12/08/2017 Weather for the Week Ahead

Despite the disappointing weather some of us have had this week,

at least it looks like a window of fine weather will coincide

with the weekend.

But thereafter, it's probably back business as usual.

We've had some rain crossing the country through Friday.

This is the band of cloud here.

You can see cloud strewn out right across the Atlantic,

so other areas of low pressure heading our way.

So it will be just a temporary dry spell.

As the weather systems and their drizzly rain

clear out of the way, it allows this ridge

of high pressure behind me to build in for the weekend.

But it will be a slow start to our Saturday morning.

It could be a bit grey, drizzly,

particularly in southern areas

with that weather front slowly exiting.

Then it's showers following on

the north-westerly breeze.

North-westerly isn't a particularly

warm direction for ourselves,

but at least it will blow in some sunshine,

just a scattering of showers

and not everywhere will see one.

The vast majority enjoying

a lot of dry weather,

not especially warm, 18 to 22 degrees Celsius.

But the cloud will clear quite quickly

through Saturday evening and overnight.

Quite chilly for the time of year.

We could see temperatures fall

to 2 or 3 degrees

across the glens of Scotland

which is close enough to a grass force.

As we had last weekend, actually.

But for the majority, just a chilly night,

It could be a bit foggy in a few places

first thing Sunday morning.

Again, there's still some strength

in the August sunshine

and there should be plenty of that

on offer on Sunday.

There are a few flies in the ointment.

One or two showers in the North

and the later in the day, rain comes

into Northern Ireland and western fringes of England and Wales.

That takes us into the week ahead.

So we've got this fine spell of weather, or mostly fine,

over the weekend, but it's back to business as usual next week.

In fact we could have potentially stormy weather late on.

The rain I talked about coming in late

to Northern Ireland on Sunday.

Moves in through Sunday night

into Monday and it's a slow mover,

quite heavy rain cos there's warm air in there,

which tends to generate a lot of heavy rain.

It looks at the moment as if perhaps

the far north will escape the worst

and perhaps the far south and east,

and not a bad day here on Monday.

The rain for many central and western areas,

but heavy rain and it continues on

through Monday night and into Tuesday.

Slowly creeping eastwards and at the same time

we may pick up some continental thunderstorms

coming into southern and eastern areas.

If those combine, we could have

some very wet weather potentially as we move into Tuesday.

But it should then move out of the way.

A ridge of high pressure starts

to topple in from the Atlantic,

pushing those weather systems out of the way,

so it freshens up and dries up

temporarily through Tuesday night.

So another chilly night, and into Wednesday,

but already behind me we've got trouble brewing.

This is the potential for some stormy weather

around the middle part of the week.

Now, the fly in the ointment

is that this has got some tropical air

mixed in with it, so it is going to prove

a problem for the computer models

to nail down the detail.

But at this stage it looks like it will whisk across the Atlantic,

turning to a fairly deep area of low pressure,

with gales, possibly severe gale force winds.

And a lot of rain because there's tropical air mixed in with it.

That's how the mid part of the week looks,

but you can see those weather systems trailing right the way

back across the Atlantic to the USA and Canada's shores, in fact.

And it's because we've got a strong jet stream

pushing across the Atlantic

and it's driving those low pressures

eastward towards our shores.

We're still to the north of the jet stream, still in the colder air.

Hence the fact there's nothing very warm

heading our way in the foreseeable future

and hence the fact that it'll stay generally unsettled.

But the next weekend we might be back into a brief

ridge of high pressure, possibly dry with some sunshine.

But the generally unsettled theme is set to continue.

Bye-bye.