Winter bites back – snow and ice set to sweep south.
Winter Weather Report No.7
Birmingham, UK, 20th January, 2006 — The much heralded cold spell has moved south overnight through Scandinavia and central Europe. The Baltic States have seen temperatures plummet to -16 Celsius this morning with fresh snowfall across Poland, Germany and southwards into Austria and Hungary. Whilst this first cold plunge has gone south over Europe, the cold air is now moving westwards and temperatures in the UK are expected to fall rapidly overnight behind a fast moving cold front with snow showers across Scotland by morning. There also remains the risk that some of the bursts of heavy rain will turn to snow on the back edge of the cold front over The Pennines and even as far south as The Chilterns and Downs in the small hours. However, the greater threat overnight is ice as temperatures drop below freezing over the damp ground from The Midlands northwards,
Freeze up in Frankfurt
As that cold front sweeps into Germany overnight, then much of the rain will turn to snow with airports such as Düsseldorf and Frankfurt likely to be affected by moderate snowfall during the early morning peak hours from 6-8am Tuesday. Operational staff at Eurocontrol in Brussels will be using WSI Pilotbrief products to provide guidance to Controllers on possible weather related network delays throughout the coming few days.
That Friday Feeling..?
The cold weather is set to last the week with locally severe overnight frosts. Even inland UK will see lows of -6/7 Celsius and possibly -15 Celsius in central Scotland (get those ski flights to Inverness booked now!). Further snow showers are expected, especially around coasts of the UK, Belgium, Netherlands and Germany with more persistent snow in southern Scandinavia, Poland and The Alps at first and later in central France. However, the real problems are reserved for later in the week as a major low pressure system develops in the western approaches and runs along the English Channel Thursday night into Friday. There is still discrepancy between the models on the intensity and track, but WSI will be watching this one for the BAA airports at Stansted and Heathrow very closely indeed!
WSI (Weather Services International)
WSI is a part of the largest private weather company in the world, with the expertise and resources to continually lead the way in forecast accuracy and innovation. Each day, WSI's weather-driven business solutions are put to the test by thousands of aviation professionals around the world. ( www.wsieurope.com )
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