THE storms are coming so quickly we might run out of names ... and as another week begins, there's no sign that the weather is going to improve any time soon. But why are things so bad this year? STV meteorologist and Renfrewshire resident Sean Batty explains...
Most people will have noticed the real lack of wintry weather this winter, especially during December and January. We were not alone, and with the exception of Alaska, most parts of the northern hemisphere have experienced much warmer conditions than normal and no snow.
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In Moscow snow even had to be shipped in for new year celebrations, and there wasn't a white Christmas for most of the US and even Canada.
So where has winter been then? Now, picture this, a fast-moving cone of air encircling the Arctic, extending from about six miles to 30 miles above the ground – this is called the Polar Vortex.
The fast-moving air acts like a ring-fence holding in the cold air, which gets colder and colder as the long polar night continues. Occasionally this can break down and allow bursts of very cold air to break away and move south into Russia, the US, and sometimes us here in Scotland, as happened in 2018 when the Beast from the East arrived.
But this winter the Polar Vortex has remained robust and in place meaning the cold air has stayed banked up over the Arctic.
What's quite interesting, though, is the Arctic sea ice is covering the largest area it has since 2010, after a bit of a jump in early February. This is likely to be down to the fact the Polar Vortex has remained fairly stationary.
So we've covered the cold air, but why is it so windy and wet here? Well, while the Polar Vortex is strong, jet streams further south are usually stronger. The jet stream that affects us here is called the polar jet and this drives areas of winds and rain around the northern hemisphere.
Recently it's been very strong, reaching speeds in excess of 250mph at 30,000ft, and that's why we've had record-breaking flight times across the Atlantic from the US recently.
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Great news if you're on a flight back from New York, but not great for those of us on the ground where that powerful jet stream is also winding up and deepening areas of low pressure crossing the Atlantic and turning them into storms through a process known as explosive cyclogenesis.
Unfortunately for us here in Scotland not much in the atmosphere is going to change in the foreseeable future, meaning that this will be the status quo, with more rain and occasional storms.
There is a little hint in some of the computer models that the jet may adjust slightly south towards March which would move storm tracks south of us, but that also means snow will become more likely.
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