2 weeks Ago By Eleanor Burleigh
A late-March snowstorm is set to hit the UK, ushering out a brief spell of settled and sunny weather seen at the beginning of the month. The disruptive conditions will move in from the west at around 6pm on March 28, according to forecasts from WXCharts , bringing snow and ice to northern regions. Households near Inverness and the Scottish Highlands will wake up to snow depths of around 1cm at 6am, while those living near Newcastle, Leeds and York will see flurries of up to 40mm per hour.
The forecaster predicts continued snowfall throughout the morning on March 29, gathering pace on the northeast English coast at around 12pm, with a rainy front moving across across the southeast near Suffolk and London at around the same time. The afternoon of March 29 will also see the mercury plummet in Scotland to around -2C, while staying above freezing but in the low single-digits in the south. Meanwhile, cities including Newcastle, Middlesborough, York and Leeds are expected to hover around 0C.
From there, the blitz of late wintry weather will ease off but remain on the ground in a stretch of northeastern Scotland, with depths of around 1cm near Newcastle, stretching down into North Yorkshire. A rainy front in southern coastal areas is expected to clear by around 6pm, with chilly but dry weather across most of the UK. On Sunday, March 30, the penultimate day of the month, snow will continue to hang around northeastern England and Scottish Highlands, WXCharts suggests, with areas around Inverness and Fort William bearing the brunt of gathering flurries, in what looks set to be a sustained blast of winter for the country.
It comes after the UK recorded its warmest day of the year last weekend, with temperatures reaching 19C in some areas - though the seasonal spike was quickly chased out by light snowfall on Wednesday, offering a taste of so-called "fool's spring", when warmer spells are followed by a cold snap during March and April. The Met Office 's long-range forecast for March 28 to April 11 warns of "changeable weather patterns" with unsettled, wet and windy conditions likely to intersperse with drier and sunnier spells into next month. "Into early April, there may be a transition to more frequent drier and .
.. settled spells," the national weather service said.
"Temperatures will probably be above average overall." Met Office Meteorologist Tom Morgan said: "We have an Arctic air mass in place across the UK at the moment, compared to a much milder continental air mass last weekend. "Last weekend, we had very mild southerly winds coming up from North Africa and Spain bringing those temperatures into the teens.
On Monday, we saw cold fronts sink southwards across the UK, and that introduced colder, Arctic air." "This is not unusual, we do see snow and frost in March quite often," he added. "If anything, it was last weekend that was fairly unusual to see temperatures as high as 18 or 19C.
With climate change, we can expect higher temperatures earlier in the year becoming a bit more likely and shorter winters with less extreme, less cold conditions.”.
