Happy new year everybody! And let’s get straight into an overview of the weather situation in Europe on the first day of 2017.
Europe is currently dominated by high-pressure weather. The dominant high that was located over the Alps yesterday has weekend a bit and moved further south, with a couple different centers of high pressure being located just to the north of the Mediterranean. A strong high pressure area is located over the northern Atlantic NW of the British isles and to the south of Iceland, which is pushing cold air from the Arctic towards the south at its eastern flank. At the leading edge of this cold air, a cold front results in a clearly noticeable change of air masses, with quite a bit of rain and also windy weather. The cold front is currently located across the very south of the UK. Because of the high pressure influence, the temperatures are similar throughout Europe, being a bit below freezing at around 0 to -8 degrees Celsius in the morning, and reaching a maximum of 0 to 4 degrees during the day. It will also be largely dry in mainland Europe, however the cold air advancing from the north and especially the cold front at the leading edge will bring some precipitation, largely in the form of rain in the lowland. There may be some snow as the front moves into Germany at night, however.
