28/04/2017 Weather for the Week Ahead

Hello. April draws to a close and we finally found our April showers.

But I suspect for many the month will be characterised with

pictures like this.

We'll have these lovely memories of beautiful spring blossom,

a lot of dry weather around and from time to time some sunshine.

And that is because we have had this fairly consistent pattern

with the jet stream sitting out in the Atlantic allowing high

pressure from the near continent to dominate the weather story.

But, as we move toward the bank holiday weekend,

we are set for things to change, albeit briefly.

With an injection of heat moving out of the States and that is

going to add fuel to the fire to the jet stream, almost add this

energy into it and allow the jet stream to squeeze together.

A colleague of mine described this as pulling a piece of Blu-Tack.

Eventually, the more you pull, it will snap.

We will start to see this area of low pressure develop

down to the south-west.

There is a level of uncertainty as to where that low is going to

be sitting as we move towards the bank holiday weekend,

but the jet stream always wants to take the easier option and that

is going to drift across the north of the low allowing this to

dominate, albeit briefly.

More on that in just a moment.

Back to Friday's weather -

relatively quiet with some sunshine around.

The showers should be fairly isolated on Friday.

One or two spits and spots across Wales and the south-west and

a few generally out of the west with highs of 8 to 13 degrees.

As we move out of Friday into Saturday,

not a bad start to our extended weekend.

A good deal of dry weather in the story.

Eventually, we'll start to see the winds increasing.

But the winds are coming from a southerly direction so,

in comparison to earlier in the week,

it is going to feel noticeably warmer.

We could see temperatures as high as 15 degrees with the sunshine.

Just a scattering of isolated showers further north.

9 to 15 degrees the high.

The breeze picking up across those exposed west-facing coasts.

Eventually, we will start see some rain.

So this is the level of uncertainty -

just where this low is likely to be sitting as we move out of

Saturday into Sunday. At the moment,

thoughts are it will be pushing into the south-west and across to Wales.

Do not make this the last forecast you see.

Keep abreast of the story as we go into the bank holiday weekend.

That front will eventually move its way north and east.

Somewhat erratically so, again, there is

a level of uncertainty as to how much rain we are likely to see

as it moves north and east.

But one thing is for sure on Bank Holiday Monday,

we will see one front clearing away to the north-east.

A slice of drier, sunnier weather following on behind and in

the sunshine, it'll feel quite pleasant.

16 degrees is not out of the question, that is 61 Fahrenheit.

Now, as we move into Tuesday,

we always keep a bit more of a breeze out to the west.

These weather fronts will encroach on the western fringes.

Not really further inland.

So we are back to a good slice of dry, sunny weather across

central and eastern areas.

And starting to get a degree or so warmer.

So it really does look as though the jet stream is likely to

revert back to the pattern that we had in April.

So for the beginning of May, we have got the jet stream

out in the Atlantic and the high pressure in the driving seat.

What that basically means is temperatures are set to climb

after that chilly few days.

We could see the potential for temperatures into the 20s

as we move towards the 6-10 day period.

So, after those wintry showers and those frosts of recent days,

if we have still got some bluebells,

hopefully you will be able to go out and enjoy them.

More from me tomorrow.