When weather will change dramatically after freezing rain and snow

There’s about to be a dramatic change in temperatures across the country, meaning it might finally be time to retire the winter woollies after a serious cold snap.

Graphs of predicted temperatures in the four UK capitals show that all will have a sharp increase from Tuesday, and will keep on getting warmer as the week goes on.

It comes after January saw widespread snow and ice, with people even skiing down roads in Devon.

There was not much respite this month either, with a warning of ‘freezing rain’ last week which could quickly turn roads into ice rinks, and a ‘Scandinavian High’ bringing cold weather down from the far north of Europe.

Your chapped hands and lips might be getting some respite soon, however, as things could start to feel more spring-like, right on cue.

Here’s the picture for the coming week… It’s not quite parasols and sun hats, but we won’t be getting frostbite.

Much of the UK has seen ‘anticyclonic gloom’ over the past week, causing dull skies, with some areas not having seen the sun in more than a week.

Met Office meteorologist Tom Morgan said he did not expect any national records to be broken, but some areas may go 10 days without any sunshine, which is ‘near record-breaking’.

Temperatures are now set to rise to 13°C or 14°C by the middle of the week, with sunshine in a number of areas on Monday.

This is well above average for the season, which is 6°C in Scotland and 9°C in southern England, but it is not likely to break the record for hottest day in February, which was 21.2°C recorded in 2019 in Kew Gardens.

Mr Morgan said: ‘We’ve basically got this battleground taking place over this weekend between cold air across Scandinavia and Central Europe, which is affecting eastern parts of the UK, but towards the west is a little bit milder.

‘The Atlantic is trying to shift that cold air out of the way, pushing from west to east across the UK, but it’s a very slow process and it will take until the middle of the coming week for conditions to turn much milder nationwide.’

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