Wednesday afternoon forecast 23/08/23
23 August - National weather forecast presented by Aidan McGivern
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00:00Hi there, we continue to see a north-to-south contrast in the weather across the United
00:05Kingdom. This was notable on the earlier satellite and radar imagery. This is 5am Wednesday
00:11and a weather front was bringing areas of rain and cloud into parts of Wales, north-west
00:16England and the Midlands. To the south of that, clear skies although with some fog patches
00:21and to the north the mix of showers and fairly breezy conditions continues for Scotland and
00:28Northern Ireland. The rain across central areas does tend to fade away into the afternoon
00:33before another system brings some further persistent rain later. We keep a lot of cloud
00:39across Wales, parts of the Midlands, into Norfolk as well as northern England but some
00:43brighter interludes will come through at times. It stays fairly showery for Northern Ireland
00:49and Scotland, some longer spells of rain for north-west Scotland. Cool here but where we
00:53keep the sunny skies further south, well we continue to see some warmth with the air
00:59temperature approaching 27 Celsius in places. Then heading into the evening, well quite
01:06interesting things are happening across Europe at the moment. On the one hand we've got an
01:11emerging heatwave across Spain and the south of France but much cooler conditions pushing
01:17into the north-west of the UK with low pressure. Now on the boundary of that, this warm front
01:23cold front and also some occluded fronts interacting as we go into Wednesday night
01:29and early Thursday with low pressure and the heatwave across central and southern parts
01:34of France. All the ingredients there for some very lively weather particularly as the jet
01:41stream takes a dive just to the south-west of the UK and we're likely to see some very
01:47lively thunderstorms developing across the English Channel and more especially northern
01:53France on Wednesday night and into the start of Thursday. What we call mesoscale convective
01:58systems, that is an organised cluster of thunderstorms with very large hail, frequent lightning and
02:05some intense rainfall rates. Now at the moment it looks very likely that those thunderstorms
02:11will affect northern France and not southern parts of the UK but we're likely to see the
02:16northern edge of any system produce for a time some showery rain into south-west England
02:23for the first part of the night and then that transferring eastwards as we go through the
02:28night. Further north again we've got that low pressure to the north-west of Scotland
02:32bringing showers and then some more organised heavy rain into the north and east of Scotland
02:37by the end of the night and cloudier conditions further south with some bits and pieces of
02:42mostly light rain for Wales and northern England. So again this north-south contrast
02:47but quite a messy picture as we begin Thursday with bits and pieces of rain, some of that
02:52will be heavy and another warm night especially in the south. So it's the developments across
02:58northern France that are the most significant aspect of the forecast and it's just the northern
03:04edge of that that could bring some heavier rain into southern and south-east England
03:08for a time during Thursday morning especially the far south-east where there is the risk
03:13of 25 or more millimetres of rain through the course of the morning. But it all depends
03:19on developments over northern France and how far north the influence of that extends into
03:25the south and south-east of England and that's slightly uncertain for the time being. However
03:29the most intense thunderstorms as I mentioned are likely to stay over northern France and
03:34push further east into Thursday afternoon. Still some showers following for central and
03:40eastern England, these fade away into the afternoon. Sunny spells then for much of England
03:44and Wales. We keep the longer spells of heavy rain for the north and north-east of Scotland,
03:49more confined to the northern Isles and Caithness by the afternoon but some heavy showers following
03:54nevertheless for western Scotland and northern Ireland. And staying cool and blustery towards
03:59the north-west, cooler air filtering its way southwards as low pressure in the north-west
04:05begins to extend its influence across the UK but still the potential for the low to
04:09mid-twenties in the south given some sunny spells emerging into the afternoon. Then into
04:15Thursday evening we'll continue to see those showers across western Scotland, longer spells
04:19of rain for Orkney and Shetland, showers for northern Ireland, clearer spells for England
04:24and Wales but into Friday and the weekend the signs are the cool and showery weather
04:30that much of northern UK is experiencing at the moment will extend countrywide and that
04:36means that for England, Wales, northern Ireland the bank holiday weekend will be fairly mixed
04:42but there will be some sunny spells at times. Bye bye.