Arctic blast hits UK on Monday – however a heat up is on the way in which

If you can make it through arctic Monday, you may be in for a treat as a mini-February heatwave might be on the way for the end of this week

Today will be colder than Iceland, with 4C highs in the North feeling like just 1C, and 6C in the South, but it is looking up towards the end of the week as temperatures could hit 14C.

Snow fell in parts of East Anglia over the weekend, with 2cm in Norfolk and 1cm in Suffolk. According to the Met Office, parts of the UK may continue to have snowfall throughout Monday.

However, forecasters are saying that temperatures could reach 13C or 14C by the middle of the week, well above the February average of 6C in Scotland and 9C in southern England.

This comes after the the bitterly cold weather the country has seen over the last few weeks because of a “Scandinavian high”, which is a large area of high pressure which develops over Scandinavia.

Met Office meteorologist Tom 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.”

He said the gloom “dominating” the UK over the past two weeks had been caused by a “large anticyclone”, or high-pressure system, which had been sitting over Scandinavia, bringing cold wind from the east.

“Those cold conditions have picked up a lot of moisture across the Baltic and North seas, and those moist conditions have led to a lot of clouds. That’s why we haven’t seen much in the way of sunshine in most of the UK recently.”

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