Guernsey Weather Fox

Happy New Year everybody!

Broad Summary of This Week’s Weather

The key words are cold or very cold. Lots of you will have noticed white stuff as well as wet stuff landing on your jackets and windscreens on New Year’s Eve. Well, that is likely to continue throughout the week, and the biggest question that most people will be asking is are we going to see any more significant snowfall. For this to happen in Guernsey, we need quite a few ingredients to come together. We certainly have one of those ingredients, which is a consistent feed of cold air from significantly colder parts of Eastern Europe. This air is usually very dry by nature, so it needs to interact with a significant amount of moisture, usually of Atlantic origin, at some higher level of the atmosphere. At the moment, computer models are not suggesting this will happen, but rather that we will continue to just see much smaller scale shower-clouds developing in the English Channel. This happens when the relatively warm sea forces the relatively cold air above it to rise. This process (convection) usually leads to the development of rain and hail, but because the atmosphere is much colder at the moment, the hail stone formation is slightly different and they actually look less like ice-balls and more like mini snowballs (called snow-pellets) and they will be all mixed up with regular snow-flakes and with regular raindrops. This is why we forecasters talk about ‘wintry showers’ or ‘sleety showers’. The key point is that it’s very unlikely to be consistent enough or persistent enough to lead to significant accumulation. However, if there are significant new developments in the forecast story, then I shall be sure to tell you about them in the updates.

NY’s Day

Weather

After such a cold night and with lots of water running off the fields at the moment, there is bound to be some ice on the roads early morning and perhaps again in the evening. The air temperature will start off at about 2°C and then plentiful sunshine will pick it up to about 6°C by late morning (definitely another hats and gloves day). There will be some cloudier times though, occasionally producing wintry showers. If you take a camera with you on your New Year walk, then look out for the picturesque white smears and rainbows as the showers are approaching. The NE’ly wind will only be light so all coasts should be nice for a walk, but the south coast should be marginally more comfortable.

Surf and the Water

The west-coast surf might just be 1-2 feet and clean in the morning. If that is the case then maybe you will choose a New Year surf rather than a New Year swim. For the swimmers, the light wind and the smooth to slight sea, will mean that virtually any time and place is ok for a quick dip (so long as you take care and know your limits). High water 8.9m at 7:40am. Low water roughly 2m at 2:10pm.

The Weekend

Weather

The NNE’ly wind will perhaps be a little stronger, but the air just a fraction less cold (with daily maxima of 7°C and nightly minima of about 3°C. The skies are likely to be more cloudy on both days, still with some sunny intervals, but briefer and less frequent than on New Year’s Day, The showers will also be more frequent and they could turn rather heavy, particularly on Sunday. We will still have that wintry mix of precipitation, especially on Sunday, but rain will always have the majority share.

Surf and the Water

Flat surf. The best shelter for a cold-water dip will be on the south coast. Tidal highs in the early mornings and tidal lows in the mid-late afternoons.

Next Week

Weather

Brrrr, staying cold every day, with ENE’ly winds at the start of the week, veering to NNE’ly winds later on. The top temperatures on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday are only likely to be 5-6°C but they will probably pick up to 7-8°C for Thursday and Friday. Ground-frost is likely whenever winds are light overnight or in the early morning. Furthermore, with wintry showers featuring throughout the week (more frequent on some days than others), there will certainly be some ice on your car windows, and possibly along stretches of the most sheltered roads.

Surf and the Water

Flat surf. The best shelter for a cold-water dip will be on the south coast. Tidal highs in the mid-late mornings Monday to Wednesday, and around lunchtime on Thursday and Friday.