10 Day trend – The dry April continues but will it warm up?
Not much rain is expected in the next week or so with high pressure continuing to dominate the UK weather. There are signs that it could finally warm up a bit next week and that the frosty mornings might go away too. Alex Deakin takes a look.
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00:00Hello. Welcome to the Met Office 10-day trend.
00:03April so far has been on the chilly side
00:06and also really quite dry.
00:08And both of those trends will continue,
00:10at least for the next few days and nights,
00:12with morning frosts a big feature of the weather
00:15into the weekend.
00:16However, there are some signs it might get a little warmer
00:19through next week.
00:21With dry weather, that's usually
00:23associated with high pressure.
00:24And one is sitting right across the UK at the moment.
00:28It does amble away steadily over the next couple of days.
00:31It remains controlling our weather.
00:33But as it shifts away, it does allow these weather fronts
00:36just to trickle up towards the northwest of Scotland,
00:39more particularly this one by Sunday.
00:41Now, there's a bit of uncertainty
00:43about the exact position of this weather front, which
00:45I can show you by showing you the spaghetti plot.
00:48That's where we run the computer model several times.
00:50And each of the computer model runs
00:52then plots the position of that weather front.
00:54It's useful for picking out the uncertainty in the position.
00:57And you can see that weather fronts could be across much
01:00of Scotland and Northern Ireland on Sunday.
01:02But its most likely position is just to the far northwest.
01:06But there will be some rain across the northwest,
01:09it looks like, on Sunday.
01:10It could be across just the Outer Hebrides.
01:12But also, it could be further south
01:13through much of Northern Ireland and into parts
01:16of central Scotland.
01:17So that's some uncertainty for the weekend.
01:19But for the vast majority through the rest
01:22of this week and the weekend, the weather's
01:23dry and bright by day.
01:25But staying on the chilly side, particularly cold at night
01:28with morning frosts continue to be in place through the weekend
01:33and probably beyond as well.
01:34Because even into the early part of next week,
01:36high pressure is still nearby.
01:37There's that weather front.
01:38I say still a lot of uncertainty by the time
01:40we get to the early part of next week about the position of it.
01:43But it's being affected either side by high pressure.
01:46So it's kind of getting wrung out, if you like.
01:48So the weather fronts will be weakening all the time.
01:52And then the high pressure that dominates,
01:54well, that's the big question as we go through next week.
01:57But certainly, high pressure is expected
01:59to be in control of our weather, as this chart shows
02:02the probabilistic pressure trend.
02:04An awful lot of red on there, red
02:07indicating that high pressure.
02:08There are the dates going forward.
02:10And as I said, a lot of red, high pressure
02:12dominating through next week.
02:14But the shape and position of that high
02:17is crucial for dictating the kind of flow we get
02:21and therefore the kind of temperatures we could see.
02:24And there's a bit more uncertainty
02:25about that, as is shown here.
02:27This is the zonal trend about whether we'll
02:29see an easterly or a westerly flow across the UK.
02:33And you can see not as strong a signal, particularly
02:35through the middle part of next week.
02:36The colour's not as strong.
02:38It becomes much more wishy-washy about whether we'll
02:40see more of an easterly flow or a westerly flow.
02:43So that's the big uncertainty about next week.
02:45But we are pretty confident that high pressure
02:47will continue to bring a lot of dry weather.
02:50And also, there are signs from most of the computer models
02:53that it will slowly start to get a little bit warmer.
02:56This is the meteorogram for Manchester.
02:58Again, the European model plotting the temperature
03:01trend.
03:02The smaller the disk or the nodule,
03:05the greater the certainty.
03:06So at the moment, the next few days,
03:09that red line there is the average.
03:10You can see that temperature's generally just below average.
03:13But there is a trend there to see a rise in temperatures
03:15as we go through, particularly towards the end of next week.
03:18But by then, of course, there's much more uncertainty.
03:21So the blobs are bigger.
03:22You can see that trend also in the nighttime temperatures
03:25as well.
03:25At the moment, well below the average line.
03:28But that trend upwards, albeit with increasing uncertainty
03:32as we go through next week.
03:33So the things you know about next week,
03:35high pressure is most likely to be dominating, which will,
03:38again, continue the dry theme.
03:40And it has been a very dry spring so far.
03:42And probably, things finally at least turning a little bit
03:45warmer with maybe less of a nighttime frost risk,
03:49especially by the end of next week.
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