Update: Early - Mid January Weather Model

An update on what to expect early-mid January weather pattern wise for our clients managing mass participant or outdoor events, motorsport/track activity, and outdoor location shoots.

You may have seen beast from the east mentioned over the last few days! 

The reason for that is because we've seen some rather cold outputs from the weather models recently, with some outputs showing very cold air in the form of an easterly, moving across the United Kingdom this weekend and into the following week.

We've seen this happen many times before, weather models showing some very cold weather with increased snow and ice risks, for the models to then drop the idea and show something completely opposite as we nearer the said timeframe. 

We’re confident that this time we won't see the Atlantic driven pattern with very wet and mild weather that we've seen of late. We do believe that we'll see a significant pattern change occur later this week and especially into next week. 

It will turn colder but the big question is how cold? 

There are a few scenarios on the table which are; 

Scenario 1: 

We see high pressure position north of the UK with low pressure well out to the south-west of the United Kingdom. This allowing the draw of much colder air from the east/north-east with very cold air bottled up over Scandinavia and moving towards the UK.

This scenario would likely bring some very cold air from the east with an increased risk of snow, especially in eastern and southeastern parts of the United Kingdom. 

Scenario 2: We see high pressure centered over the United Kingdom, initially drawing in some much colder air across eastern and south-eastern parts of the United Kingdom.

The high eventually cutting off the coldest air from the east/north-east with a UK high setting up bringing much drier weather, chilly by day and widespread overnight frosts. 

The coldest air then moves into central and perhaps eastern parts of Europe. Further down the line, depending on where the high migrates, we could see a link up to Scandinavia or the north with some very cold air moving in. 

Scenario 3: The high sinks much further south and we draw in milder air over the top of the sinking high.

At the moment, whilst we won't write off or totally dismiss scenario 1 and it would be hard to go against the ECM model, we do think scenario 2 is the most likely. 

However - The ECM model is not the only model showing potential from the east. So keep across regular updates. We’ll update as always.