30/03/2017 Weather for the Week Ahead

Hello, there. There's the promise of some settled weather

as we head into next week - just recently, though,

we've seen the wind direction changing into more of a southerly,

which is drawing up some warmer air.

In order to achieve the highest temperatures, though,

we need some breaks in the cloud and more sunshine.

This is where the warmer and drier air was earlier on,

but that's moving its way northwards

towards England and Wales,

pushing away some of this cloud, which is bringing in some rain -

and that cloud is still bringing some rain at the moment.

The rain clears away from the Midlands

and gets more pushed up towards Irish Sea coastal areas,

moving away from Wales

into north-west England and southern Scotland,

allowing more sunshine to develop across much of England and Wales.

Now, it may well be a warmer day across the north-east of Scotland

thanks to those southerly winds compared with the last few days,

when we've had the onshore breeze -

but more rain to come for Dumfries & Galloway,

across Cumbria, maybe the Northern Pennines,

eastern parts of Northern Ireland,

even into the afternoon, the threat of rain,

western fringes of Wales and the far south-west of England,

but, for much of England and Wales,

we get much brighter skies, some sunshine,

and we could get up to 22 degrees Celsius, 72 Fahrenheit.

Now, as we head into Friday,

the main focus of the rain

will shift away from Northern Ireland up into Scotland.

Behind that, to the south,

we may have a little rain coming eastwards

across England and Wales, but not much.

We've got more in the way of sunshine, actually,

following on behind, and, although it's slightly fresher air,

a wee change in wind direction, to a certain extent,

it'll still feel pleasant in the sunshine.

This weekend is going to be a weekend of two halves.

Showers on Saturday to greet the new month,

a chilly night on Saturday night,

and then Sunday looks like being the driest day of the two.

The wind's not particularly strong on Saturday,

so, the showers are going to hang around for a while.

Little bit hit and miss, perhaps,

but there could be some heavy ones in there, as well -

but get some sunshine, and it's pleasantly warm.

Now, those showers get pushed away

by this short-lived area of high pressure

that's building up from the south,

and that will settle things down on Sunday,

so, a much drier day on Sunday.

Again, for most of us, the winds will be light.

It'll be a bright day, there will be some sunshine,

it will be pleasantly warm. 16, maybe 17 degrees.

The far north-west, late on in the day,

will see more cloud, a strengthening wind

and the chance of some rain.

That's on that weather system, there,

but it's coming in to that area of high pressure

that's clinging on across England and Wales,

so, movement of that band of rain is going to be painfully slow,

and it's going to be across Western Scotland and Northern Ireland

that we see most of the rain on Monday.

Ahead of it, difficult to know how much sunshine there's going to be,

but we've still got some quite warm air,

so, 16 or 17 degrees, again, quite likely.

Pretty good for this time of year.

Into the outlook,

and that band of rain pushes south-eastwards across the UK.

Again, not much rain in the south-east.

It continues to be largely dry here -

and then, high pressure, you can see,

building in from the Atlantic.

This is the settled weather that I promised you -

and that high pressure builds in across the UK,

centred more across the southern half of the UK.

So, dry weather, some sunshine -

some cloud, as well.

Shouldn't be too cold at night,

and it should be pleasantly warm at this time of the year

in the sunshine.

Position of the high, though, as usual, is crucial,

because, to the north of the high,

around the top of it,

we've got more of this Atlantic wind

affecting Scotland, in particular,

blowing in cloudy skies.

Get the other side of the mountains more sunshine,

and it will be warmer.

That's what we call the Foehn effect -

and you can find out more details about that online.

Goodbye.