Not Out Of The Woods Yet

Earlier this month, I considered the background to severe weather events on both sides of the Atlantic, showing that these could be attributed to natural phenomena, and that they could not be credibly used to challenge the established wisdom on climate change.

Since that time, the weather patterns in the UK – well, here in the North West, at least – have brought more snow, although it has melted quickly and hardly caused any disruption. But as of now the harsh night frosts have gone, there has been rain rather than snow (and coming from the South West, too), and even the odd day or two of spring like sunshine.

So is the wintry weather at an end? The short term good news is that conditions look to remain fair in this part of the country for a few days, but the longer term bad news is that winds coming out of the still cold continent, together with some snow and night frost, are entirely possible. And why should this be?

Ah well. As I mentioned before, the Atlantic Jet Stream is behaving unpredictably. As can be seen from this forecast, those high level winds are blowing over the UK at the moment, but over the coming week their effect will die away: check out the forecast for next Friday.

In fact, there may be some high level wind effect encouraging weather system movement out of Scandinavia into North East England by next weekend. But this is too difficult for the Christopher Bookers and James Delingpoles of this world, so expect the usual exaggeration and abuse from them.

Cuts out thinking.