19/04/2017 Weather for the Week Ahead

Well, after a fairly chilly Easter weekend,

most of us woke up to some sunshine on Tuesday morning,

but it was cold,

particularly across Scotland.

Temperatures in the glens

got down to minus six degrees

and now Tuesday night into Wednesday,

it's the south where we're going to see

the lowest temperatures overnight.

Here's a satellite picture from earlier on.

The clearer skies prevalent across the south

so here temperatures will be dipping away

during the early hours of Wednesday,

whereas to the north with a weak weather front

pushing through, more cloud,

it won't be quite so cold.

Now in city centres

throughout the country,

it won't be that cold - five or six degrees,

but in rural areas

and even some suburban areas,

temperatures will be close to freezing

or below, perhaps even as low as minus four degrees

so once again, a chance of some of those tender plants

being affected by the frost first thing in the morning.

But the morning is starting beautiful

across the south.

Really lovely weather,

feeling quite fresh out there.

Five or six degrees, the winds are light.

The sun's pretty strong

at eight o'clock in the morning

so perhaps we won't feel that cold.

The frost will be around

only just before dawn, I think.

The further north you go,

the thicker the cloud is.

In fact, even some spots of rain around

in one or two places,

but really very, very light

and feeling a little bit milder,

maybe eight or nine degrees.

Through the course of the day,

we are thinking that some of this cloud

is going to drift further south

so perhaps throughout Wales,

most of northern England and the Midlands,

it may cloud over,

but even here, the clouds will break

from time to time.

The best of the weather will be across the south,

the south-east and eastern parts of Scotland

are in for some sunshine and not so bad there

on the temperature front,

maybe 14 degrees in eastern Scotland.

Thursday, we have high pressure

across southern areas of the UK,

weather front towards the north

so perhaps some spots of rain

around in the far north of Scotland,

maybe affecting the Western Isles as well.

For most of us,

a fairly brightish sort of day.

A lot of this cloud will be fairly thin

so perhaps hazy skies for most of us.

15 in London, maybe even 15 again

across eastern parts of Scotland.

Now, a subtle change on the way

towards the end of the week.

This cold front will be very sluggishly moving

across the UK and introducing fresher air,

colder air from the north

so ahead of it temporarily,

depending on how much sunshine we're going to get,

we could get up to 17 in London,

whereas from the north,

that fresher air really will be oozing down

and through Friday night

and you can think of this line here,

the cold here and the warmer further south,

that's the cold front moving through Friday night

so once again towards the weekend,

we are going to see some fresher north-westerly winds,

but with high pressure very close by,

we're never really going to get an awful lot of rain.

At most, just thicker cloud at times

and a few spots of rain,

which is not great news for gardeners

because we haven't seen an awful lot of rain

for quite some time.

High pressures just to the west of our neighbourhood.

We keep those north-westerly winds

through Saturday and most of the weekend.

Now, here's the weekend schematic once again,

so we've got that high pressure here,

the low pressure there

and think of the air almost being

sort of corkscrewed between the two,

almost pushed through like putty further south

so colder air digs in

into other parts of Europe as well,

but it's not desperately cold.

Now, also what we're forecasting

is a jet stream out of the north-west.

Notice these little ripples in the jet stream.

That's an indication

that there will be little low pressures

moving towards the north of us,

perhaps bringing some outbreaks of rain,

so any rain that we will get

will be coming in from the north

and that doesn't often bring an awful lot of rain

so mostly dry, most of that rain that does arrive

will be further north

and it is going to stay on the cool side.

Bye-bye.