icy cold air from inside the Arctic Circle. On Christmas Eve this cold air moved across the entire country, bringing with it a crop of heavy and frequent snowfalls in the North and West.

The heaviest snow fell across Northern Scotland, where it snowed throughout Christmas Eve and Christmas Day and again on the morning of Boxing Day. There was plenty of snow on the Highlands and 13cm fell at Kirkwall on Orkney. There were also frequent snow showers in Northern Ireland and even a dusting around Dublin on Christmas morning. Hailstorms and sleet were reported across Merseyside, with widespread snow flurries for Northwest England on Christmas morning.

The hills of North Wales had snow shower after snow shower and managed to accumulate several centimetres of snow over Christmas. Southern and Eastern England did not do quite so well and, despite being decidedly cool, will have to wait at least another year for their white Christmas.

The outlook for the rest of the week is changeable weather, with any further snow to be confined to the Scottish mountains.

Link to Weather Eye source

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BY PAUL SIMONS

IN THE early hours of yesterday morning I was woken by a sudden squall of rain and hail. There had been some steady rain for several hours, but in what seemed like an instant, the intensity of the rain increased before turning to hail.

The abrupt hailstorm was accompanied by a raging wind, which rattled the windows and shook the trees. As quickly as it arrived, the squall was gone and a brief glimpse from the window an hour later revealed a waning moon and starry skies.

The squall was in fact the back edge of an active frontal zone, intensified by cold surface air digging in under warmer frontal air higher in the sky. The mixing of these two air masses initiated violent atmospheric updraughts, which spawned the heavy rain, hail and strong winds.

Such was the intensity of this mix that across Wales and the West Country there were even unconfirmed reports of tornados.

With cold air and cloud-free skies right behind this front, temperatures dropped quickly. In some places the drop was 4C in two or three hours.

In the North of England these falling temperatures, accompanied by a crystal- clear sky, turned surface water and partially melted hail into a dangerous layer of black ice.

Link to Weather Eye source

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BY JEREMY PLESTER

ELLEN MacARTHUR, on board the trimaran B&Q, will some time today reach the halfway point in her attempt to beat the solo round-the-world sailing record. She is now in the Southern Ocean, to the south-west of Tasmania and travelling at more than 400 miles a day.

MacArthur must take the fastest, but not always the most direct, route. There is no use in following strong winds and the most direct route for days if that route will leave the boat stranded in an area with no wind at all. In some circumstances it is better to take a slower initial route — even if it means more mileage — in order to meet more favourable wind patterns in several days’ time.

MacArthur will be paying particular attention to weather forecasts but in the Southern Ocean, beacuse of the remoteness and lack of weather stations, this information can be inaccurate. Instead, ocean- going experience will give her the advantage.

MacArthur is well ahead of previous attempts. She holds an advantage of more than a day and a half on the record holder. But, even with a lightning-fast boat, experience and determination, she will be at the mercy of the winds over the next few weeks.

Link to Weather Eye source

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BY JEREMY PLESTER

WEATHER lore is full of quaint rhymes and sayings warning mariners of impending danger. Much of this lore is utterly useless, of course, but there are a few which just might be worth paying attention to.

One of the most compelling rhymes concerns mackerel skies. Both “Mare’s tails and mackerel scales make tall ships take in their sails” or “Mackerel scales — furl your sails” give warning of bad weather on the way.

Mackerel skies are actually pillows of cloud high in the sky which resemble the glistening patterns on the fish’s flanks. These clouds are cirrocumulus clouds and are made of ice crystals several miles high in the sky. Rather than being a uniform flat layer of cloud they are billowed up into broadly parallel ripples of cloud. The characteristic ripples of cirrocumulus are formed by vigorous winds high in the sky.

Although ancient mariners could never have known that these strong winds existed so high in the sky they were aware of the fact that very often these winds would be the precursor to bad weather. Rather than bringing about a sudden deterioration in conditions a mackerel sky would often give mariners several hours in which to batten down the hatches.

It is little wonder then, that in the many hundreds of years before weather forecasts were available, mariners were always on the lookout for mackerel skies.

Link to Weather Eye source

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BY JEREMY PLESTER

ANOTHER deep area of low pressure brought yet more foul weather across Britain on New Year’s Day. Pressure dropped rapidly ahead of a swift-moving frontal system on Saturday afternoon and for the second time in a week a lively squall line crossed the country.

Worst hit were eastern and Northern Ireland where torrential rain, thunderstorms and turbulent winds struck just after lunchtime. At Dublin airport hundreds of passengers were delayed after two parked Aer Lingus aircrafts were picked up and blown into each other. Fortunately no passengers were aboard at the time.

Readings from the Dublin airport weather station picked up sustained gusts of 47mph (75.6kph) with one gust reaching 89mph (143.2kph).

A suspected tornado was reported to have hit the nearby town of Clonee. In what was an eventful afternoon, residents described sudden raging winds, thundery rain, hail, cars being blown over and windows smashed.

During the afternoon the squally frontal zone continued to head east and although the thunderstorms were not as severe across central Scotland, there was still plenty of rain and hail. The sheer length of the squall line was particularly noteworthy: at precisely 2pm the squall line stretched from the Aberdeen coast almost to the Bishop Rock Lighthouse on the Isles of Scilly.

Following the front were more rain showers and these turned to snow overnight.

Link to Weather Eye source

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BY JEREMY PLESTER

TEMPERATURES across Scotland have been on a rollercoaster ride during the past few weeks. The weather pattern has been very changeable as deep and very mobile areas of low pressure have brought fluctuating temperatures and just about every type of weather imaginable.

Cast one’s mind back to Christmas Day, snowfall was widespread with blizzards in the Highlands while overnight temperatures dropped below zero. By the following Wednesday the overnight temperature at Kinloss on the Moray coastline was a very warm 12.6C, around 10C above the average overnight minimum for the time of year and even several degrees above the daytime average.

These warm temperatures were only short-lived though and a few nights later they were back down towards zero as yet another wintry spell moved in for the weekend just gone. Once again temperatures shot back up on Monday before gales and torrential rain battered the West Coast yesterday.

Scotland is no stranger to see-sawing weather conditions because of its position fairly close to the Arctic Circle but also with the warmer influence of maritime west or southwest winds. Typically, as large areas of low pressure approach, southwest winds will be bringing warmer than average temperatures, but as these same lows exit to the east, the winds swing to the north, bringing frigid air and wintry conditions.

Link to Weather Eye source

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BY JEREMY PLESTER

THERE ARE not many places in Britain that have been totally reliant on frosty nights for a livelihood. One such village is Stonesfield, Oxfordshire, where a booming slate industry once thrived.

The slates at Stonesfield are not true metamorphic slates but thin layers of oolitic limestone. A true slate is easily split along cleavage planes with hammer and chisel into thin roof tiles. Using the same methods on Stonesfield slate would merely fracture the stone into hundreds of small pieces, useless for roofing.

What made the Stonesfield slate particularly unusual was the high water content held between the individual layers of limestone. This water, when was exposed to sub-zero temperatures, would expand slightly, splitting the limestone into thin layers. All quarry workers would then do was to shape the wafers of limestone to the required size to complete the job.

The quarrymen would leave huge slabs of the limestone in the elements late in the winter. Then overnight frosts are still quite frequent but a complete thaw occurs during the day.

Several successive nights of frost were best for splitting the stones but it was crucial to keep the slabs moist. If the stone was allowed to dry out, no amount of watering would release the slate.

Link to Weather Eye source

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BY JEREMY PLESTER

AT 10.02am on August 17, 1883, Krakatoa exploded into the atmosphere in what was the biggest volcanic eruption since human beings walked the Earth.

Like the recent cataclysm in the Indian Ocean, the consequences of the volcanic eruptions were felt far afield. Tonnes of debris were hurled skywards, a tsunami struck neighbouring islands, burning rock and ash fell from the sky and fierce electrical storms were triggered by billowing clouds of ash.

The sound of the explosion was thought to have travelled almost 3,000 miles; countless people believed that they could hear distant gunfire. At the time of the explosion meteorology was becoming increasingly popular and meteorological instruments were proliferating around the globe.

The most prized instrument was the barograph, which measures atmospheric pressure and then records it on to a rotating drum.

Shortly after the explosion barographs around the world went haywire. Readings rose sharply and then dropped over a period of almost two hours.

Meteorologists were baffled, as the readings were too sharp to be produced by freak weather, but the sheer number of readings meant that they could be no coincidence.

A post-mortem was ordered and a think-tank set up. After a lengthy analysis it became apparent that a pressure wave created by the eruption had spread from the volcano and then circled the globe seven times.

Link to Weather Eye source

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BY PAUL SIMONS

IT SEEMED to come out of nowhere and exploded like a bomb — the weekend’s storm was a monster, and it began so innocently.

For much of last week it felt as if springtime had arrived early, as warm air invaded much of the country from the southwest. But that warmth collided with bitterly cold Arctic air and helped to set up a vicious weather front which hammered northern Britain. Parts of the North West were swamped by more than 100mm (4in) of rain in just 72 hours, and Carlisle was marooned in flood waters.

A new development across Northern Ireland burst into life in just 18 hours over Friday night. The jet stream — a river of wind several miles overhead — buckled and accelerated to about 170 mph (280 kph), acting like a huge vacuum nozzle and sucking up air from a depression below, driving it into a frenzy of wind.

It is thought that at a height of three miles (five kilometres), dry air plunged down through the tops of clouds packed with snow and ice, which refrigerated it into a dense mass of cold air. It dropped like an avalanche onto the ground with a burst of violent winds — a so-called sting jet. Gusts of about 70 mph (113 kph) were widespread, with a phenomenal 128 mph (206 kph) logged at Great Dun Fell in Cumbria. It was one of the most violent storms to hit Britain for years.

Link to Weather Eye source

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BY PAUL SIMONS

DESPITE the storms, this January is turning out to be astonishingly warm. Even as the nights have turned chilly, the days still feel more like spring than the depths of winter — latest figures suggest that Britain is some 3C (5.4F) warmer than normal for the time of year.

January 9 was particularly balmy, when Church Fenton, North Yorkshire, scored 14.7C (58.5F), followed by an amazingly mild night with Machrihanish on the Mull of Kintyre breaking its highest January temperature with 14.4C (58F) in the evening.

Much of that warmth has come from mild, sub-tropical southwesterlies swept in off the Atlantic, often on the back of the same depressions which brought winds, rains and thick clouds.

In fact, those clouds helped to boost night-time temperatures by trapping heat on the ground. But during the day cloud cover drastically slashed the hours of sunshine recorded, with the North of Scotland getting only a third of its normal sunshine quota for the month.

Another big surprise is the rainfall figures. Although heavy rainfall has battered the north and west of the country — western Scotland has received three times its average rainfall — eastern parts of Britain have stayed remarkably dry, with only a quarter of the month’s usual rainfall in East Anglia.

This may point to drought problems later on in the year if heavy rains do not fall during the rest of winter.

Link to Weather Eye source

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BY PAUL SIMONS

THE WEATHER this month has been on a dizzy rollercoaster ride, from storms and snow to balmy spring-like warmth.

But this weekend Britain will experience an icy shock as winter makes a dramatic return with northerly winds pouring straight down from the Arctic and sending temperatures plummeting.

To begin with, an Arctic blast from the North will collide with a block of mild air to the South and could set off snow showers over high ground in Wales, Midlands and southern England. In this titanic battle it is expected that the warm air will lose out and leave the entire country shivering in bitter night-time temperatures.

But unlike some previous cold snaps this winter, the current freeze could linger around slightly longer. A block of high pressure is set to build up west of Ireland and its eastern flank will pour cold air down the UK; unusually, South and East England are at risk of the coldest temperatures.

But the high-pressure system will delivery plenty of bright sunshine and clear blue skies for many places, although the East Coast of Scotland and England could be hit by snow showers.

As the high pressure wallows around in the Atlantic, temperatures will remain on a knife edge: Monday and Tuesday are set to remain cold and frosty but Wednesday could turn mild again and possibly swing back to cold again.

Link to Weather Eye source

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BY PAUL SIMONS

ABERDEEN beats Edinburgh and Glasgow for sunshine. The latest Met Office figures show that the Granite City last year recorded a yearly total of 1,454 hours of sunshine, 7 per cent more than the Scottish average. Edinburgh trailed well behind with 1,225 hours of sunshine, and Glasgow with 1,224 hours.

This may come as a surprise given Aberdeen’s reputation for rather dour weather, but the northeast coast is protected by the Highlands from cloudy, wet Atlantic depressions that crash into the west coast — which is why the dullest place in Scotland is Kinlochewe, Wester Ross, northwest Scotland, which has only 850 hours of sunshine a year. By the time those wet winds reach Aberdeen they have been wrung dry over the mountains, leaving much clearer skies.

In fact, many parts of the north and east of the country are remarkably dry, with average rainfall of less than 250mm (10in) over the summer, which is comparable with the drier parts of England.

The down side is that the east side of Scotland is much colder than the west in winter. The North Sea is much cooler than the Atlantic, which is warmed by the Gulf Stream.

The east coast is also often plagued by a sea fog known as haar, when warm air passes over the cold North Sea and condenses into a depressing fog, striking most often between April and September.

Link to Weather Eye source

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BY PAUL SIMONS

THE weather is behaving very strangely — Scotland has been warmer than the South of England over the past few days, while Menorca has suffered a big snowstorm and Algeria has been drenched in rain.

A giant area of high pressure has dug in off the West Coast of Ireland and is slowly churning air clockwise, picking up mild air from the mid-Atlantic, sweeping it around Iceland and back down into Scotland. But that milder air is taking time to reach southern England, which has remained shivering in colder, more northerly winds.

The anti-cyclone is so powerful it reached a whopping 1050 millibars this week — the UK’s record for high pressure stands at 1054.4 millibars, in Aberdeenshire on January 31, 1902 — and is blocking out wet westerlies from the Atlantic. The weather is largely calm, dry and will likely stay that way for days to come.

Because the high pressure is so well entrenched, the jet stream — a ribbon of wind miles overhead — has been looping around the UK and diving down through Spain and the Mediterranean where it is causing mayhem. A deep depression hit Algeria with 46mm (1.8in) of rain, nearly half its average January rainfall, and cold northerly winds howling down from Russia sent temperatures crashing across Spain, with Menorca receiving a vicious snowstorm on Wednesday.

Link to Weather Eye source