06/04/2016 Weather for the Week Ahead

Thanks for joining me.

It's time to get a check on the weather for the next week or so

and the forecast hasn't actually changed,

if you were watching yesterday.

It will remain very unsettled for the rest of this week,

further blustery showers on the way for tomorrow after what has been

a brief spell of better weather

during the course of Tuesday.

The changes are already starting to take shape

across the North Atlantic.

These are showers here which are gathering.

They are also coming in on a cold, north-westerly wind.

That's going to be in place across the UK

during the course of Wednesday,

so a really chilly day on the way for some of us,

particularly in those blustery showers.

This is what it looks like through the course of tonight,

so the weather front,

which actually is the leading edge

of this colder air coming in off the North Atlantic,

you can see where it starts to rain

across Northern Ireland, Scotland,

even a bit of winteriness here.

Does look as though it will stay dry all through the night

across East Anglia and the south-east.

Here's the morning - those winds keep on strengthening.

In fact, they'll get stronger and stronger

through the course of the day,

up to gale-force and a real what we call rash of showers,

so lots of them,

hit and miss, on and off from hour to hour

with sunshine in between.

This is round about lunchtime -

you can see a good chance

of catching these showers across most of Scotland,

plenty of them through the Lowlands,

down into the south-west of Scotland,

Northern Ireland catching quite a few here,

into the north-west of England as well

and one or two across parts of East Anglia and the south-east,

at least at this stage.

Notice fewer showers for Wales,

the bulk of the Midlands

and south-western parts of England,

but I wouldn't be surprised

if one or two of us get caught out

in a heavier one even here.

Temperatures will hover around 7 to 9 degrees but, of course,

because it's a lot stronger,

you don't need to be a meteorologist to figure out

that it's certainly going to feel quite a bit colder,

so perhaps the apparent temperature,

the "feels like" temperature

may be around 2 or 3 degrees above freezing.

Thursday, copycat conditions for some of us.

Still cold, north-westerly winds. If anything,

it may actually be worse across the south of the country.

There might be more cloud

and more frequent spells of rain

and again, it's going to feel pretty chilly

in those strong winds.

Come Friday, there's another weather front coming our way,

further rain expected across western areas,

initially reaching Northern Ireland,

parts of Wales,

down into the south-west early in the day, we think.

Perhaps later in the afternoon,

that rain will sweep across other parts of the country,

so you're starting to get that message

that it is going to be raining pretty much every day,

but not everywhere for the rest of this week.

And the weekend - low pressure parks itself across

this portion of the country.

Quite often, lows sweep in from west to east.

This one is just going to meander

across this part of the Atlantic

and the UK and just keep sending

weather fronts in our direction.

One of the reasons why it's stuck across this part

of the world is the shape of the jet stream

and if you know your Greek alphabet,

you might know the letter omega

and this is exactly what we are seeing here,

and omega shape to the jet stream.

It actually looks a bit more like an octopus, to be honest,

but the physics are such that when we get this sort of pattern,

the atmosphere grinds to a halt

and we don't get these weather systems moving

so much from west to east.

They kind of stay where they are,

so this area of low pressure is going

to hang around across this part of the Atlantic

and the UK through the weekend into next week,

which basically means the weather

isn't going to change an awful lot.

Rain showers to sunshine, back to rain showers again.

And at night, when the sky is clear

it is going to be pretty chilly,

so the unsettled theme looks as though

it is set to continue into next week

and that's your omega block lesson.