We continue with the cold theme for many areas over the next 48 hours or so. The wintry weather will become increasingly confined to northern hills through Saturday night and into Sunday. We stay with the cool east to northeasterly flow which will bring further snow showers, even into Monday across the higher ground in the north, however to lower ground precipitation will be falling as rain, hail and at times sleet.   The showers will be heaviest and most frequent across eastern coastal counties of England and Scotland (north sea facing coasts) and we maintain the risk of one or two of these showers being thundery in nature. Whilst many central and western areas remain cold and dry, however …

An area of low pressure is expected to track close to the United Kingdom late Thursday and will head NNE during Friday morning. Whilst strong winds are associated with this area of low pressure, thankfully many areas will escape the strong winds, however many areas will be blustery during Friday. The low tracks NNE late Thursday night bringing severe gale force winds across much of Ireland and Northern Ireland, especially west and southwest coasts. Strong winds (gale force) will also affect the southwest of England and Irish sea coasts in general. Through Friday the strongest winds then extend northwards into parts of W, SW and NW Scotland including the Western Isles of Scotland. The image below shows expected wind gusts …