11/03/2016 Weather for the Week Ahead

Hello there. Well, fans of wet weather should look away now.

Hopefully I won't lose too many viewers.

The rest of you, if you'd been watching the broadcast

over the last few days, you'll know

I've been promising plenty of dry weather

in the week ahead. Not to start with,

for some of us, in fact,

some dampness turning up across parts

of Northern Ireland and western Scotland

during the course of Friday,

but for the rest of the UK,

it's a drier prospect.

Here's that patchy rain

pushing into Northern Ireland

and western Scotland since the afternoon,

but eastern Scotland doing OK

and for England and Wales,

broken cloud and after that chilly start

with light winds

and hopefully some sunshine,

temperatures will pick up quite nicely,

we will be knocking on the door

of double figures in most places.

So a fine end to the week here

and that fine theme continues

into the weekend for the majority.

Some sunshine, it will feel quite springlike at times,

but it will be a damp start across some northern areas,

courtesy of a set of weather fronts

bringing that patchy rain

which will spread to other parts

of Scotland and Northern Ireland

and for a time across the Irish Sea

into the likes of Cumbria

early on Saturday, no great amounts

but a disappointing start to the weekend,

whereas further south

for the bulk of England and Wales,

it will be dry again after a chilly start,

hopefully some sunshine.

Light winds in the south,

but quite breezy

for a time further north.

Temperatures dependent on

how much sunshine you see,

but again knocking

on the door of double figures

in the best of any brightness.

Now as we go through

Saturday night and into Sunday,

so these weather fronts start to retreat

back northwards again

and take most of the rain with them,

so it's a largely dry story on Sunday.

Getting the amounts of cloud right

will not be easy over

the next few days, so bear with us.

There are detailed variations in the amount of sunshine

but hopefully where you are, you'll see some.

Probably the best of the temperatures, actually,

later on this week getting across

northern and western areas,

possibly up to the low teens.

Cooler further south

and the reason for that is we're going to

start to draw in easterly winds off the near continent.

If you're watching yesterday,

I mentioned that the continent isn't desperately cold,

but it will be quite cool winds

and it will knock the temperatures

on the head, particularly

where you've got exposure to that wind,

so, for East Anglia, for example, 6 or 7 degrees,

compared to 11 or 12 across parts of Scotland

and Northern Ireland, particularly

if we see some brightness.

Spot the difference, really, on Tuesday.

We've still got that mostly dry story,

we've still got those easterly winds

across the more southern areas

keeping it relatively cool

particularly along that east coast

but, again, in some sunshine

it shouldn't feel too bad.

Now I'm going to run the sequence through the rest of next week

and the thing you'll notice is that high pressure dominates

right the way through next week, slap-bang over us at times.

Now, rain is normally generated by the jet stream,

so where is the jet stream?

Well, it's way to the north of us for a start.

It's bringing some outbreaks of rain across parts

of Scandinavia later on next week.

We also have another branch of the jet stream to the south of the UK

down across southern parts of Europe and into the Mediterranean.

If you've got friends or family

heading to the Med later on next week,

they'll have to take something waterproof

because this branch of the jet stream

will bring some very disturbed wet and windy weather

and also in the mid-Atlantic,

this little kink in the jet stream

will generate some wet weather here,

but for us closer to home we're well away from the jet stream

and we will remain high and dry, we think,

for several days to come, for the next week or so,

and perhaps even longer than that.

High pressure in control, plenty of dry weather later next week,

some sunshine, but still

that chilly breeze

affecting the south.

Sarah will update you

again tomorrow.