It just clicked

After my post yesterday in which I mentioned the poor vis and high winds that we’ve been experiencing recently, I read a news article on the BBC web site that mentioned that the UK was about to experience a period of poor air quality and atmospheric pollution. Today I read that the latter is due to pollution being blown across into the UK from mainland Europe and also to dust being blown up from the Sahara Desert, and an article on the Daily Mail web site included the following image by way of explanation.

Something began to stir in my mind and I recalled a post that I did way back on 28 February about how ‘distortions’ to the Jetstream were affecting our weather. It included the following image that showed how the Jetstream, which I’d always thought of as a continuous high level band of strong winds that occasionally meandered from its ‘normal’ position to the north of the UK to positions a bit further south, was in fact far more complex.

The image showed that the ‘continuous’ stream of wind was actually fragmented and split and that its southern segment, as I commented at the time, was extending as far south as North Africa. After today’s reports, I wondered if this was still the case and whether a distorted Jetstream might be responsible for the air pollution in question and the dust from the Sahara Desert that has been sprinkling our cars here in south-west France and as far north as London and South-east England, and this is what I found.

This image shows the position of the Jetstream as of today and it seems to confirm my thinking. It would appear that it’s the Jetstream, our old enemy, that’s responsible for the ‘distortions’ in weather patterns that we’ve been experiencing recently. I’m not a meteorologist or any kind of expert in weather and its patterns and cycles and I do not have much knowledge of the history of the Jetstream over the years, or even over many months. However, I do recall discussions at a time when the UK had been suffering from an extended period of cold weather with constant northerly winds when an image was produced by the Met Office showing how the Jetstream had moved uncharacteristically further south than normal, dragging the ‘arctic’ weather conditions with it. And that was when it had moved only as far south as the English Channel. Now it would appear, that it’s moved much further south, as far as North Africa, and not only that. Now it’s also been torn apart, for some reason, into fragments that are wreaking havoc with the weather all over Western Europe.

I cannot explain why this should be or whether similar situations have existed in the past. What concerns me is how long it will go on for and to that I do not have any answers. The Jetstream forecasts that I have access to seem to indicate that there will be no significant change for at least the next few weeks but that shifting patterns will bring about short-term changes in local weather. I’ve made my own analysis based on those forecasts which for the next few days are largely in accord with the ‘official’ weather forecasts. It looks as though although the UK will experience strong winds from the west on 6 and 7 April, for us here it will be much more settled, remaining so right through to April 11/12, when we will again experience westerly winds with, most likely, a bit of rain. At the same time, there could be strong, cold northerlies in the UK. But on the basis of the present forecasts, it appears that pilots both here and in the UK can look forward to a good, settled period of weather from around April 16. We just have to wait and see how true that actually is.