This is an in-depth Met Office UK Weather forecast for the next week and beyond. This week Julian Hemming Tropical Prediction Scientist joins Annie for a masterclass in the Hurricane season and the unprecedented strength of Hurricane Berly this early on in the season. We also take a look at what’s to come for the rest of July in the UK. Bringing you this deep dive is Met Office meteorologist Annie Shuttleworth.
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00:00Hello, welcome to your latest deep dive from us here in the Met Office HQ. I'm
00:04Annie, I'm a meteorologist and presenter here at the Met Office and this week
00:08we're going to be talking all about Hurricane Beryl moving through the
00:12Caribbean throughout this week. We'll also be talking about the UK's weather
00:16as well, what we can expect for the rest of this week, the weekend and next week
00:20is it going to get any warmer again. But the hot topic tonight today is Hurricane
00:26Beryl and I am joined by Julian Hemming, our resident expert on tropical
00:32storms, tropical prediction scientist I think it is isn't it? That's right Annie,
00:36yes. Hello Julian, thank you very much for joining me and could you start off
00:40by just telling us a little bit about your role here in the Met Office? Yes, my
00:44role is basically to do a lot of work to do with tropical cyclones worldwide. That
00:49can range, have a big range of things that I do from even going right into the
00:54computer code in our model to try and represent the way tropical cyclones are
00:59formed in the model. But it goes right through to evaluating the model
01:03forecasts and then making sure we have the right products going out to warning
01:10centres around the world and having relationships with those warning centres
01:13making sure they're getting what they want from us. And then also doing
01:18things like this, explaining to people what's going on and why things like this
01:23are happening. Yeah and so it's really important to know that here at the Met
01:28Office we're not just looking at the UK's weather, we are sort of the UK's
01:31main meteorological society or office but we are also looking around the world
01:36at key impactful weather as well and Hurricane Beryl is that key, the main
01:42thing going on at the moment isn't it? Yes that's right, I mean the Met Office
01:46is a global forecasting centre so although Hurricane Beryl and others like
01:50it are not going to have any direct impact on the UK, we run a global model
01:54and as I've said there are regional agencies around the world like for
01:58example the National Hurricane Centre who look after this area where Beryl
02:03is, which they like to get information from a variety of models from
02:08different agencies and one of those is the Met Office model so we provide
02:12them with that information and other products and so even though we won't be
02:16directly affected by Beryl, that's what we do, but I should add that sometimes
02:21Atlantic hurricanes like this can turn whilst they're back out over the ocean
02:26and head towards the UK as extra tropical or post-tropical storms and so
02:30that's another reason why we're interested in them. Yeah okay and could
02:35you just give us a little bit of background on the hurricane season and
02:40how they form? Yes in the Atlantic the hurricane season officially runs from
02:46the 1st of June to the 30th of November, now that doesn't mean you'll get
02:51non-stop activity all through that period, occasionally we'll get early
02:55season storms and in fact in the last 10 years or so we've had quite a few weak
02:59storms developing in May time and normally the early part of the season
03:04through June and July we will start to get a gradual build-up of storms,
03:08normally they would be around the fringes of the basin so you might get a
03:12storm in the Gulf of Mexico or in parts of the subtropical Atlantic and it's not
03:17normally until the real peak season which runs from about mid-August through
03:22to mid to late October that you get the really powerful storms developing in the
03:27deep tropics and going through the Caribbean or up towards the eastern
03:30coast of the USA, but this year we've got an exception in hurricane Beryl. Yeah so
03:36it's a major hurricane level category five isn't it, it has been made this
03:42morning was it the category five? Yes it was yes early this morning it was
03:46upgraded to category five. And so it's Beryl that's if I understand it goes
03:51alphabetically doesn't it so that's second in the season, so what else has
03:55happened so far this season? I think this may need a bit of explaining. I can explain this part, this is called a Hofmoller diagram and what this
04:04shows you is what we call African easterly waves. Now most Atlantic
04:08hurricanes or large proportion of them will develop, if you look at this little
04:13map down the bottom which shows the coast of Africa here and then the
04:16tropical Atlantic, now most of the storms will develop from disturbances in the
04:22weather which come off the coast of Africa and at some point they might turn
04:25into tropical storms as they move across this way. Now this plot shows a kind of
04:31timeline so the longest ago is at the top so it's actually June 12th June at
04:38the top and then it progresses down the black line is today and below that is
04:45the forecast from our global model for the next seven days and these marked
04:50lines on here show the African easterly waves. Now you can see earlier in June
04:55they weren't very coherent there's you could sort of make them out but there's
04:59not much going on there and in fact this kind of blob over here around about
05:0418th to the 20th of June if you look down it should match up on the map with
05:09this area Gulf of Mexico that was tropical storm Alberto which was the
05:13first storm of the season which was fairly short-lived moved into Mexico but
05:18it did produce some heavy rain and some storm surge along the Texas coast and
05:24then we have other easterly waves here now this dark one is Hurricane Beryl and
05:30you can see it originated over here became very strong developed into the
05:34hurricane this is where we are now so the hurricanes here and we expect it to
05:38continue that way along it's going to travel through the Caribbean Sea here
05:47there's another one here which you can see is located here now which is in the
05:52Gulf of Mexico and in fact there was a very brief tropical storm Chris in the
05:56southern Gulf of Mexico so we've had the sea storm already as well after after
06:00the bee storm now you'll see there's a couple of other waves here which are
06:04shown on the diagram so there are more easterly waves developing behind Beryl
06:09this one here there is a chance it could develop into a storm but it's not such a
06:14high chance as there was with Beryl so we don't expect another severe hurricane
06:18from this one and I should say not all of these easterly waves will develop
06:22into tropical storms it's dependent on the conditions they meet both in the
06:26ocean surface and in the atmosphere as to whether they actually develop into
06:30tropical storms but Beryl is the one you can see from the very dark colors how it
06:33became very strong as it moved through this region. Okay so the
06:38African easterly waves is the origin and then it they can that could then turn
06:42into these the tropical storms and hurricanes at the at the highest level
06:46category 5 is the highest level isn't it and that's what Beryl has been
06:50is it still category 5? It's still category 5 as we speak yes. And so what
06:56what's happened with Beryl so far? Well it formed out east of the Caribbean in
07:02the tropical Atlantic and at the time it became a hurricane which was late June
07:08it was actually the most easterly hurricane on record to have developed
07:12because we have had other hurricanes develop earlier in June in previous
07:17seasons but most of them tend to be around the fringes of the basin as I
07:20said up towards Gulf of Mexico but this one being what you can see here these
07:25islands here are the Windward Islands so you can imagine the Caribbean Sea is
07:29that way and the tropical Atlantic is that way and Beryl developed way out
07:33here and that's the the furthest east that a hurricane had developed it
07:38continued moving towards the Caribbean and strengthened and at this point which
07:42was on Monday afternoon you can see island sitting there in the eye of the
07:47hurricane that's an island called Carriacou which is in the Grenadines and at this
07:53point this is a radar picture by the way which shows the rainfall associated with
07:58the hurricane and at this point it was category 4 and so it meant that we
08:03suspect the winds around the centre just around the eye here were around 150 miles
08:08an hour as it passed over Carriacou and we've seen there's various
08:13footage out there online showing the impacts of hurricane Beryl on Carriacou
08:19and then it's continued moving into the Caribbean Sea so away from land and it
08:23continued strengthening in the coming hours after that which is why we're now
08:27up to category 5 so the estimated wind strengths are now around 165 miles an
08:33hour and that is incredibly early in the season to have a storm of that strength
08:38category 5 165 mile an hour winds the earliest on record that we've ever had a hurricane
08:44reach those wind strengths was on the 5th of August and that was Hurricane Alan in 1980
08:51so it shows that we're kind of a full month ahead of the previous record for a
08:56storm of this strength so early in the season. It's unprecedented as you were telling me earlier
09:01and is there a key reason why we're seeing such a major hurricane so early
09:08on in the season? Well I think for that we probably need to go to the diagram
09:13which illustrates something about the ocean heat content now it's actually
09:18been well documented that in the Atlantic sea temperatures have been very
09:22high recently and this diagram shows something a little bit different it's
09:25called ocean heat content which rather than measuring just the sea surface
09:30temperature it's an indication of the depth of the warm water beneath the
09:35surface and that's critical for hurricane development because if there's
09:38a good depth of warm water then it gives plenty of fuel for the hurricane to
09:42develop and become very strong. Now what we see here is a timeline of it's the
09:47last 10 years so all these little lines are the previous 10 years or so
09:52stretching from January through to December and it's this ocean heat
09:59content is for this region shown in the red box it covers the tropical Atlantic
10:03and the Caribbean Sea so usually a typical season we get a low point in the
10:08ocean heat content around February March then it builds during the middle part of
10:14the year and it peaks around late September which is of course the peak of
10:18the hurricane season. That's what normally happens the blue line is the
10:23average for the last 10 years. Interestingly this line here which goes
10:28right up here is 2023 so it's last year and then the red line it's a little bit
10:33broken because of some missing data it's even higher in 2024 up to the beginning
10:40of July and we did see this sudden change around April May in 2023 so just
10:47over a year ago and there's still research going on as to why the ocean
10:51suddenly warms like that over this time it might be related to changes in the
10:56larger scale atmospheric conditions in the Atlantic for example where the
11:00the strength of the subtropical high there's still work going on to
11:03understand that but we had this very high ocean heat content last year we did
11:08have an active season relatively a hurricane season last year but it might
11:13have been a bit tempered by the fact that we had an El Nino at the same time
11:17which tends to suppress hurricane activity okay but since then in the last
11:22year the El Nino is gone the La Nina is here and when you get La Nina and very
11:27high ocean heat content then that is a recipe for an active hurricane season so
11:33in some senses although Beryl was a record-breaker it's not entirely
11:38surprising that we've had a strong hurricane early in the season because
11:41all the conditions are there and if this ocean heat content does continue rising
11:46even at a normal rate it's going to be very high by peak season so we're
11:52probably expecting a very active season to come. So yeah we could see much
11:56further major hurricanes like Beryl we started on a very active note and we're
12:03likely to see that carry on so Beryl's moved through the Windward Islands last
12:07night where is it going next of all I think we've got its track here. Yes this is the
12:12latest forecast track from the National Hurricane Center so we can see it here
12:16sitting in the Caribbean Sea the track is fairly straight running a kind of
12:21west-northwestward track there will be some variation in the forecast from that
12:25so we can expect some divergence particularly in the possibilities later
12:32in the forecast period what we're looking at is the hurricane to move
12:36through the Caribbean the next place under threat you'll see in the red blob
12:39here with the hurricane warning is Jamaica it's possible Beryl could move
12:44over Jamaica or just to the south it's uncertain exactly how close it will be
12:49at the moment that will be kind of Wednesday into Wednesday evening into
12:54Thursday then it'll carry on and likely make another landfall over the Yucatan
13:00Peninsula of Mexico on Friday across the peninsula and then into the Gulf of
13:06Mexico now these symbols here indicate what the National Hurricane Center think
13:09the strength will be so M is a major hurricane so that's category 3 or above
13:13H is category 1 or 2 hurricane and S is tropical storm we do expect some
13:18weakening during this phase so we don't expect Beryl to reach Jamaica as category
13:245 because there is an increase in what we call wind shear which is where they
13:28as you go up through the atmosphere the winds vary with height the wind shear is
13:32very low here but it's higher over here so we expect some weakening but exactly
13:37how much is uncertain at the moment it could bring Beryl down to below major
13:43hurricane strength probably still a hurricane when it reaches Jamaica what
13:47what state it will be and by the time it gets to Yucatan Peninsula we're
13:50unsure at the moment and it's even possible that if it gets out in the Gulf
13:56of Mexico even as a tropical storm it then could restrengthen again before one
14:00final landfall which is likely to be somewhere on this coast of eastern
14:04Mexico or Texas and that's going to be right at the end of the weekend and so
14:10what sort of impacts are people preparing for when they're in this track
14:14or the cone of the cone of the track and from the hurricane well from the
14:19footage you've seen from the impacts that were in the windward islands
14:22obviously if you're right at the center of the hurricane there's huge impacts
14:26from wind and the wind impacts tend to be fairly limited to an area near the
14:31center of the storm because the winds drop off as you go away from the center
14:34of the storm but there are other impacts which can happen a lot further away from
14:38the center of the of the hurricane so there can be a large amounts of rainfall
14:43and that can cause severe flooding we saw that even from a tropical storm
14:48Alberto which is just a tropical storm say just as that made landfall that
14:52produced a lot of flooding a lot of rainfall and the storm surge as well as
14:57you get a hurricane even some distance from the center of the storm particularly
15:01on the northward side as the storms move that way you can get some really severe
15:07storm surge some distance from the from the center of the hurricane and because
15:12there's moving through islands I they're much more sensitive to the storm
15:15surges everywhere yes that's right I mean we're looking at places like we've
15:18got the Cayman Islands here as well which are not likely to see a direct
15:22strike but they could see some impacts from storm surge yeah so it's an area as
15:27well this is the not they're not unused to seeing hurricanes but this is a
15:31particularly as the strongest it can be category five so they would be preparing
15:36for this preseason but probably might be a little bit surprised to get something
15:41this strong this early yeah and as you said we're likely to see more more
15:46hurricanes a very active season potentially through the rest of the
15:50season there's a whole raft of seasonal forecasts that came out at the end of
15:54May which is usual and it just about every one of them was suggesting the
15:59ingredients were there for a very active season most of those forecasts were
16:04suggesting something like twice the levels of activity that we would get in
16:08an average season so we need to be prepared for that that doesn't mean to
16:12say we're going to get one after the other the whole period the whole whole
16:16season we might get periods of a few weeks where there's nothing but
16:20certainly once we get to peak season which is as I say mid-august through
16:25September and October it's likely we could see some other major storms during
16:30that period yeah so it's something we could definitely be talking about a lot
16:35more over the next few months perhaps we'll have Julian on as a guest again if
16:40we have any such major hurricanes in the future through the season but thank you
16:45very much for joining me this time Julian I will let you go we can we can
16:48talk about the UK next something slightly less interesting to those
16:52meteorologically minded but slightly less impactful thank you for joining me
17:00so from major hurricanes to a bit of a disappointing summer so far for the UK
17:07let's have a little look closer to home and have a look at what the current
17:11setup is here in the UK so first of all I thought I would show you the jet
17:16stream we've actually got a pretty active jet stream moving across the
17:20northern part of the Atlantic towards the UK for this time of year you can see
17:24the jet stream it's this bright pink color and it's driven by a temperature
17:29gradient that's what creates the jet stream so I'll just turn it off very
17:34briefly you can see obviously we're into the summer so it's not quite as cold to
17:39the north closer to the North Pole so the colors don't look as extreme as they
17:43would in the winter but we've still got some of those paler blues and this
17:47tropical air mass with the Azores high stats of the south and west of the UK
17:51and along that boundary is where we see the jet stream develop and through the
17:57rest of this week that jet stream will continue to move across the Atlantic
18:03towards the UK bringing us a pretty changeable rest of the week actually
18:07some fairly breezy days as well particularly on Thursday which is
18:11Election Day in the UK and also some spells of wet weather and it's going to
18:17be cooler as well particularly as we head towards the weekend as that jet
18:22stream moves across the UK it's going quite slowly I want it to be at the
18:27weekend by now and so by the time we get to Friday and Saturday we start to move
18:32on to the northern side of the jet stream and that's the colder side of the
18:36jet stream so you always have the warmer air to the south of the jet and the
18:39colder air to the north for this jet stream that affects us so by the time we
18:44get to the weekend we are going to be on the colder side of the jet stream with
18:49our winds coming in from a north westerly direction so that cooler feel
18:55that we're starting to feel already and some of us have been feeling through a
18:59lot of the summer so far throughout June and we will be continuing until the
19:05weekend whether that will change into next week well it does seem like we will
19:08see a change into the start of next week at least for a time and for the second
19:13week of July I'll talk about that in just a moment but first of all let's
19:16just take a closer look at the rest of this week so it's going to be a fairly
19:20changeable week through the rest of the week we've got spells of wetter and at
19:25times windy weather so let's have a look at how much rainfall we can expect
19:29through the rest of this week so and particularly through Wednesday and
19:35Thursday we've got some potential for and for some heavier rain so this is
19:40through Wednesday let me just go to the end of Wednesday there we are the 24
19:48hour totals through Wednesday you can see it's particularly Western areas when
19:52we see our weather moving in from the West it's Western areas quite typically
19:56that see the heaviest rainfall particularly northwestern areas so parts
20:00of the Highlands and Western Scotland in general actually Eastern Scotland will
20:04stay largely dry but most areas you can see there's at least some rain covering
20:10at least somewhere in the UK there's only a few places that are white through
20:14Wednesday and into Thursday there's potential for across the the Pennines
20:19southern Pennines to see part some hit higher rainfall totals and they'll
20:24probably be quite a lot of cloud around through Wednesday as well so a bit of a
20:27disappointing dull and damp day on Wednesday and then as we head to
20:32Thursday let's have a look at what is happening to our pressure pattern so for
20:40Thursday we've got low pressure out we've got low pressure up to the north
20:49of the UK through Thursday and you can see we've got some really tightly packed
20:53isobars up to the north and west of the UK and that's what's going to be
20:56bringing us that squeeze that breezy weather for the election day particularly
21:01across northern areas of the UK actually to the south it's still going to be
21:05breezy but we're not going to see anywhere near as much of that heavier
21:09rainfall through across southern areas on Thursday so Thursday is a little bit
21:14of a mixed day and heavy potentially thundery showers across northern areas a
21:19much drier day with some sunny spells to the south so each day this week is going
21:24to be unfortunately a bit different so you're going to be wanting to keep up
21:27to date with the forecast through this week because then there's another change
21:30as we head towards Friday and the weekend with the wetter weather arriving
21:35to more southern areas you can see this weather front starting to approach from
21:38the south there is some uncertainty in the details of that so this is one to
21:42keep up to date with throughout the week we'll be covering more details in the
21:4610-day trend and our daily forecasts on that but in general the trend for
21:53Thursday let's go it's Friday actually isn't it I'm trying to show you there
22:02we are that's better
22:0924-hour totals is for much of the rainfall now the scale changes slightly
22:16so the dark blues here mean 10 to 25 millimeters of rain so none of this is
22:20particularly significant rainfall and the ground is relatively dry at the
22:25moment so we're not expecting any major impacts but it's more significant rain
22:28than we've seen lately across southern areas actually was a dry quite a
22:32particularly dry June for many southern areas central areas of England and Wales
22:36we've not had a lot of rainfall across southern areas recently and actually
22:40through Friday and into Saturday we could see potentially quite a lot of
22:44rain across southern areas with the dry weather this time actually to the north
22:48and some eastern areas of northern England and Scotland getting away with a
22:52dry entirely dry day through Friday and throughout Friday so then as we head
22:58into the weekend we've got that cool we're on to the cooler side of the jet
23:04stream as I showed you earlier and once the cooler side of the jet you've got
23:12low pressure it's still up to the north and east of the UK so we're going to
23:17continue to see this northwesterly that's the wrong one this northwesterly
23:21wind direction and north coming in from the cooler ocean from the north and west
23:26and will bring showers over the land across northwestern areas potentially
23:31further inland across southern areas so probably quite a blustery showery day a
23:35cooler feel to come throughout the beginning of the weekend and then by
23:40Sunday the pressure pattern this just about will show us some of Sunday it
23:47starts to become slightly more relaxed as we head towards Sunday we're still
23:52expecting showers through Sunday though and as we're still in this cooler air so
23:56and because we've got less of a flow as we call it this winds won't be quite as
24:01strong we could potentially see some quite slow-moving showers on Sunday and
24:05but then there are signs as I said for the early part of next week for things
24:10to change from this cooler more changeable regime at least for some of
24:15the UK definitely not for the whole of the UK so first of all I'm just going to
24:20show you the general pressure trend these are the regime probabilities so
24:25blue a lower pressure dominating reds a higher pressure dominating so there's
24:30quite significant jump from Sunday to Monday to see these reds return the reds
24:35the oranges and the yellows and and it's quite dominated particularly for the
24:40beginning of next week with the brighter red that's a Scandinavian high so high
24:45pressure centered towards the eastern side of the UK so we're expecting high
24:49pressure to be dominant towards the east of the UK and probably lower pressure
24:54still dominant across the West so we're looking at a bit of a West East split
25:00for next week but with high pressure to the east that would allow the winds go
25:05clockwise around a high pressure so that allows a southerly wind to develop for
25:10some areas so you can see this is covering up my key but red is southerly
25:15on this map this is the and the trend of southerly to northerly or kind of in
25:20different between so the main we've got these greens are sort of indifferent
25:23because we've got more of a westerly changeable regime at the moment and then
25:28it switches quite strongly to the southerly wind direction but with high
25:33pressure dominant to the east and low pressure dominant to the west so
25:37potentially it will turn more settled across eastern areas of the country from
25:43at least the early part of next week and for much of next week before we start to
25:48see the return of things turning a little bit more changeable with that low
25:51pressure dominating more widely by the time we get to next weekend so with the
25:57southerly wind what does that mean for our temperatures well southerly
26:01direction as you know across Europe it is much warmer than across the UK at the
26:05moment and and well could we could start to pick up some of those high
26:11temperatures this graph map isn't showing they're showing me what I'm not
26:14letting me click on it but and we are expecting the temperatures to increase
26:19across the UK at least towards average there is the potential as we head
26:23towards this the latter part of next week that we could see temperatures
26:27across at least eastern or southeastern parts of the UK come a little bit above
26:32average but it doesn't look like we'll see anything particularly long-lived or
26:37exceptional for the time of year and in the West it's looking like we can we
26:41will continue to see some pretty unsettled weather through the rest of
26:45next week but I think widely across the UK temperatures will return much closer
26:50to average and with the best of any drier and brighter weather across
26:54southeastern areas which will come in time for the second week of Wimbledon
26:57after a bit of a cooler and more changeable first week to Wimbledon so a
27:02bit of a change on the way from the beginning of next week but for the next
27:06few days a cooler cooler weather will continue showery weather as well and
27:13then what's going to happen after that so the long-range forecast there are
27:18just some tentative signs looking towards the middle to late part of July
27:23that we could see a bit more of a wider widely settled spell just lasting for a
27:29few days at least across the UK but there's a very tentative signs certainly
27:34something to be keeping up to date with which of course we will be covering in
27:38all of our content across YouTube our 10-day trend and our deep dives as well
27:43thanks very much for joining me today and thank you again to Julian for
27:47joining me as our special guest I hope you've enjoyed today if you have please
27:51don't forget to leave your comments I'll be around to answer some of your
27:54comments throughout the rest of this evening and tomorrow as well so make
27:59sure you leave your comments feedback like and share this video as well and I
28:03will see you again very soon thanks for joining me bye bye