Holiday Monday on 2 January saw perfect winter weather with mostly sunny skies for much of the UK and Ireland, as can be seen by this superb NASA satellite photo above.
Under the clear skies, temperatures fell to minus 6 Celsius over the sandy soils of the southern England countryside. Minus 4 was quite widely observed in Wales and over parts of northern England and Ireland.
For the remainder of this week, the weather will be mostly settled and some more frosty nights are on the cards. Wednesday night into Thursday morning looks to have a widespread sharp frost with temperatures dipping to minus seven in parts of Scotland. After a brief spell of strong winds along the North Sea coasts, winds should be fairly light.
The weekend will see a transition in the weather as milder Atlantic winds arrive and this will set the scene for the week commencing 9 January. The weather map shows the five day average pressure pattern, with the main high pressure centred west of Portugal and the low pressure near Iceland.
The northwest corner of the UK will have above average rainfall for the week starting 9 January, wind speeds across the UK and Ireland should be close to average for the time of year (the windiest week of the month), and both day and night time temperatures are expected to be above average (most likely for Ireland and Wales). Sunshine levels should be above average for eastern coasts of both Scotland and England.
There are indications that the Jetstream will be slightly weaker than average for the second part of the month. As a result, temperatures are likely to be below average for much of Europe (without being extreme), rainfall and wind speeds will probably fall short of average across northwest Europe.
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