February 23rd, 2026

Hi All,

As I type this, the air temperature is already nudging into the low teens and some areas are forecast to tip even higher mid-week, with 15-17°C likely.

Quite a change from earlier this month.

The reason is that the jet stream which has been lying in a southerly position most of the winter has shifted northwards. This is allowing warmer air to push up from the south and also for the time-being, most of the heavy rain to be pushed across the north of the country. We are in a sunshine and showers sort of mode currently then with most of the rain vectored to the north and north west of the U.K in a more traditional pattern as opposed to the more southerly-vectored rainfall we have experienced this winter. Warm and windy means that wind will be a drying one and our daily E.T will also be edging up for the first time since, well, probably September last year. Warm, with a drying wind, what's not to like ?

Later this week, we will see an Atlantic low pressure push in to revert us to a more familiar, heavier rainfall pattern, pushing into Ireland early on Thursday and crossing The Irish Sea into the west of the U.K later that same day and then across the remainder of the U.K through Thursday / Friday. Some strong winds will accompany this system and we will also see the temperature drop back to something a bit more normal for February with 9-10°C more the norm. We will retain that breezy south westerly airstream for all of the week, which means at least we will get some drying periods between the rainfall currently forecast. A brief respite on Friday before another low pressure system winds into Ireland and the U.K for the weekend.

Across The North Sea, Denmark will hang onto that cold air for the start of the week, but they'll be an uplift as we approach mid-week with that milder, south westerly airstream arriving and pushing temperatures up into high, single figures. That low pressure system previously mentioned will push rain into Denmark for the end of the week. I see the milder air and sunshine & showers weather pattern potentially staying in place for Denmark next week as we arrive into March.

10-day ECMWF projection courtesy of tropicaltidbits.com

So, a sunshine and showers feel to the weather this week with a couple of heavier weather systems chucked in towards the end of the week and over the weekend, Not bad as we head out of February and reach the first day of meteorological spring on Sunday, March 1st.

Now this run of pleasant temperatures has got nature into thinking Spring is on the way and some of my younger Hedgehog visitors clearly agree. This one appeared a week ago in the garden looking for food under the bird feeders and so I have started feeding it. It looks a bit tatty, as though it's had a hard winter so one to keep an eye on. I don't expect the more mature Hedgepigs to come out of hibernation for another week or two yet, but maybe this run of mild weather may influence that decision ?

I see the first Sand and Housemartins have reached the Isles of Scilly so it won't be long before we see these appearing around our coasts and hear Chiffchaffs in the woods and hedgerows. I had my first Blackcap in the garden last week, great to see and whilst fishing the river Trent at the weekend I saw flocks of Fieldfares heading east, are they going home to Scandinavia already I wonder ?

Although meteorological spring starts on Sunday, I think the majority for us have been around the block enough to know that winter doesn't usually release its hold on our weather that easily, so we should view this as a nice prelude to spring, but a temporary one maybe.

Weather Outlook and Ensembles.....

With that in mind, what does the meteorological outlook look like as we venture into early March ?

So, the ECMWF projection for the start of next week sees the jet stream reverting to its more southerly position and with that we can see a deep, Atlantic low pressure coming into view. Interestingly, the GFS long-range forecast has this system much further north with the jet stream also in a more northerly position, similar to this week.

The models don't agree.

ECMWF Ensemble for temperature @ 2m - London, England Reproduced courtesy of netweather.tv

ECMWF Ensemble for rainfall - London, England Reproduced courtesy of netweather.tv

So there's clearly some uncertainty in the forecast. One way we can get a handle of how much uncertainty is by looking at what is known as ensemble data.

Ensembles represent a multitude of slightly different runs of a meteorological algorithm and they result in a multitude of weather outcomes. If the outcomes are tightly-packed horizontally, then the forecasters can have confidence in the forecast for that particular parameter. If the lines are the graph are widely-dispersed, it suggests significant variability is attached to the forecast, with a lower probability it is accurate.

If you look at the two graphs above, the top one is for temperature at 2m and the bottom for precipitation. You can see that both show pretty tightly-packed outcomes (lines) until around 1st March (arrow), whereafter they begin to widen as the probability attached to the current forecast decreases. The rainfall graph also has a couple of outliers on the 27th of February (arrow), suggesting that two runs indicate a potentially higher rainfall outcome than the others.

So to me looking at this, I would interpret it as the temperature forecast is pretty good / accurate for the next week and also from a rainfall perspective, although there's some variability in just how much rain we get at the end of the week. It also tells me what I already know and that is most weather forecasts nowadays have a pretty decent accuracy for temperature over the next 5-7 days, but for rainfall this is less sometimes.

Now when we look at something like disease prediction, bear that in mind, 5-7 days is realistically what we are looking at currently and at certain points of the year (summer into autumn), we are seeing less accuracy timescale-wise, as the weather is harder to predict. That is certainly time enough for you as a turfgrass manager to act, so it's still useful, but just be wary beyond a certain timescale.

Bearing in mind the conflict between the two long-range forecasts and the low probability beyond 5-7 days of a forecast, it is probably remiss of me to venture further with what next week's weather looks like other than to say this ;

If the ECMWF projection is correct and to be honest I hope it isn't, we will see a deep Atlantic low pressure push in during Monday to bring cooler weather and rain for the southern half of the U.K. Following on from this are two more Atlantic low pressures. They are both slow-moving and associated with cooler air. If correct, these will push into Northern Ireland and north west Scotland next Wednesday / Thursday, before looping southwards and bringing heavy rain to the southern half of the U.K at the end of next week. We certainly don't need this. Now currently the GFS projection is completely different and I don't see this on forecasters like Meteoblue.com's output either, so I would conclude that we have low probability attached to the above. Let's see this time next week as it pans out.

This run of mild weather will provide a very welcome growth boost for everyone that has been suffering with thinning surfaces after a winter of extremely low DLI levels and temperatures. Above is a snippet of February's agronomic report from our Prodata Reports software and I have highlighted the last two days (the current one is still building data of course) and you can see that the Growth Potential has moved from 0.05, 0.1 sort of area at the end of last week to 0.37, 0.39 currently and with a mid-week peak coming up, I'd expect that to top 0.5 - 0.6 sort of range. That's indicative of a nice growth rate, good clip in the boxes and finally a bit of recuperative growth from our grass swards, Amen to that !

Last Friday, knowing the forecast, I got up early, solid tined my small, rubbish, back lawn that doesn't see the sun from the end of October to the beginning of March, overseeded and fertilised it knowing we had rain and milder temperatures on the way. I besom broomed the last topdressing in just as the first rain drops began to fall.

I settled into smug mode thereafter.

Now I know a good number of you carried out early aeration in January and February this year, despite the truly awful run of weather we endured. Those surfaces are going to growing in very nicely during this weather window and by the time we reach early March, most likely recovered. Job done, box ticked, well before expectations and play levels rise.

Using weather windows is of absolute necessity to a turf managers agronomic strategy, whether that be timing of aeration, fertilisation, PGR and / or pesticide applications. So it follows logically that that very same turf manager should have a good understanding of weather forecasting and basic weather pattern interpretation beyond the weather forecasting apps you have on your phone or are sent from manufacturers. You don't have to be a meteorologist to understand the format and output above, you simply need a basic grasp of weather systems and output. Go to it !

All the best.

Mark Hunt