A hint of winter into next week

Over the past week on Twitter, I’ve had a lot of tweets asking if there’s going to be any snow in the near future, so I thought I’d look at the weather charts and share my latest thoughts with you.

Autumn has of course been remarkably warm across the UK, but it’s going to turn colder through the weekend as a northwesterly winds sets in.

In absolute terms temperatures are only going to fall to around average, but relative to the mild weather of late, it’ll feel noticeably colder – particularly in the wind.

Will there be any snow?

For a few places there will be – largely over the hills and mountains in the northern half of the UK. Even here, generally it’s only likely to settle on the ground above 300 to 400 metres.

Most places this weekend will actually have a great deal of sunshine with excellent visibility in the polar maritime air that’ll be sitting across us. However, some rain could occasionally brush across southern counties of England.

It’s Scotland and Northern Ireland, along with northwestern parts of England and Wales that will be prone to having wintry showers.

Why are the showers affecting such a limited area?

Showers form when parcels of air are warmed near the ground and rise into the sky to form cumulus clouds. At this time of year the source of warmth comes from the relatively warm waters surrounding our shores.

This weekend the showers are forming over the relatively warm waters to the northwest of the UK and being blown in by the strength of the wind.

As soon as these showers move over land they loose their energy supply and fade quickly.

So for most places into next week, the only noticeable hint of winter will be overnight frosts with a need for some car windscreen scraping first thing in the morning.

Don’t forget you can stay up to date at channel4.com/weather or you can follow me on Twitter for weather chatter @liamdutton.