A distinct change in the weather will reach the British Isles by this weekend, as milder air sweeps in from the south-west behind Friday’s rain.

This sets the scene for temperatures widely into double figures for a few days, although with grey skies at times.

Temperatures look like coming back nearer normal into the new week, and the main question is then how far south the incoming Atlantic fronts move. Rain looks likely to become common in the north-west, whilst the south-east is drier through midweek.

The current very cold spell over Scandinavia holds the key to how the European and British weather pattern evolves in the slightly longer term.

A lot of very cold, dense air is in place across northern Scandinavia, and this may take some shifting. The model understanding of cold-warm transitions is not brilliant, so expect some jumping around in the coming days as they try to push milder air into northern Europe.

Even if Scandinavia does become milder in the week ahead, then this may not be the end of winter, because quite often, pattern ‘memory’ remains in the short-term climate system.

The processes which have brought the cold start to 2016 in the far north may quite easily come back around, and bring a renewed push of cold to the region, having a knock-on effect to our weather patterns too.

So, looking a couple of weeks ahead, it means treat milder west or south-westerly trends currently favoured by the models with some caution.

I think we have to wait a little while for the next hit of winter to reach the UK shores, but here at Weatherweb we still favour a cooler month into February, and are watching how this pattern unfolds for a potential colder snap developing into early mid-month, say around the 10-15th period.

Much to ponder, and it’s a time for combining model output with educated meteorological ‘hunches’, so let’s see how things develop!