Author: Linus H

TODAY may start off with quite a bit of clouds, but later the sky is expected to clear and it will stay mostly sunny at least for the second half of the day. The temperatures this morning start off at 12 degrees and are expected to reach a maximum of up to 19 later during the day. No precipitation is expected, and the wind will be mainly light.

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.

Mainland Europe is currently dominated by a strong high pressure area located over the Alps. In the eastern Mediterranean, a low pressure system brought heavy precipitation, in many cases in the form of snow, to Greece and surrounding regions, while Scandinavia is being battered with wind and precipitation as a low pressure system is moving across the peninsula. A cold front is crossing over the British isles from the north-northwest with cooler air trailing behind, bringing storm gusts in the process. In most of mainland Europe, temperatures are slightly below freezing at night and reach low positive values during the day, with the Balkan and Scandinavia being the exceptions where it is cooler.

So far, this winter was fairly mild and also unusually dry throughout large parts of Europe – but recent runs of the forecast models suggest that that might change soon. Currently, cold air is located over the Balkan, which even led to snow falling in Greece with pictures of the Acropolis covered in snow. The temperatures stay below 0 degrees Celsius even during daytime in the region. However in the rest of Europe to the north and west, the temperatures range from around 0 to 5 degrees.

The map below shows the current snow cover in Europe and the altitude at which the temperature reaches 0 deg. C (in meters) – as you can see, western and central Europe have absolutely no snow except for in the mountains, and the altitude of 0 degrees Celsius is located at around 2,000m.

The reason why it is cold in the southeast but comparatively warm but nonetheless dry in the rest of Europe is a high pressure area located over central Europe, which moves the cold air from Russia to the southwest towards the Mediterranean, while keeping upright a flow of mild air from the southwest and west towards the rest of Europe. The high is also blocking the rain coming from the Atlantic, though, resulting in the unusually dry weather for this season.

Towards new year’s eve, however, this high-pressure system is expected to weaken while at the same time a new one will form over the northern Atlantic and start to move east gradually. Ahead of that new high, the wind direction in central Europe will turn from west to north, and with the wind from the north comes cooler air.

A cold front will be located at the leading edge of this cold air mass, hence precipitation in liquid and solid form is to be expected. The level at which 0 degrees Centigrade are reached will fall to 200m, in some places possibly even right down to 0m. Except for Scandinavia, the first ones to be affected by this cold air will be the British Isles (UK and Ireland), with snow falling throughout Scotland and possibly even in some lower-lying areas of England. On the 2nd of January, the snow is then also expected to reach France, Germany and possibly Austria and Switzerland, with the largest amounts of snow expected to fall at the northern side of the Alps.

Although there will be snow, the temperatures will still range from around -3 to +5 degrees every day, and especially in the northern parts of central Europe the snow is expected to melt.

On Friday, new snow is expected to fall throughout large parts of Europe, and it will continue throughout the weekend especially in the Alps and the southern half of Germany, resulting in a predicted snow cover of over 10cm in some low-lying areas.

This is a brief overview of what is expected to happen in terms of winter in (central) Europe AS OF NOW; please do take note that these forecasts are still quite long-term and hence may change in the coming days.