A quieter spell - at last by Helen Willetts
2005 quite literally stormed in across the UK and hasn't relented since. New Year's day will be remembered for the squally winds and a tornado at Belfast airport. By the second week we had two full blown winter storms with ferocious winds, heavy rain and flooding. Finally last week brought the snow and blizzards.
Therefore here at the BBC Weather Centre we haven't stopped recently, so imagine how glad I was when I arrived in work this morning to see High Pressure dominating the Atlantic. This should keep most weather fronts at bay, in fact any precipitation we do get will be light and patchy. The pressure is pushing towards record values too, 1050mb is expected by tonight, although it will have to go some to beat January 2003's 1058mb.
It's not exactly time to put our feet up though as the southeast of England still has the potential to see snow showers and several centimetres at that, which could well cause havoc on the roads. Showers by their very nature are hit and miss, I know that sounds like we are hedging our bets but on a showery day things really do change over a very small area and in a short time too.
Now I did say that any precipitation would be light but also talked about a few centimetres of snow. Let me explain, light rain is classed as less than 1mm per hour. But 1mm of water expands by about ten fold when frozen, so 1mm of water is equal to 1cm of snow. Therefore we only need a little light precipitation to see several centimetres of snow!
Tonight is also Burn's night. It is remembered in the Willetts household as a stormy night, if you don't remember the storm of 1990, it was quite exceptional and where I come from in North Wales the winds had the strength to blow out my bedroom window!! A quiet 'weather' night at least is on the cards for the Scots.
We are not out in the cold alone. Karachi in Pakistan and India's northern Shimla hill resort have experienced snowfall in the last day or two and we all know about the major winter storm across Northern America. Florida has also had some of it's coldest weather for three years and news is filtering in about widespread disruption due to snowfall in Croatia, Turkey and Slovakia.
If recently you have seen reports from an unusually wet Baghdad the weather here has been quite news worthy itself as it. In fact the same weather system has led to widespread disruption in the UEA and Saudi Arabia, branded here as the worst storm in 20 years.
Long live High pressure I say!!
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