Morgan said: “We’ve basically got this battleground taking place over this weekend between cold air across Scandinavia and central Europe, which is affecting eastern parts of the UK, but towards the west is a little bit milder.
“The Atlantic is trying to shift that cold air out of the way, pushing from west to east across the UK, but it’s a very slow process and it will take until the middle of the coming week for conditions to turn much milder nationwide.”.
Met Office says snowfall may continue briefly in parts of UK before milder conditions well above February average.
Temperatures could reach 13C (55F) or 14C by the middle of the week, well above the February average of 6C in Scotland and 9C in southern England, the Met Office said.
The Met Office meteorologist Tom Morgan said he did not expect any national records to be broken but current periods without sunshine could last 10 days in some areas, which would be “near record-breaking”.
