Will the snow settle?

The forecast above is for whether snow will fall. Determining if accumulations will occur is even more difficult. A number of tools are available on the website to help, but for the next 5 days the UKV snow depth forecast charts may prove helpful.

If you are looking for more information consider checking out the Snow forecasting tools article.

Frost, rain, snow, heat and thunder risk

Belfast frost

Belfast rain

Belfast snow

Belfast heat

Belfast thunder

Full weather forecast

Next 3 days hour by hour

Belfast hourly

Next 16 days in 3 hour intervals

Belfast 16 day

Select location

UK postcode or place

What is needed for snow?

In the UK conditions are often marginal for snow and a number of variables need to align. For example, the upper level air must be cold enough. If it isn't then precipitation will fall as rain or freezing rain regardless of how cold it is at the ground level.

Upper level air temperatures need to be at or below freezing point which is 0C (32F). That is most likely to happen when winds are blowing from a northerly or easterly direction.

Temperatures at the surface generally need to be at or below 2C (36F). However, it can snow when they are higher, particularly in the spring when the air is often drier and the dew points are correspondingly lower.

A cold snap on its own is usually not enough for widespread snow because there also needs to be enough moisture in the air. For example, a northerly wind often brings dry weather to southern Britain with snow showers more likely in the north and around coastal counties.

In the UK snow is more likely to fall in the north and over higher ground.

If you'd like to learn more see UK Met Office's guide on How does snow form? and the Wikipedia entry Snow

Information

The snow forecast updates four times each day.

It combines data from the Meteo France Arpege, NCEP Global Forecast System (GFS) and NCEP Global Ensemble Forecast System (GEFS).

If you would like more in-depth information check our extensive range of Numerical Weather Prediction model data

To check the complete weather forecast use the Place, postcode or geolocation options in the header.