Now the three main winter months are over, it's a good opportunity to look at the weather maps for the overall winter story for Europe.
Relative to the 30 year climate, it was a warmer than average winter for the Nordic Countries, the British Isles and Iberia. However, it was a colder than average winter for much of central and southeastern Europe. It was also a drier than average winter for much of Europe, with some localities having less than 50% of average precipitation. This was due to less Atlantic low pressure impacting our weather and more high pressure over mainland Europe than we normally see.
The map above shows the winter total precipitation as a percentage of normal (from rain gauges) with yellow/orange indicating dry.
Looking ahead for the remainder of March reveals a warmer than average spell coming to the UK and Ireland for the period 8-11 March, mild south west or westerly breezes will bring temperatures of 12 to 15 Celsius and night time values will hold up at 7 to 10 degrees for most of us. For the middle part of the month we could see some colder nights as high pressure influences European weather for a while, but during this time some pleasant early Spring days are likely.
Then for the last ten days of the month, we're likely to see low pressure returning from the nearby Atlantic. This will bring spells of rain and strong winds to Scotland and Ireland (notably the western sides), whereas further south and southeast the weather pattern will be a mix of sunshine and showers.
Looking at the calendar month of March as a whole, we're expecting near or slightly above average temperatures, rainfall and wind, and mostly above average sunshine levels. We'll look forward to the signals for April weather in a couple of weeks time.
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