This is an in-depth Met Office UK Weather forecast for the next week and beyond. After a look at this week’s weather which will see some strong winds and heavy rain driven by a strong jet, we look back at November and autumn before delving into what Winter 2024/25 may bring. Bringing you this deep dive is Met Office meteorologist Alex Burkill.
00:00 Intro
00:30 This week’s jet stream
01:58 Tuesday night
03:40 Later this week
07:12 Saturday’s low
11:26 Into next week
16:03 November 2024
18:50 Autumn 2024
21:28 Winter outlook
35:40 Lenticular cloud
36:55 Sunrise & sunset times
40:42 Outro
You may also enjoy:
– 10 Day trend forecast https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLGVVqeJodR_ZDSHKqsgszMnk9d5IEF5UH
– Podcasts exploring weather and climate https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLGVVqeJodR_brL5mcfsqI4cu42ueHttv0
– Daily weather forecasts https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLGVVqeJodR_Zew9xGAqYVtGjYHau-E2yL
00:00 Intro
00:30 This week’s jet stream
01:58 Tuesday night
03:40 Later this week
07:12 Saturday’s low
11:26 Into next week
16:03 November 2024
18:50 Autumn 2024
21:28 Winter outlook
35:40 Lenticular cloud
36:55 Sunrise & sunset times
40:42 Outro
You may also enjoy:
– 10 Day trend forecast https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLGVVqeJodR_ZDSHKqsgszMnk9d5IEF5UH
– Podcasts exploring weather and climate https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLGVVqeJodR_brL5mcfsqI4cu42ueHttv0
– Daily weather forecasts https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLGVVqeJodR_Zew9xGAqYVtGjYHau-E2yL
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00It's a busy weather week. There is a lot going on. Hello, welcome, and thank you for joining
00:05me for this week's Deep Dive. I'm Alex Burkill, meteorologist and presenter here at the Met
00:10office. I will be talking about what the weather's going to be doing through this week and beyond.
00:16I'm actually going to be joined by a special guest later on, looking at what we can expect
00:20through the rest of this winter. And I'll be having a little look back at what we saw
00:24through November and through the whole of autumn. But like I said, there is a lot happening
00:29this week. So let's get going. We have at the moment quite, well, we're kind of in the
00:35respite period of some sort. But I wanted to show you the jet stream as we go through
00:40this week. Now, as you will no doubt be aware, the jet stream plays a really active part
00:44in what the weather across the UK is doing. And I wanted to highlight that it's going
00:48to strengthen quite rapidly as we go through the next 24, 48 hours or so. In fact, as we
00:55go towards tomorrow evening overnight, a really strong jet is coming towards the UK.
01:02If I just try and show you this. Now, I have been away for a little while and I haven't
01:06done a deep dive for a little while. And since I've come back, they've played around with
01:10the buttons. But I think if I press here, that's going to give us the speed of the jet.
01:14This is coming up with 200 miles per hour. That's the speed of the winds higher up. So
01:19not the speed of the winds near the surface. But nonetheless, 200 miles per hour is really
01:23quite strong and it could be even stronger than that. I think as we go through tomorrow
01:28night, it could be close to 250 miles per hour. That means we are going to see some
01:33pretty unsettled weather coming through. I'll talk more about that in a second. It's also
01:37good news if you're planning to travel across the Atlantic or flying across the Atlantic,
01:42at least from west to east. If you're going the other way, less good news. But yes, planes
01:47can use the jet stream to travel even faster. So it will speed up the journey time. But
01:52back to the UK weather. And if we let's show you the picture that we have across the UK
01:58at the moment, because there are a couple of things that I want to highlight. So if
02:02I just run this through and as we go through the rest of Tuesday, we have this band of
02:07rain. I'm not really sure why this isn't playing. Here we go. We have a band of rain that's
02:11pushing its way across parts of Scotland and Northern Ireland. Now, across much of the
02:15UK, it's been a fairly decent day. But this band of rain and snow, I'll pause it here,
02:20is coming through. And it could bring some fairly significant accumulation, several centimetres,
02:25mainly over higher ground, perhaps to about 100 metres or so up. So not especially high.
02:29We may see a few centimetres accumulating over higher ground than that. It could be
02:34a little bit more relatively business as usual for the time of year. We often see snow across
02:39parts of Scotland. There may be a little bit of snow perhaps over some higher ground a
02:42bit further south, maybe parts of Northern Ireland, Northern England maybe. But really,
02:46the snow is largely going to be confined to northern parts of Scotland and mainly the
02:51higher ground. Perhaps the greater cause for concern as we run through the rest of the
02:56night and that clears away, I've gone too far, apologies. We then get some clearer skies
03:02coming through and there'll be some wintry showers as well. But because of the wet weather
03:06that's pushed through, we are at risk of seeing some icy stretches. As a result, we do have
03:12a warning in force at the moment. If I just run through, just to make you aware, there
03:18is an ice warning across much of the central eastern parts of Scotland and that's because
03:23there could be some difficult surfaces first thing tomorrow morning because of not only
03:28the band of rain that's come through and the snow and then the drop in temperatures with
03:31some clearer air, but also because of those wintry showers that could be making their
03:36way through as well. But back to the UK's forecast. And as we go through, let's dart
03:42ahead to Wednesday. And actually, if we start Wednesday, let's go to slightly earlier in
03:47the day. For many, Wednesday is looking like a pretty decent day. On the left-hand side,
03:52you can see we do actually have a bit of a ridge of high pressure before the strengthening
03:56jet comes its way in. And so, as a result, yes, maybe a few coastal showers in some places,
04:02but most places having a pretty decent day to start on Wednesday at least. Later on,
04:08we are going to see the influence of that strong jet coming through. We're going to
04:12see a band of rain sweeping its way in and we're going to see some very strong winds,
04:16particularly towards the northwest of the UK. So let's have a look at the winds that
04:21we can expect. And I hope this works. This isn't what I was planning to do. So let's
04:28get that up. This is looking different to how I practiced it, but let's hope it works.
04:34Let's pick somewhere up here. And so, these are the gusts, I believe. Yes, they are. So,
04:42this is for western Scotland. And you can see, as we go through Wednesday evening overnight,
04:46they are really going to strengthen. We could be looking at gusts around 65 to 75 miles
04:51per hour in the most exposed spots. So it is going to be very windy as well as wet as
04:56that system comes in from the west. As a result, another warning to show you, there are only
05:01two out at the moment at time of recording. So I think once we've got through these two,
05:06that will be it for the warnings for the time being. But if we dart ahead to Wednesday night
05:12to Thursday, then yes, we have a warning that covers the Hebrides, the Northern Isles and
05:17the far north-northwest of mainland Scotland as well. So it is going to be windy as well
05:23as wet as that system comes through. But let's go back to the rain. Let's go back to
05:31the split screen and we go through. If we run through, if I just press play and if we
05:36go through. So a very wet and windy picture coming through as we go through later Wednesday
05:40and overnight into Thursday. And then there's actually another system that comes through
05:45Thursday. Remember that really strong jet stream that I highlighted earlier? That's
05:49going to drive another low that pushes through on Thursday. And so more wet and windy weather
05:55making its way across. It's all coming from the west. So western parts are always bearing
05:59the brunt of it. But everywhere we'll see some outbreaks of rain and everywhere it is
06:03going to be pretty blustery. Not as strong the winds as across the far west of Scotland,
06:07but you can see some very strong gusts. If we just go back, you can see strong gusts.
06:12I don't know why is that not working? Here we go. It's catching up. You can see as we
06:17go through Wednesday night, the strongest winds are mainly, oh, I've darted ahead. I
06:23don't know what happened there. If we go through Wednesday night, you can see the strongest
06:30winds coming along as we go towards the northwest of the UK. But as we go through into Thursday,
06:39they really are a bit more widespread perhaps around mainly the western part of the country,
06:45but it will spread a bit further south as well. So really Wednesday into Thursday and
06:50Thursday itself is looking very wet and windy at times. Not everywhere we'll necessarily
06:55see impacts from this, but nonetheless it is going to be a pretty blustery picture and
07:00pretty wet at times too. Friday, we then see a slight respite. The jet stream is still
07:05across us, but you can see a bit of a ridge in the pressure pattern. But yeah, Friday
07:09there'll be some showers around and then our attention turns to what's going to happen
07:13on Saturday. And so to show you that, I'm going to look at the bigger picture now. And
07:18if I just run through and dart ahead to Saturday, and what we have on Saturday, oh, I've gone
07:25too far. And I'm going to get rid of the jet stream for now and put rain on instead. And
07:31we have an area of low pressure that's set to come its way across the UK. There's been
07:37a bit of uncertainty about this low. If I'd recorded this deep dive yesterday, I'd be
07:42telling an ever so slightly different story. I'll come on to that in a second. It does
07:46look like it could be very deep, but it doesn't look as deep as it did 24 hours ago. So it's
07:52likely that we're going to have a relatively deep area of low pressure coming towards the
07:56UK as we go through into late Friday and into Saturday. The most recent model run from the
08:02Met Office, our global model, is the one that I have here. And you can see it takes the
08:06track of the low mainly across southern parts of the UK. And it's not as deep as it was
08:12showing that it was 24 hours ago. Remember, the deeper the low, the more unsettled the
08:17weather we're likely to see. So the stronger the winds, the heavier the rain. So whilst
08:21this would be a very wet and windy picture, it perhaps won't be as impactful as it could
08:25have been if the scenario that we were looking at previously comes off. The other thing to
08:30bear in mind is that the track has changed. And I can show you that in a couple of ways.
08:34So here is – well, I say a couple of ways. I'm only going to show it in one way. But
08:39here are the forecast 24-hour rainfall totals from various models. We've got Met Office
08:45model on the left, ECMWF, European Centre in the middle, and GFS on the right. And these
08:51are the forecast 24-hour rainfall totals from midday Friday until midday Saturday. And these
08:57are based from the previous model run. So the model run starting – that was run at
09:02midday on Monday. And they show, if we look at the Met Office model first, quite a wet
09:08picture across the UK, particularly western parts, western Wales, but many places seeing
09:12a fair amount of rain. ECMWF, pretty similar with the position of the low, some slightly
09:17higher rainfall totals across parts of northern England and the tip of Wales perhaps, but
09:22generally a similar idea. GFS, the American model, a bit further north, but not too dissimilar.
09:28But if we compare it now to the more recent one, the midnight run from this morning, and
09:33it's very, very different. Like I said, the latest global model from the Met Office wants
09:39to have the low tracking now across southern parts of the UK as opposed to across central
09:43parts of the UK. As a result, this suggests that we'd see the heaviest rainfall totals
09:49across southern parts, and this could cause some impacts. Further north, it's likely to
09:53be a bit drier. ECMWF has a similar picture, but the rainfall totals aren't as high. Meanwhile,
09:59GFS is sticking with the low going a bit further north than the other two models, and so it
10:03keeps their highest rainfall totals across parts of Northern Ireland, southern Scotland.
10:08So quite a different story. So still a lot to play for as to exactly the track that this
10:13low is going to take. The other thing that we have to bear in mind is not just the track,
10:17but how deep it's going to get. And there is some uncertainty about that as well. I
10:22think what we can be quite confident about is that there will be some unsettled weather
10:26pushing its way through as we go through this weekend. But exactly how unsettled it's going
10:30to be, particularly for the UK, that's where there's still quite a bit of uncertainty.
10:34So we need to be aware of the track that this low is going to take and just how deep it's
10:39going to be. There's the potential that it could stay just to the south of us, and really
10:44we won't see especially impactful weather. There's the potential it comes across the
10:48UK, and we could see some very impactful weather. Or there's also the possibility that
10:54the low could come across us and then deepen further as it continues its way eastwards
10:59and affect other parts of Europe a bit more – well, affect them a bit more, really,
11:06and they could see the strongest winds and the heaviest rain. So still a lot to play
11:10for as to what could happen this weekend. It could be very unsettled on Saturday in
11:15particular, or it could be that the heaviest rain, the strongest winds don't really develop
11:20until the low itself has pushed away a bit further east. So definitely one to keep up
11:25to date with. What happens thereafter? And this is actually where confidence gets a little
11:30bit higher, which is a bit weird, but I'll explain that in a second. What we're likely
11:35to see is this high-pressure building from the west, and so that should clear most things
11:40out towards the east. And so the unsettled weather that we see through the rest of this
11:44week and through the weekend should push away towards the east. It may take quite a
11:48while to do so, so I think really Saturday, Sunday, we're going to see further outbreaks
11:52of rain mixed in. And it's worth bearing in mind, whilst I mention it before I forget,
11:57on Saturday it's not just rain and wind that we need to be aware of. There could be some
12:02snow mixed in with it too. Not on the same scale as Burt, but it could be a multi-hazard
12:09event if the worst of it comes off, but that's no guarantee at the moment. However, I think
12:15we are going to see this high-pressure building as we go into the beginning of next week.
12:19So if I run that through to the end as we go through Sunday. So yes, we end up with
12:23a bit of northerly wind, so likely see our temperatures dropping, but then this high-pressure
12:28building as we go into the beginning of next week. Now, I can show you that if we look
12:33at the most likely forecast from ECMWF. So this chart shows the most likely regime for
12:42next Monday, the 9th of December, from ECMWF. Now I say most likely because you may be aware
12:48that ECMWF, they use an ensemble system, so they have several members which run their
12:55model and they run the model lots of different times with slightly different conditions each
13:00time, and then that gives us some idea of probability. Now something that's interesting
13:04about next Monday's, and I don't know if you can see, but at the top it says 100% probability.
13:10That's slightly misleading. It isn't 100% probability that this will happen. What it's
13:15actually saying is 100% all of its members are suggesting that this is the most likely
13:21regime for next Monday. They could all be slightly wrong, and so there's no guarantee
13:27that this will definitely happen, but there is exceptionally high confidence that we are
13:31going to see this high pressure coming in, and that should shift all the unsettled weather
13:36away towards the east for a bit of time as we go at least into the beginning part of
13:40next week. I can show you the confidence in a slightly different way, and this is our
13:45forecast confidence index from ECMWF. If you've not seen this chart before, what it shows
13:51is how high the confidence is in the forecast compared to average when we look how far in
13:58the future. The dashed line is the average forecast confidence for each day as we go
14:06into the future. As you would expect, the confidence generally on average decreases
14:11looking further ahead, and whether or not it's red or green shows whether at this stage
14:16the confidence is higher or lower than average. If it's red, the confidence is lower than
14:21average. So slightly lower than average confidence for what the weather is going to do as we
14:25go towards the end of the week, and that kind of goes in line with the uncertainty about
14:29all that unsettled weather, particularly that low that comes through on Saturday. But then
14:34confidence actually rockets up, and it's as high as it can be for next Monday, really
14:39high confidence in the idea of that high pressure coming in and bringing some settled weather
14:44for a time, something colder, perhaps even frosty at times too. In fact, you would expect
14:48some frost at this time of year with some settled weather and the air coming through
14:53from the north or northeast, you would expect some pretty chilly nights. But very high confidence,
14:58exceptionally high. To be honest, I've never seen confidence for six or seven days ahead
15:04to be that high. Then it drops down much closer to average, the forecast confidence, which
15:10is business as usual to some extent, in as much as that high may cling on for a little
15:17while as we go through much of next week, or it could just be a one or two-day kind
15:21of feature and then push through and then we get some more changeable weather as we
15:24go towards the end of next week. So that's still all to play for at the moment. But I
15:28just wanted to highlight how exceptionally high the confidence is for next week, the
15:33beginning part of next week in particular. So just to clarify, there is some unsettled
15:39weather to come as we go through this week, particularly Wednesday into Thursday, and
15:43then on the weekend as well. The exact track that low of the weekend is going to take and
15:49exactly when it's going to deepen, how much it's going to deepen, that's still all to play for.
15:53Right. I think that's everything that I wanted to cover for the immediate forecast. Like
15:59I said, I will be talking about the winter forecast in a second. But first, I wanted
16:04to have a little look back at what happened in or during November and autumn, because
16:10it is now meteorological winter. We have started looking at the winter months now. And instead,
16:16we have our statistics from November and the autumn that has been. Interestingly, when
16:23you look at the month, the seasons across the UK, the statistics look fairly average
16:30and they don't really tell the story until you look at the detail. Behind me, I have
16:34the map of rainfall compared to average for November across the UK. And you can see many
16:40parts of the country had much drier than average, the browns showing that it's much drier than
16:47average through November. And in the south, the southern half of the UK only looks around
16:52average or a little bit wetter than average in some places. But like I said, that doesn't
16:57really tell the story. So if we actually look at the rainfall across the UK as we went through
17:01the month as a whole, and you can really see it was a tale of two halves. The first
17:06two weeks of November, we were stuck under that high pressure, anti-cyclonic gloom. It
17:12was pretty cloudy, but there wasn't a huge amount of rain. As a result, it was pretty
17:17dry. It was one of the driest first two weeks of November on record. But then we had some
17:22much wetter weather towards the second half of the month, particularly when Storm Burt
17:26came through in that weekend around the 22nd, 23rd of November. Some very wet weather then.
17:32We had around six inches in some places. So exceptionally wet event. And you can see that
17:38here. And so when you average it all together, it wasn't especially notable. But there were
17:45some when you split it up, a very, very dry start to the month, and then some very wet
17:49weather later on. Then the other thing that I wanted to talk about when it comes to November
17:55is the fluctuation in temperatures, as well as the largely dry, cloudy weather. That anti-cyclonic
18:01gloom that we had to start November also led to things being pretty mild. And so temperatures
18:07were so slightly above average to begin with. Then just before Burt, you may remember we
18:13had that cold Arctic air coming down from the north. We had a fairly significant snow
18:17event across many parts of the UK. Even in the south, we had some major snow. We here
18:22in Exeter, we had some significant snow. And with that, we saw much colder than average
18:28temperatures for a few days. And then thereafter, it's kind of been up and down through the
18:33last week of November. But again, a tale of two hearse when you look at the temperatures.
18:38So if you looked at the month as a whole, it really wouldn't paint the right story.
18:42It wouldn't tell the details that you can if you look at things a bit differently.
18:49So I've talked about November, but now let's look at autumn. And again, when you look at
18:53autumn as a whole, it kind of doesn't, it misses bits out because we did get off to
18:58quite a wet start. September was pretty wet, particularly across parts of England. Ten
19:03counties had their wettest September on record. And I think even Oxfordshire and Bedfordshire
19:09had their wettest calendar month on record. So a wet start to autumn. Then October wasn't
19:15as wet. And then we had that drier period to begin with November. But then you can still
19:21see just how noteworthy storm Burt was coming through with how high this bar chart is for
19:28those five or for those last couple of weeks of November that it really was quite wet compared
19:33to the rest of the period, even though earlier on in the season, it had been pretty wet.
19:39Also, you can see that again, here is our cumulative rainfall compared to average. And you can see
19:45for the first, it was quite wet beginning of September. This is across the whole of the UK
19:49and it's fluctuating around. It was a bit wetter than average as we go through towards October.
19:55So by the time that we were getting towards the end of October, autumn so far had been wetter
20:00than average. And then November happened and we had that very dry period, those two weeks of very
20:06dry weather. And that took us well below the average for that stage in autumn. And then even
20:12with the increase in rainfall towards the end of the month with the storm coming through, it didn't
20:18get, when you look at the UK as a whole, it didn't get to, it didn't get above average. So autumn for
20:27the UK was drier than average by a fair chunk, even though we had a couple of months where it
20:34was wetter than average and then a very wet period. Because of this two weeks where it was so dry
20:38during November, it really has skewed the average when we look at it now. The other thing when we
20:43look at November, again, here is our map showing the rainfall amounts and the anomaly compared to
20:49average. And again, there's quite a north-south split, but it's even more marked compared to
20:53November when we look at the season as a whole. So drier than average across much of Scotland,
20:59Northern Ireland and some parts of Wales and East Anglia, but across central southern parts of
21:03England, here it was markedly wetter than average. Gloucestershire had its wettest autumn on record
21:09with around 74% more rain than average. And so it really was very wet and you can see why we had
21:17some impact. So again, when you look at the UK as a whole through the whole month, it doesn't really
21:22stand out. But when you look at the detail, there were some very noteworthy weather events.
21:28Now here at the Met Office, every month we issue a three-month outlook, which gives us a
21:33trend of the type of weather we can expect through the following three months. But this one is perhaps
21:39the most important one each year because it covers us through the whole of meteorological winter. Now
21:44to talk about why we issue these and what this one actually shows, I'm joined by Deputy Chief
21:50Meteorologist Chris Balmer. Thank you for joining me, Chris. And now a couple of things about the
21:55three-month outlook. First of all, why do we issue these? They don't go into the detail, do they?
22:01No, certainly not. These are not going to give us an idea about kind of weather conditions on any day
22:05or any given week through the forecast period. The one we're looking at kind of covers December,
22:10January and February. But what we can use it for by looking at the three months as a whole is we
22:14kind of look for anomalies in the forecast. So whether there's any signals that the weather
22:18through that three-month period might be wetter than normal or drier than normal or warmer than
22:22normal. So it's really we're looking at those anomalies through that full three-month period
22:26rather than any kind of specific weather patterns at any given time. And why do we issue these? Who
22:31uses them? Well, the products and the kind of service was originally designed for contingency
22:36planners. So people that have to make decisions kind of at longer lead times. So for most people,
22:40this kind of forecast really is just for awareness only. But there are some people, you know, for
22:45example, in the energy industry that have to try and manage things like energy demand. So obviously,
22:50there's still a lot of science and developments come in these forecasts. And there's still to a
22:55degree, some limited level of skill. But the information is still useful for people trying
22:59to do that kind of longer term planning of resources or whatever is requirements for
23:03their business. So initially, I suppose it wasn't for most people to look at. In fact, we kind of
23:08hid it away on the website for a little while, didn't we? It wasn't developed as a public facing
23:12service. But I think we learned that there is actually some merit in releasing this information
23:17to the public, because yet you might not be able to make absolute decisions based on it,
23:21but it might just increase your awareness and allow you to think about what kind of weather
23:25might become might be more likely in the coming season. I think it's important people understand
23:30what it is and what it isn't telling us. Let's take this one, for example. So yes, this covers
23:34the whole of December, January and February meteorological winter. And what kind of things
23:39is this one indicating to us? So yeah, so we split the forecast into three headlines. So we have a
23:44look at temperature, have a look at rainfall and have a look at how windy the season will be.
23:49And we split the forecast up into three categories. So the middle category is kind of 60% of the
23:56forecast, which is the kind of near average conditions. But then at the other end of the
24:00forecast, for example, in temperature, we've got mild and cold. So that's the kind of normally in
24:05the forecast distribution, that likelihood of those would be 20%. If you've got a forecast that's
24:11giving you no signal from what has been normal for the last 30 year climatology, which we used
24:15to put this together. So what we do is we look at our forecast and see how that compares to that 30
24:20year climatology. So we look at our forecast models and the science behind them. And we're
24:26trying to see where those anomalies might be. So if we look at the headline probabilities we've
24:30got here, so we start on the top ones over temperatures. So just a reminder, so if this
24:35was a kind of, the forecast was showing us perfectly normal average conditions for the
24:39winter, that still means you'll get variation in weather patterns, but the kind of full three
24:44months, it will be close to that 30 year climatology. That would suggest there's a 20%
24:49chance of cold and a 20% chance of mild. We can see on this forecast that we've got, we're skewed
24:54towards mild, so rather than 20% chance of mild. Quite significantly skewed towards mild.
24:57Yeah, so that's about 45% and only 5% cold. Now, one thing, because we're comparing this to a 30
25:04year climatology, and of course, we're well aware of climate change, the UK climate is warming.
25:09So that means because the kind of, if we were just to look at the last few winters and compare them
25:15to the last 30 years, we would see that on average they would be warmer than the last 30 years. So
25:19it's normal now that with that climate change signal that we normally tend to be skewed towards
25:24mild or warmer for the season. But actually for 45% is actually, that's telling us a little bit
25:29more information than that, because based on, as we'll see shortly, the prevailing weather patterns,
25:33which are expected to come more from the west, that does indicate that we're more likely to have
25:37above average temperatures as a whole for the season. Doesn't mean we won't get some cold
25:42outbreaks. There's always that caveat that, you know, in a typical winter conditions,
25:46you always get some colder spells. But indicated by just a 5% chance of cold, that tells us that
25:51there's only a very small chance that the winter as a whole will be kind of cold compared to that
25:5630 year climatology. So in terms of temperature, there's very much a skew towards mild for the
26:01winter. And it's skewed towards mild, taking both climate change into account and other things. So
26:06this isn't just climate change. It's not just climate change. That's also to do with the
26:09prevailing weather regimes that the models and the science is telling us is most likely for the
26:12coming winter. Talk about that in a second. We will. But you can see how that comes out as well
26:17in the rainfall and the wind. So again, we would normally expect, or kind of a forecast with no
26:22signal compared to the climatology would suggest 20, 60, 20. But we can see both to less degree
26:28in temperature, but both rainfall and winds are both skewed towards wet and windy. So it doesn't
26:33give us a definitive answer that yes, the winter will be wetter than windy than normal, but that
26:38chance is higher than it would be as going into a normal winter. It's more likely to be wetter and
26:43windier than average than drier. Exactly, exactly. Of course, in any given winter, you see wet and
26:48windy spells, but this is suggesting they may be more frequent. There's a greater chance that
26:53they'll be more frequent than what is typical in any given winter. And the skew that climate
26:58changes are having on the temperature, that's less impactful? I don't think we're seeing that
27:04in the headlines. I think this is more to do with the prevailing weather patterns, which the
27:07models are kind of suggesting rather than the climate change signal here. Let's get on to those
27:12though. So the prevailing weather patterns, what kind of thing are we talking about? So this is one
27:17of the things we look at when we're putting the forecast together. So this is kind of like a
27:21weather model, which we look at for the week ahead. But this is run out for much longer lead times.
27:25And it's an ensemble model, so run many, many times. And this is looking at mean sea level
27:33pressure for the whole three months. And again, it's coming up with an anomaly compared to what
27:37the average is for the full three months. So all those model simulations compared to average.
27:42And we've got anomalies on this chart. So what we can see on this chart... So this is the three
27:47month anomaly pressure pattern for December, January, February. December, January, February. And probably
27:52worth saying as well, and this is from the Met Office seasonal forecast system, which is called
27:57Glossy. When we're putting the forecast together, we put a lot of weight in our forecast system,
28:01but we look at... There's other seasonal forecast systems from around the world, which we look at.
28:05So we look at them all and see, is there common signals? Are they saying the same thing? Are they
28:09differing? And we try and understand what's driving these signals as well, which we'll come on to.
28:14But what we can see is actually relatively consistent for this winter amongst the different
28:19centres, is they've got this similar pattern. So people will be familiar that we normally see in
28:26the UK winds from the west. So you have a pressure gradient where you get lower pressure to the north
28:30of the Atlantic and higher pressure to the south. Now, this isn't necessarily telling us that. This
28:35is talking about anomalies. And where it's blue, what it's telling us is over that three month
28:39period as a whole, the model is suggesting that in these areas, pressure will be lower than average.
28:44And in these areas, pressure will be higher than average. And that's one thing where there is skill
28:49in seasonal prediction systems in terms of forecasting the kind of general, what we call
28:54kind of circulation patterns. One term that some people may have heard of is the North Atlantic
28:58Oscillation. So put simply, that's a pressure dipole between Iceland and the Azores. And so when
29:04pressure is lower than average near Iceland and higher than average near the Azores, that tends to
29:10be called a positive North Atlantic Oscillation. And with that in terms of weather conditions for
29:15the UK, that tends to be associated with, in winter, warmer than average, wetter than average,
29:20and windy than average conditions. So it's suggesting a kind of enhancement of westerly
29:24winds through the season as a whole. So a mobile pattern with weather systems coming in from the
29:29Atlantic. And it doesn't mean we'll see that pattern persist for the full three months. And
29:34you can kind of almost see there's some indication of higher than average pressure trying to extend
29:37from the southwest to some degree in these charts. And some of that, if we break it down month by
29:42month, there's a bit more sign of higher than average pressure in December. And then this
29:46pattern gets squashed a little bit further south in January and February. So there will be some
29:50seasonal differences. And the weather pattern won't be stuck in one pattern for the full three
29:54month period. But based on the modelling for the full three months as a whole, we get these kind
30:00of anomalies which point towards those headline figures which we looked at previously.
30:04You mentioned higher than average pressure perhaps more likely during the beginning part of winter,
30:09which is what we could see next week. Yeah, so exactly. We've kind of, we've seen really
30:16big fluctuations with our weather at late. So in November we saw some very mild spells and
30:20cold spells. And it also looks like we're kind of heading into that kind of pattern at the moment.
30:24We'll see some mild unsettled weather at the start of this week. And then into next week,
30:28it looks more like we're going to see more of a northerly and more high pressure trying to build
30:32from the west. So there are signs of this kind of, what is showing in these models already in December.
30:37So obviously, this was model data that we've used. And you mentioned that we use lots of
30:41different model outputs. But what other things do you look at other than just model data?
30:48Yeah, well, so we work kind of collaboratively to put these forecasts together.
30:52So we look at the models. So what I've kind of talked about there from Meta Office Seasonal System
30:56Glossy. But we also look at these things called teleconnections. So looking at these kind of
31:01things that have a remote influence on the weather patterns that we have in the UK and kind of more
31:07generally in Northwest Europe. So when you talk about connections, probably the thing that most
31:11people will be aware of is the El Nino Southern Oscillation. So it really gets a lot of attention
31:17in the press. For example, last winter, we had an El Nino event. So that got a lot of traction.
31:24And an El Nino event, so we're looking at sea surface temperature patterns here. Well, these
31:29again are anomalies of sea surface temperatures in the Pacific. During an El Nino period that we
31:34saw last winter, all this area of the central and eastern Pacific, the sea temperatures were warmer
31:39than average at low latitudes. And we can see in terms of ENSO, which we kind of call in short,
31:45we've got a reverse pattern this winter. So the pattern of sea surface temperatures over the
31:50Pacific at the moment, so this this graphic is just showing us information, observed information
31:55from the last couple of weeks. And it's showing some quite weak anomalies, but colder than average
31:59over the central and eastern Pacific. So this is sea surface temperature anomalies, the blues
32:04obviously showing, and then it's colder than average for this time of year. Here's Australia,
32:08and so yeah, in the Pacific. Right, and so it's the opposite of an El Nino. It's the opposite,
32:14and we're looking most importantly at the equator. So what we're looking at here is the sea surface
32:18temperature is being colder than average in these areas, and weakly warmer than average, what we
32:23call kind of the maritime continent, but more commonly this is Indonesia, Papua New Guinea,
32:27that kind of area. So where it's red, that's showing it's warmer than average. Now in the
32:32tropics, one of the main drivers of where we get kind of more persistent heavy showers and
32:36thunderstorms is the sea surface temperatures. So we know that sea surface temperatures drive
32:41weather patterns within the tropics. So we know based on how this pattern sets up, it'll have
32:46some influence of where the kind of most persistent heavy showers and thunderstorms will be over the
32:50coming season. Now we've kind of talked about El Nino 7 oscillation. So this is a pattern close
32:57to what would be termed La Nina, but this pattern is quite weak actually at the moment.
33:03No one's declared it La Nina just yet. No, so it's not officially La Nina, and you need two things
33:08really for a La Nina. We're looking at the ocean here, so you need a certain strength anomaly in
33:12the ocean, but you also need coupling with the atmosphere, and we've not really seen that based
33:17on some of the other metrics we look at. So when we look at the Pacific, we can say from a
33:21teleconnections point of view, we may be getting some influence which is typical of a La Nina winter,
33:26but it's not as strong La Nina, and it's not, it may still try and establish itself. So it still
33:32is a valid teleconnection for us to look at, but it doesn't mean it, but it's not necessarily kind
33:37of a big driver of mid-latitude weather patterns for the coming winter. It's still fascinating that
33:44we're looking, you know, to literally the other side of the world, and what's going on there at
33:48the moment plays quite a key role in what the weather's going to do over the whole winter for
33:54the UK. Absolutely, and this kind of pattern has been well researched. There's an awful lot of
33:59research that's been done trying to link different phases of ENSO, so El Nino and La Nina, and then
34:05try to work out how that influences patterns that affect the UK, particularly in winter,
34:10and research has shown that they do have some quite distinct influences on the broad weather
34:14patterns. So with a La Nina, so again we're not quite there yet, but we've got a pattern
34:20not dissimilar to that, and that tends to favour kind of a higher chance of kind of dry and cold
34:25weather in early winter, but once we get into late winter, so more January and February,
34:29it kind of favours warmer, wetter and windier weather, and that's something which is actually
34:33consistent. So the research is actually quite consistent with what the operational modelling
34:38which we've got at the moment is showing us, which gives us some confidence in the forecast,
34:41but still comes with the caveat that there's a lot of uncertainty in these seasonal forecasts.
34:45So yeah, that was really useful. I think lots of people would take a lot of that on board,
34:50but just to recap then, so this is our three-month outlook for winter, and yes, milder, wetter and
34:56windier than average, more likely than colder, drier and calmer, no guarantee, and even within
35:02that there will be fluctuations. There'll be some calmer days, there'll be some wetter, windier days,
35:06there'll be some colder spells, so winter as normal, but just at the end of, so in three
35:13months' time I'll get you back on and we can see how well we did. Yeah, absolutely, and obviously
35:18this is a probabilistic forecast, so this is not saying it will be wetter and windier than average,
35:22but we're saying compared to normal there's a greater chance of that. So we kind of have to
35:26verify these over a longer period than one winter, but we do look back at these forecasts every time
35:32we issue them to see what we can learn and see how they verify. That's great. Thank you so much for
35:37joining me, Chris. I'll see you again in three months' time. Thank you. Over the weekend some
35:41of you may have thought you saw a UFO in the sky, but of course it wasn't. Now I saw this photo on
35:48Twitter, or X as it now is, from at loomartin15. Thank you very much, Lou, for saying I could talk
35:54about it in this deep dive, and her partner took this photo somewhere in South Yorkshire on Friday,
36:00and it shows this rather stunning cloud, which I guess some may think looks like a UFO. It really
36:06does, and in the past this type of cloud had been confused with UFOs. It's actually called lenticular
36:11or autocumulus lenticularis, and it's formed on days where the air is quite stable, and as the
36:18wind hits against any high ground, any hills or mountains, it then bounces over it, and then
36:24downwind of the hills and mountains we then get this rippling effect where the air goes up and
36:29down, up and down. It leads to mountain waves, and in some days it leads to these stunning clouds
36:36forming. You can kind of see the air traveling over and then coming down the other side in that
36:41rippling pattern when you look at the cloud. They're one of my favorite clouds because they
36:45do look so picturesque, so thank you again for letting me talk about that today. Then the last
36:52thing that I wanted to talk to you about today before I go is something that came up in the
36:57comments from last week's deep dive. Well done to Anna. It was her first deep dive, and it was
37:02really good. If you haven't had a chance to watch it, then do check it out. But one of the comments
37:07asked about sunrise and sunset times as we get closer to the winter solstice, because there is
37:12something I think may surprise a fair few of you. Now behind me I have the sunrise sunset times for
37:18Leeds. I've picked Leeds as just somewhere relatively central in the UK. Now most of us know that
37:24around the or at the winter solstice, which this year is the 21st, we have our shortest days. That's
37:29when we have the least amount of or the least day length, so the shortest period between sunrise and
37:35sunset. And you can see on the 21st for Leeds there's around several, there is 7 hours 24 minutes
37:42and 42 seconds between sunrise and sunset. But you may think that sunrise starts to or will
37:53get later and later up until the solstice, and sunset will get earlier and earlier up until the
37:59solstice at an even amount. But actually that's not the case. If we look at sunrise times to start
38:05off with, and yes they are getting later and later and later and later until the solstice,
38:11but they actually continue to get later and later for a little while yet. In fact it takes until
38:17beyond the end of the year, until the 1st of January, for sunrise times to start to get
38:23lighter. So even though we've after the 21st crossed the winter solstice and had the shortest
38:30day, our mornings will continue to get darker for a little while yet, for over a week longer,
38:37and it's not until the 1st of January when the mornings will start to get lighter. The flip
38:41side of this is our evenings will start to get lighter a bit earlier than you might expect. If
38:46we look at our sunset times, and yes they're getting earlier and earlier up until around the
38:5215th, 16th, and it's here a few days before the winter solstice that sunset times start to get
38:59later. And so that's when we'll start to get lighter evenings. So we get lighter evenings
39:04before we get lighter mornings. Now the reason for this is because, well it's a couple of things,
39:10it's because the solar day is a little bit longer than 24 hours. The solar day being the length of
39:16time that it takes for the earth to rotate such that it goes from the noon to noon position, so
39:21where the sun is relative in the sky. The reason why the solar day is a bit longer, that's for two
39:27reasons. One, the earth is tilted on its axes a little bit at around 23.4 degrees, and the orbit
39:35that the earth takes around the sun isn't quite circular, it's elliptical. And so as a result there
39:41are times in the year when the earth is a little bit closer and a little bit further away from the
39:47sun. Now as we head into January we're getting closer to the time when the sun is at its closest,
39:52well sorry, the earth is at its closest point to the sun. As a result, because it's getting
39:56closer and closer, the orbit, its speed actually speeds up a little bit. Because of this and the
40:02tilt in the earth's axis, the time that it takes for the earth to spin such that it's solar day
40:11actually is a bit longer. So it takes, it has to rotate more for the sun to go from the noon to
40:16noon position. So because of this we end up with this slight variation, slight discrepancy perhaps,
40:22in what you would expect between the sunrise and sunset time. So that could be something that you
40:27impress your friends later on with some knowledge. The fact that even though the solstice is on the
40:3221st, our evenings will start to get lighter before that, a few days before, and our mornings won't
40:38start to get lighter than that until the beginning of the new year. Thank you so much for joining me,
40:43I hope that made some sense. I made sure that I tried to cover it because I found it quite
40:48interesting. There is a lot of weather going on at the moment, so remember we do have some
40:53more unsettled weather to come as we go through the rest of this week and possibly this coming
40:57weekend. As always, if you've enjoyed anything that I've talked about today, do hit the like
41:02button, do hit the subscribe button if you're not already one of our many subscribers. Make sure you
41:07share this with anyone who might find anything interesting and also if you have any questions
41:11or comments, please do leave them in the comment section and I'll try to respond to some of them
41:16later on. I've enjoyed doing this deep dive, I think it's Anna doing the 10-day trend tomorrow,
41:20it'll be her first 10-day trend and that will definitely be one to check out as we'll have a
41:24better idea of what's going to be happening this weekend. I'll see you again soon, bye-bye.