The snow has stopped, but ice will continue
Well, as forecast a few days ago, much of the UK had significant snowfall during Saturday and into the early hours of Sunday causing notable disruption on road, rail and airline networks.
Mild air from the Atlantic Ocean and cold air from continental Europe battled it out across the UK, and where the two collided, snow fell heavily.
The mild air won the battle over western areas – such as Northern Ireland, Wales, south west England, western Scotland and low lying parts of north west England – where after some snow, the temperature rose turning it back to rain.
For central and eastern parts of England, however, the cold air held ground, with 5-10cm of snow falling widely, with some places seeing more. Church Fenton in North Yorkshire had the most snow lying at an official weather station, with 16cm recorded.
Snow depths at 9am on Sunday:
Church Fenton, North Yorkshire – 15cm
Wattisham, Suffolk – 15cm
Leek, Thorncliffe, Staffordshire – 11cm
Northolt, London – 10cm
Bingley, West Yorkshire – 10cm
High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire – 9cm
Coleshill, Birmingham – 7cm
Benson, Oxfordshire – 3cm
As skies cleared behind the snow across northern England, temperatures plummeted to around -8C in parts of Yorkshire last night. Temperatures across the rest of the UK were closer to 0C as a blanket of cloud stopped it getting very cold.
Read more: Snow causes disruption
Whilst the snow may have stopped falling, the next major concern will be widespread ice – especially for central and eastern parts of the UK where snow thaws slightly during today, then quickly freezes again tonight.
As well as ice, there is likely to be some fog, especially where snow is still on the ground and milder air moves over the cold surfaces and condenses.
Whilst the significant snow is over, there is a band of occasional rain that will push southwards across England tonight into Monday morning.
Where cold air lingers across East Anglia and south east England, there is a chance that the rain could turn to sleet and snow. However, it’s not expected to give any more than another centimetre or two on top of what has already fallen.
What is will do though, is exacerbate the risk of ice in these areas for rush hour tomorrow morning, so it’s definitely worth allowing extra time for your journey and taking extra care.
After milder air temporarily moving into western areas for today and tomorrow, by midweek the colder air will return to all parts of the UK.
At this stage, however, it looks like it’ll be mainly dry with sunshine by day and temperatures around 2C. By night there’ll be widespread, hard frosts as well as a risk of fog and ice.
As always, you can stay up to date with the latest forecast on the Channel 4 Weather website. I’ll also be tweeting regularly with weather updates, as well as answering some of your weather questions.
Over the past few days, your weather reports and pictures have been much appreciated, so do keep them coming. There’s a chance that the best pictures will feature in a gallery on the Channel 4 News website, or perhaps on the main programme.
You can follow Liam on Twitter @liamdutton