A very unsettled week ahead
Tuesday began with thick fog in Tideswell. As the SE wind freshened this lifted into low cloud and, although the morning stayed dry, it became decidedly raw in the strengthening wind with the temperature only just creeping up to 3°.
Slight rain started around 1230z and as the intensity increased it turned to moderate sleet just after 1300z. The sleet carried on until about 1345z but then, with the temperature just creeping up, it turned back to rain. We then had moderate to heavy rain till about 1730z. After the rain ceased we have gone back to thick fog and slight drizzle. The current (2030z) temperature is 5.1° and that’s the highest it has been all day.
The satellite image below, from the middle of the day, shows the cloud from the frontal system over the the country and a great mass of cloud to the SW heralding another wet and wind day tomorrow.
Over the next week Atlantic weather systems will dominate our weather. In Tideswell we’ll see spells of wet and very mild weather alternating with spells of brighter and somewhat cooler weather but it’s almost impossible to put any sort of reliable detail on the predictions. One thing that does look pretty certain is that tomorrow (Wednesday) will be particularly windy. Even in Tideswell, which is relatively sheltered, we may well see southerly winds gusting to over 50 m.p.h.. For the following few days the wind will be a significant feature of the weather.
The first animation below shows a prediction of the evolution of the weather systems over the next 5 days.
The second animation shows one computer model’s idea of the accumulating precipitation over the next 16 days. This indicates well over 100 mm in the Peak District.
The detail shown in these animations cannot be relied on but they do indicate a lengthy spell of very unsettled weather which will often be mild and will be largely frost-free.