Libby's weather analysis

Following her forecast on Friday, meteorologist Libby Greenhalgh looks back at what actually happened

See Libby's Friday forecast

The outlook forecast given last Tuesday forecast light winds over the weekend with conditions between 4-8 knots. This was fairly correct for the Saturday, dominated in the morning by the high pressure ridge, while Sunday early wet and misty conditions cleared to produce fresh northwesterly conditions of 18 to 20 knots due to a new low centre coming in from the mid-Atlantic.

Saturday saw a damp and misty start as the pressure systems fought for dominance. With a high pressure centre off to the southwest and a low pressure centre to the northwest of the British Isles. As the day progressed the low centre off the tip of Greenland and the related frontal systems dominated the weather. Late morning the warm front had occluded with the chasing cold front of the low pressure and brought overcast conditions and generally wet weather, with winds from the northwest around 8 knots.

By around 1400 the associated cloud feature was slowly clearing producing drier and brighter conditions, winds remaining north-northwesterly but increasing to around 10 knots, ahead of another low pressure system that produced Sunday's weather.

The system that was becoming key was a low pressure centre in the mid-Atlantic that was spinning up throughout the day and heading towards the UK for Sunday.

Sunday saw a wet start with light winds first thing as the system’s associated occluded front dominated the weather across the Solent. By 1030 the occluded front had cleared producing dry sunny conditions with winds from the west to the northwest between 18-23 knots.

Outlook for this coming weekend

The weekend looks set to bring some very different synoptic conditions. With the weather dominated by high pressure system centred over Scandinavia bringing colder easterly winds of about 10 knots on Saturday, while Sunday will see the winds freshen to around 15 knots from the east.