Monday 29 November 2010

Weather update - Monday

from Bucks County Council at 11:00am:

The main points to take are that, even where you haven't had any/much snow so far, you are likely to see some in the coming days.  There will be some strong winds making for VERY significant wind chill effects i.e. the expression "bitterly cold" is likely to be understating the case. With the strong winds, any lying snow will drift around, something which could itself cause some problems (e.g. blowing snow back on to already cleared carriageways).

Today there will be frequent snow showers blowing in across parts of Kent and perhaps East Sussex at times. These have the potential to give a few centimetres of snow in places by the end of the day.

As the winds increase later today and overnight and become more easterly, then the showers will start to spread westwards across much more of the region.  A wide variation in snow depths is likely across the region by the end of Tuesday morning.  The far west may see only a dusting while Kent and East Sussex could have up to 10cm, especially over the higher ground.  In general, 2-5 cm with locally more on higher ground (10-locally 15cm possible on Chilterns and North Downs in particular) probably gives a reasonable summary.  That said, some drifting will also obviously cause some wide variation in snow depths.  So some problems perhaps during tomorrow morning's rush but during Tuesday daylight hours while there will still be a risk of a few snow showers almost anywhere, they should become lighter and more scattered during the day.

By Wednesday, the threat of showers is still there for us all but the high risk areas are back to being Kent and East Sussex and, perhaps, along the Channel coast as the showers develop along the Channel and are blown in land (similar to the weekend).

There is a threat of an area of more persistent snow affecting the region on Thursday but that continues to be monitored so "stay tuned".

For the rest of the week it stays bitterly cold with severe frosts overnight so, with the snow, icy roads are likely to become more of a widespread problem than they have been for most of us so far.

There is currently a Flash warning in operation for Kent and Medway.   Advisories for the next few days are in the process of being updated so see (http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/weather/uk/se/se_forecast_warnings.html) for details of these.  The radar images at http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/weather/uk/radar/ may prove useful.