Week Ahead – A wet start to summer 03/06/19
It’s a wet start to summer with several periods of prolonged rain this week, interspersed by heavy showers. Met Office meteorologist Aidan McGivern has the soggy details.
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00:00Hello, it's time for the Met Office forecast for the week ahead.
00:04It's the first week of the meteorological summer, but for some, this week will feel
00:07more like the start of the rainy season.
00:10In one word, this week is going to be wet.
00:12At least three spells of persistent rainfall between now and the weekend, interspersed
00:17by yes, some warm sunshine, but also some heavy downpours.
00:20The heat of the weekend that some parts of Britain experienced has now been firmly pushed
00:25into the continent by a plunging jet stream.
00:28That jet stream you can see diving to the south of the UK over the next few days.
00:33And that means we're on the cool and relatively unsettled side of the jet stream.
00:38Now the jet stream of course also picks up areas of low pressure and moves them our way.
00:43And if we go back to Monday, you can see it doing just that over the next few days into
00:49Tuesday and then Wednesday, it brings these low pressure systems into the UK.
00:53And another thing that is important to note is that there's hot air over the continent
00:57and that will sometimes interact with these low pressure systems as they dive to the south
01:02and then north again, picking up the increased humidity.
01:06We're not going to experience increased temperatures, but we are going to experience that high humidity
01:10and that will translate to some very wet weather, particularly across southern and eastern parts
01:15of Britain by the end of the week.
01:17It's actually the west on Tuesday morning that we start off with some heavy rainfall.
01:20Showers or longer spells of rain, you can see the patchy nature of the blues and oranges
01:26travelling across the country.
01:27After a dry start in the far north and the east, we'll see showers here as well.
01:31Now brighter colours there in the far south-east and the south-west, you could see some thundery
01:35downpours, otherwise it's just outbreaks of rain on and off and a good deal of cloud cover.
01:40A lot of cloud to start off Wednesday, but the wet weather becomes more confined to central
01:45and southern and south-western Scotland.
01:49Elsewhere, it's a case of sunny spells, but a few heavy showers developing through the day.
01:54So it's not a washout for many places on Wednesday.
01:57There will be some brighter weather for a time, but later on Wednesday, another system
02:01moves up from the continent and again it's interacting with some very humid air over
02:06the continent, some thunderstorms, and that leads to uncertainty in terms of where exactly
02:11the rainfall will end up in terms of its east-west distribution on Thursday.
02:15But it looks likely that across eastern parts of the country it's a wet start and then
02:19that rain tumbles into central and northern Scotland through the day.
02:23Further south, across England, Wales, Northern Ireland, sunny spells, but also scattered
02:27heavy thundery downpours, perhaps even some hail thrown in, and temperatures typically high teens.
02:35As we say goodbye to that system, the next one turns up from the south.
02:39Again, it's coming up from the south, it's picking up increased humidity over the continent
02:44and it's going to bring some substantial rainfall.
02:47And once again, because of its interaction with thunderstorms over the continent, there's
02:51some uncertainty in terms of its exact location and timing, but it looks likely that Friday
02:55will start off particularly wet across southern Britain, perhaps 50 millimetres of rainfall
03:00or so in the south-east before that all moves northwards through the day.
03:04Of course we do need some rainfall in the south, so it's not all bad news, but not a
03:09pleasant week of weather.
03:11And for northern Britain, well we don't really need the rainfall, and another day on Saturday
03:16of some very wet weather across Scotland and Northern Ireland, we could start to see
03:20some problems.
03:21So you get the idea by now, more rain or showers heading into the weekend, there will be some
03:26sunshine away from the bouts of wet weather, but it won't be prolonged, it won't be particularly
03:32warm either, temperatures on the cooler side.
03:35So we all want to stay up to date with the weather over the next few days, keep track
03:39of the rainfall, but also keep track of where we get any drier and brighter weather because
03:43there will be some fine interludes.
03:46So you can find all the latest via the Met Office app and via the Met Office social media
03:50channels.
03:51Bye bye.