Week Ahead – bright spells and some showers 25/07/22
There’ll be a few showers around this week but also some bright spells and it’ll turn a little warmer later. Met Office meteorologist Aidan McGivern has the forecast for the week ahead.
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00:00Hi there, good news for holiday makers this week. There will be some bright weather around.
00:04It will turn a little warmer by the end of the week as well. Bad news though if you're
00:08hoping for some significant rainfall to make up for the substantial deficit that many areas
00:15are experiencing at the moment. While there will be some showers around most days, I don't
00:20think there will be anything especially useful in the forecast for this week. On the face
00:26of it, high pressure is building in during the next few days. That then drifts east.
00:29A small area of low pressure floats with the southwest by the middle of the week. And then
00:34another high builds in from the southwest for the weekend. Low pressure by Saturday
00:41will bring some more unsettled changeable weather to the north of the UK. But with high
00:45pressure close to the south a lot of the week and into the weekend, well no significant
00:51rainfall is expected. But things look a bit more complicated when you consider the atmosphere
00:59right up the top where the planes fly, where the jet stream is, because the jet stream
01:03is in a split flow during this week. That means it's coming in from the west and then
01:08it splits into one branch going to the north of the UK and one branch often affecting southern
01:14parts of the country. So this is Wednesday for example and with that small branch of
01:19the jet stream close to the south, well that introduces some instability in the atmosphere
01:23and that means that although we've got high pressure firmly over the UK, there'll still
01:27be some rising air, there'll still be some showers around. And so the jet stream, not
01:34bringing us particularly unsettled weather this week, but it will occasionally cause
01:39some shower clouds to bubble up in different places on different days. And then this northerly
01:44branch of the jet stream picking up low pressure by the weekend and sending some more long
01:49rain into the north. But for Tuesday, well for many places it starts off dry. There will
01:54be an area of cloud, remnants of a weather front that will have drifted south overnight
01:59and within this zone a few showers will develop by the afternoon. But the cloud will equally
02:04break up and there'll be some sunshine reappearing across central areas. Scotland, Northern Ireland
02:08seeing sunny spells, certainly a drier day compared to Monday. Just a few scattered showers
02:13for the north of Scotland but mostly dry elsewhere. And for Wales and the south west,
02:18well that's where the sunniest skies will be and temperatures will respond well enough
02:23in the sunshine. It's going to feel pleasant enough, 22 to 25 Celsius in the south, 18
02:30to 20 further north. Then into Wednesday, a bright start for many, plenty of sunshine
02:36first thing. Fresh first thing, I think over the next few nights temperatures will fall
02:41close to average and so more comfortable for sleeping compared with some of the nights
02:45at the start of last week. Then as the day goes on, that segment of the jet stream that
02:51I mentioned will introduce some instability across much of England and Wales and some
02:55pokey showers will develop initially in the south and then they'll drift north into Wales,
03:00the Midlands, Northern England. And scattered showers will still form in places across Scotland
03:04and Northern Ireland but they'll be well scattered with some decent sunny spells away from them.
03:10Temperatures not far from average, high teens, low 20s, perhaps 24 Celsius there in London.
03:19Then into the start of Thursday, high pressure starts to move away. This small slack area
03:25of low pressure brings a weather front close to the south west. That will tend to thicken
03:29up the cloud overnight so a cloudier start to the day I think compared with Wednesday.
03:35And there'll be a few showers around first thing, Northern England, southern Scotland
03:38for example. As the day gets going further showers will develop, some heavy downpours
03:42perhaps for central and southern Scotland, Northern Ireland, Northern England and in
03:46towards the south west. But away from the showers some brighter spells, even some sunshine
03:52but not as many I think compared with Tuesday and Wednesday. 24 Celsius fairly widely across
03:59southern parts of England, 22, 23 elsewhere across England and Wales and around 20 Celsius
04:05at best for parts of Scotland and Northern Ireland. But those temperatures are rising
04:10and if we fast forward to Friday you'll see that those temperatures will have gone up
04:15a notch. So we're looking at low to mid 20s across Scotland and Northern Ireland, mid
04:21to high 20s across England and Wales. A warming trend later this week but nowhere near as
04:29high as we saw at the start of last week and there'll still be some showers around particularly
04:34towards the east and the north of the UK. There'll also be a lot of cloud around so
04:39it's not water or sunshine either, we'll see some hazy sunshine with a lot of high cloud
04:45I think in the forecast. The reason it's turning warmer is because we're getting our weather
04:50more from the south west but at the same time that means low pressure is to the north and
04:55that will bring by Saturday some weather fronts, especially for Scotland, Northern Ireland
05:01and Northern England. So that means that this weekend looks a bit more unsettled with
05:06spells of rain or showers in the north and at times the west but staying largely dry
05:10in the south east.