Week Ahead – slowly warming up 04/07/22
The weather will warm up this week but it’s going to some time, especially in the north where there’ll be some rain at times.
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00:00Hello, and welcome to the Met Office forecast for the week ahead. Following the cool and
00:05changeable weather that many of us have experienced lately, there is a trend through the coming
00:11week for drier, brighter and warmer weather for many. But it's not going to happen overnight.
00:17It is going to take its time, particularly the further north you are. And that's because
00:23we will still see some weather fronts bring changeable weather to northern parts of the
00:27UK, Scotland, Northern Ireland, parts of Northern England. However, later in the week,
00:32this high here, which will influence the south from the start of the week, well, it will
00:36become much more widespread by Saturday, settling things down across the country. This is known
00:44as the Azores High. It's normally situated towards the Azores, but it extends from the
00:48west through the week, allowing the weather to turn eventually more settled. But as I
00:53said, it's going to take some time in some areas because we keep a changeable northwesterly
01:00airflow at first over the next few days. That will bring some rain or showers, for example,
01:05to Northern Ireland, parts of northwest England, north Wales and especially western Scotland,
01:10where the weather turns damp later again on Tuesday. Brighter skies for eastern Scotland,
01:16northern England, a lot of cloud further south. And as a result, well, temperatures won't
01:22be too remarkable. We're looking at high teens, low twenties for many. But this area
01:29of rain in the northwest, well, it only becomes more heavy and persistent later in the day
01:34and into the start of Wednesday as these weather fronts move in. And you can see the isobars
01:38are tightening at this stage as well. So it's going to turn breezier and an unsettled start
01:44for northern areas on Wednesday. There are outbreaks of rain crossing Scotland, Northern
01:49Ireland, northern England, north Wales. The rain on and off for many, brought on by gusty
01:55winds and a cool feel. But the rain persistent there for western Scotland, particularly over
02:00the hills where 50, 60 millimetres is possible in some of the wetter spots. But to the lee
02:07of the hills, just downwind there, could see some reasonable temperatures, 20 Celsius as
02:13the winds warm up over the higher ground. But further south, though, that's where the
02:16warmest air will be on Wednesday. Bright skies, very little rainfall south of north
02:23Wales, north Midlands and temperatures reaching 24 Celsius. Into Thursday and a fine start
02:30for many. Still a lot of cloud cover across the UK. Still some showers coming in on this
02:35northwesterly and a bit more of a breeze down the North Sea coast to affect eastern parts
02:40of England, eastern Scotland. Could affect those temperatures on the east coast, I think,
02:46may mean that the warmest air has shifted a bit further west around central southern
02:50England, 26, possibly 27 here. But further north and east, well, around average for the
02:57time of year high teens, low 20s. Friday starts bright in many areas, best of the sunshine
03:02in the south and the east, a bit more cloud further west. And again, some outbreaks of
03:07rain arriving from the Atlantic to affect western Scotland, perhaps northern Ireland
03:11as well. And it's there where it will continue to feel on the cool side, with a blustery
03:16breeze in the far northwest. But temperatures are continuing to rise further south, mid
03:20to high 20s with some decent sunny spells. So really, it's a dry week to come for southern
03:26parts of the UK whilst it stays cool and changeable further north. But by Saturday, the high pressure
03:35I mentioned coming all the way from the Azores, well, it extends more widely across the UK
03:40and weather fronts become confined really to the far north of Scotland. So that means
03:45the weekend starts off dry, bright and fairly warm in many places. The highest temperatures
03:50again towards the south and southeast, mid to high 20s here. But I wanted to say a few
03:56words about the likely weather trends into next week. And that's because over the weekend,
04:02one or two computer model runs showed some really extreme temperatures. And of course,
04:06those kinds of extremes get picked up on social media and the press get quite excited
04:11about them. But what I would say is that meteorologists don't just pick one or two computer model
04:17runs. We look at many different computer model runs to get the full picture of the likely
04:23weather trends, the range of possible temperatures and the kinds of uncertainties we're dealing
04:28with when looking at the weather more than a week ahead. And these kinds of things can
04:34be shown on a temperature trend graph here called a meteorogram. And this shows London
04:39for the next couple of weeks. And a couple of things worth pointing out on here are the
04:43red line here showing the average temperature for daytime highs and the boxes showing the
04:49likely range of temperatures predicted by the European model, not just one run, but
04:5450 or so. And as we go further out, the boxes get bigger, indicating more uncertainty, of
05:00course. But what's notable is that the boxes from the middle of this week are all above
05:05the red line. So that indicates that we have high confidence that it will warm up in London
05:11and those temperatures will be above average later this week and throughout much of next
05:16week. But it's into next week where those boxes become really quite large. There are
05:21some models that are predicting very high temperatures whilst others are predicting
05:26just above average. So what we can say for the likes of London and more especially across
05:31southern half of the UK is that we'll see a warming trend through this week and into
05:36next week. Temperatures will be above average. But just how far above average those temperatures
05:43end up, well, that is open to uncertainty at the moment. And just for the sake of balance,
05:49here's Glasgow. And with the weather more likely to be a bit more changeable with some
05:54rain or showers at times, well, those temperatures remain a bit closer to average through the
06:01next couple of weeks. But again, those boxes get bigger when you're looking further ahead.
06:05So a lot of uncertainty about the numbers of those temperatures next week. But the trends
06:12are clear. It's turning drier, brighter and warmer in many places.