- 2 years ago
This is an in-depth Met Office UK Weather forecast for the next week and beyond. Summer forecasts rumours are going around, but what can we say at this stage and how is the first week of summer looking? Bringing you this deep dive is Met Office meteorologist Annie Shuttleworth.
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00:00 Rumours of the summer forecast are doing the rounds but what have we said about
00:05 the summer so far? What can we say about a whole season and with the 1st of June
00:11 just a few days away what's the first week of summer looking like? Hello
00:15 welcome to the latest deep dive I'm Annie Shutterworth I'm a presenter and
00:20 meteorologist here at the Met Office and this is your deep dive where we take a
00:25 closer look into this week's weather, the upcoming season's weather, that's what
00:29 we're doing this week and all sorts of other details. If this is your first deep
00:33 dive welcome along if you are a regular welcome back thank you very much for
00:38 joining us don't forget to subscribe turn on the notifications as well and
00:41 share this video with anyone you think who might be interested in it and might
00:45 not have seen it before. So this week we're going to be talking about the
00:49 summer, the upcoming summer, what we can say about it and what we can expect and
00:54 as I said there are a few summer forecasts already out there doing the
00:59 rounds. This is one that has been in the headlines today in fact Met Office warns
01:05 the government of 50 days of rain in just three months as
01:10 Britain braces for one of the wettest summers on record. Now this statement is
01:17 pretty out there and it's actually nothing that we have said in fact we
01:22 would never give any specific details on the forecast for a whole season any
01:26 specific details of exactly how many days of rain we can expect and we've
01:32 only just released our summer forecast and these headlines were written before
01:35 today so they actually only covered May June and July rather than June July and
01:41 August which is actually meteorological summer. So first of all this is not based
01:45 on anything to do with summer and it gives far too much detail for a whole
01:48 season that we would ever give. Now we do do seasonal forecasts we definitely do
01:54 briefs things into government to contingency agencies as well but and
01:59 we'll go over what we do say and what we can say in a little bit more detail but
02:03 what does this 50 days of rain mean? Well 50 days of rain or one day of rain in
02:09 the UK counts as one millimetre of rainfall falling anywhere in the UK so
02:15 that could fall in Scotland you could have 50 days of rain in Scotland
02:19 actually in the south the Midlands Wales anywhere else you could have absolutely
02:23 no rain so you'd be having a completely different experience so putting a
02:27 forecast on how many days of rain you will have is completely useless in many
02:32 ways you're actually not going to be able to tell much about what
02:35 you can expect at all so it's that is one reason why we would never
02:40 give a forecast on exactly how many days of rain you can expect and it's a level
02:43 of accuracy that you simply can't get out of a weather forecast. So how many
02:49 days of rain do you kind of see throughout the summer? Well let's have a
02:53 look at this chart now this shows you how many days of rain you can expect
02:58 throughout the year we've got two different bars on the averages the
03:02 averages for 1961 to 1990 and 1991 to 1920 excuse me so we do 30 year
03:10 averaging periods and the best thing to compare our current weather to is to the
03:16 most recent averaging period which goes up to 2020 so that's the red those are
03:21 the red bars as I said summer months are June July and August and you can see
03:25 that from June July and August we tend to see somewhere between 11 and about
03:30 13 days of rain so that gives us somewhere between 30 and 40 days of rain
03:35 for a whole season at the whole of the summer and actually the average for the
03:40 UK of days of rain is somewhere around 37 days of 37 days of rain that's for
03:45 one millimeter of rain to fall anywhere in the UK and actually if you were to
03:50 change that number to 0.1 millimeter which is something we'd also record so
03:54 just a trace of rain actually the average for the UK would be about 50
04:00 days of rain and so 50 days of rain if you're just looking at 0.1 millimeters
04:05 rain would not be a particularly wet summer at all but if you're looking at
04:08 one millimeter of rain then it probably would be one of the wetter summers but
04:13 it's not what we're predicting at this stage we put no level of deep that level
04:17 of detail on our summer forecasts so what have we said about the summer so
04:22 far I said our summer seasonal forecast has been released today and let's have a
04:27 look at it so it doesn't really look like a forecast that you may have seen
04:33 before we have gone over these in previous deep dives we've had a guest
04:37 will hang on a few times to discuss these in a bit more detail particularly
04:41 Alex did one with will last summer to have a look at the summer forecast and
04:45 actually the forecast was very similar to this if you look back at that video
04:49 you'll notice the numbers are very similar and actually for this summer
04:53 average the for this summer the forecast is looking pretty close to average in
04:58 fact there's no particular strong signals for the upcoming summer apart
05:03 from one which you may have noticed but we'll talk about that in just a minute
05:06 first of all I'm going to talk about the rain because that's where we started
05:10 with a wet summer with the headlines telling us we're expecting a wet summer
05:15 now this states that we were more likely to see it goes about 60% that you're
05:21 likely to see the 60% chance you're like to see about an average summer and 20%
05:26 of it being wetter 20% dry that's kind of the standard deviation where you
05:30 think things would with probability how you think things would generally lie and
05:33 then we look at drivers global drivers and how they're playing out and how they
05:38 might impact our weather on top of that to give us these forecasts and the
05:42 global drivers there are there are no real strong drivers for this cut upcoming
05:47 summer so that's one reason why things have come out pretty close to average
05:51 but that doesn't mean that we're not expecting a wet summer it doesn't mean
05:54 we're not expecting a dry summer it means that it's most likely to be drier
05:59 but actually you can't really rule anything out and even if it was an
06:04 average summer it could have been really wet in the north and really dry in the
06:09 south and actually it's averaged out so it doesn't give you a representation of
06:12 what it's going to be like in one single place so that's not what these forecasts
06:17 are used for and so the signal for this summer is that there is equal likelihood
06:22 it's fairly balanced whether we will see a wet or a dry summer you can see
06:26 there's not much in whether we've got whether with just 15% or 20% whether it
06:31 would be a wetter or a drier summer as said there is one number that it does
06:37 stick out a little bit and that is the temperature on the temperature line that
06:41 we have a 40% 45% chance that it will be a hotter than average summer and that's
06:48 2.3 times the normal chance now this is compared to this that this 30 year
06:53 average and the UK UK temperatures are increasing in line with global
07:00 temperatures due to climate change and actually that is the key driver for this
07:04 signal because our summers are increasingly more likely to be hotter
07:08 than cooler than average and that's the trend we're expecting to continue now
07:14 this does tell us a few things it does mean that heat related impacts such as
07:20 heat waves health heath issues wildfires those sorts of things are more likely
07:25 for the season and average and that information is useful for the government
07:30 for contingency planners as well but as I said it doesn't this forecast does not
07:35 tell us that we are what we can expect for your holiday for a week in July or
07:40 your wedding on a particular day in August unfortunately where the
07:44 forecasting is simply not such that we can give specific forecasts for specific
07:48 days months in ahead but we can give general trends for those that are able
07:54 to plan using those trends and risks and so this forecast is actually designed
07:58 for people who are used to be made used to making risk based decisions based on
08:03 these types of forecasts they've got plenty of experience and that is who
08:07 they are for so I said this was quite similar to the to the to the forecast we
08:15 had for last summer and so many analysis and averages do tend to take away the
08:21 general trend but so we were going for about a 20% chance of it being wetter
08:25 than average 15% that it was going to be dry than average and so how did last
08:30 summer pan out so I've just got this as a reminder this was the summer rainfall
08:35 as a whole where it's blue it was wetter than average where it's brown it was dry
08:40 than average and where it's white it was kind of in between basically though it
08:44 was about average in fact and so there were some wetter than average spots
08:48 northwest England in particular and across the south coast as well there
08:52 were some wet spots Northern Ireland particularly western areas of Northern
08:56 Ireland had a fairly wet summer as well I don't know if you remember we had a
09:01 really nice June and then quite a disappointing for quite a few people
09:04 July and August as well and so that doesn't really tell you the whole story
09:10 of how the summer panned out so what I'm trying to say is that these sorts of
09:13 forecasts these averages are not something you can take away for exactly
09:18 how the feel of the whole summer is going to be and these sorts of headlines
09:22 are almost in the impossible to be factually correct as well so summer is
09:29 actually starting on the 1st of June which is only a few days away so
09:34 although we may not be able to tell you exactly what's going to be happening for
09:37 a day in July we can tell you what we are expecting for the very first week of
09:42 June with quite a lot of accuracy as well so let's have a look at what the
09:48 weather is going to be like for the next few days and the next couple of weeks in
09:53 fact so first of all let's have a look at the pressure pattern okay that's a
09:58 good angle I think so we've got the jet stream here and the pressure pattern
10:02 we've got frontal systems on there as well I'll just play it through for the
10:10 next couple of days so we've got the jet stream coming in we've got this area of
10:14 low pressure across the UK that's bringing this wet weather through today
10:19 and into Thursday we've got an unsettled few days to come it was a pretty
10:23 unsettled Bank holiday Sunday and Monday for many areas and it's staying
10:27 unsettled for the next couple of days but there are signs of change coming by
10:32 the end of the week and actually quite a strong signal that the main bulk of the
10:36 jet stream dives to the south and bulks up to the north as well so it splits and
10:41 that allows this high pressure to build in across the UK and that high pressure
10:46 then moves in from the West we've still got low pressure center to the east so
10:50 we'll still get some unsettled weather moving down eastern areas for the end of
10:54 this week but by the weekend this high pressure is really edging into western
10:58 areas becoming much more dominant across the UK and high pressure means sinking
11:04 air that means that you don't get showers forming as easily because you
11:08 need and you need unstable air for showers you need air to be able to rise
11:12 and when you've got sinking air that stops those showers bubbling up and
11:16 developing it means dry weather and it also can reduce cloud cover as well
11:21 because of that sinking dry air as well so that means more sunshine is on the
11:25 way and more dry weather is on the way as well so high pressure is likely to
11:30 move in it's just gonna sit to the west of the UK through a lot of this the
11:34 Friday Saturday the weekend as well we'll start to see some weather fronts
11:38 probably starting to move in to the far north but actually the signals are that
11:43 that high pressure remains fairly dominant until at least Tuesday we'll
11:48 show a bit more I'll show a bit more on that in a minute let's take a closer
11:51 look at the next couple of days a little bit more zoomed in on the UK so I'll put
11:58 the pressure pattern on as well so you can see the weather fronts from today
12:01 actually let's have a look at the radar first of all so that's what's been
12:07 happening so this was yesterday we had some very heavy showers moving through
12:11 and then through last night we had a weather front move into the southwest
12:14 and as that's moved through some heavy really heavy bursts of rain through this
12:19 morning and have fallen and on the back edge of that weather front we've seen
12:23 that seen things become more unsettled and that's why we have a thunderstorm
12:27 warning out for this afternoon into this evening and it's likely going to stay
12:32 unsettled into tomorrow as well we've got further thunderstorm warnings in
12:37 force so this weather front moves through and then behind it heavy showers
12:43 breaking out it's something called a shallow moist zone that we've had
12:46 developing it's quite a complex frontal setup so it means that we've got embedded
12:52 instability so instability means that air can rise and you can get those
12:56 potentially quite heavy downpours and thunderstorms now the area of low
12:59 pressure moves off to the east through Wednesday but then I'm going to pause it
13:05 let's go back a tiny bit okay I think tomorrow lunchtime's a good good stop
13:14 stopping point so as the low pressure shifts off we've still got really
13:19 unstable air but I mean there's less rain around it's going to be a slightly
13:24 drier day and but we've got this these showers still coming in on this
13:29 northwesterly wind essentially the winds kind of switching direction because we
13:33 do have the load below but things will come in from the north essentially
13:36 moving south and east through the day but where you're closer to this area of
13:42 low pressure the winds are lighter and that means we've got something a less of
13:46 what we call a steering flow now the steering flow is the level at which the
13:50 winds are which steer showers so it's it's higher up in the atmosphere and
13:55 where we have a not a particularly strong steering flow so calmer winds at
14:02 that level it means the showers don't move very quickly so actually across
14:06 Scotland where we're closer to that low pressure and tomorrow those showers are
14:11 expected to move quite slowly so you could get rainfall totals building up in
14:15 the same area because the showers aren't moving away very quickly whereas a little
14:20 bit further south where we've got more isobars the wind speeds a little bit
14:23 higher and and so we've got low pressure those showers moving through quickly
14:29 there's still the potential for some very heavy potentially thundery downpours
14:32 in the east tomorrow but they'll move much more quickly so we're not expecting
14:36 as many impacts so as a result of that we have got and we have got a warning
14:46 enforced for Scotland for tomorrow there are warnings enforced for today but today
14:50 I'm just going over tomorrow for now and that is where we are expecting that's
14:57 the morning so there we go this warning area is covering that area that we're
15:04 expecting those really heavy slow moving showers and potentially some impacts from
15:09 the thunderstorms not rain falling in a short amount of time we've got our
15:13 rainfall totals we can look at for a bit more detail and how much rain we can
15:17 expect so this is today and through let's get the 24-hour totals on through
15:24 throughout and let's start today and just see how the general trend works out
15:32 so today we've got those thunderstorm warnings parts of and southwestern
15:36 Scotland is where we're expecting some pretty high totals as well you can see
15:39 that trend there's brighter colors that's showing and 50 millimeters in 24
15:43 hours and then we'll start to see the rain become more focused in the east
15:47 through tomorrow you can see those heavier those more of those totals
15:51 building up quite widely across the east in the west there's still some showers
15:54 building up but there's more white spots where we're not expecting as much in the
15:58 way of rain when you're looking at showers it's actually a when you get
16:04 quite a lot of rain falling in a short space of time when you start to get
16:07 those impacts so that's a good idea it's a good idea to look at those and for
16:11 Wednesday so you can see we've got really bright spots here that's kind of
16:14 25 millimeters and falling in three hours we could see about 30 millimeters
16:21 falling in about three hours and potentially more than that so that could
16:25 bring those localized impacts so that's Wednesday and then on Thursday we've got
16:33 the low pressure moving away quite a lot of switching around so let's keep up
16:41 here we go so Wednesday the low pressure moves away Wednesday evening and then
16:46 Thursday we start to see a bit more of a feature moving in from the northwest and
16:50 that's going to drag down an area of rain down south and eastwards through
16:54 the day so there's further potential for some quite heavy downpours through
16:58 Thursday a bit more focused across eastern areas still as in the west we're
17:02 starting to see the high pressure you can't quite see the height there it is
17:04 it's coming in and coming in for Thursday evening or Thursday afternoon
17:08 so things are already starting to improve from the west by Thursday but
17:11 we'll still see some rain across the far east all the way into Friday but things
17:17 are getting dramatically better ahead of the weekend so high pressures building
17:22 in how warm and sunny is it going to get so for Friday temperatures were starting
17:30 to rise but it's only really and into Saturday and Sunday where we start to
17:34 see temperatures rise a little bit towards the around average a little
17:38 above average moving towards sort of low 20s for the weekend across southern
17:42 areas and the best of the sunshine where you do have a bit more of an onshore
17:45 breeze and through the weekend it's going to be a bit cooler across eastern
17:49 areas potentially in the shelter though there's all that difference we have had
17:52 some really warm days already this year and you will know that when the sun
17:57 shines we've got high UV levels pollen levels are on the rise as well so those
18:01 summery impacts will start to be a bit more widely felt but it's Saturday and
18:06 Sunday when we start to see those temperatures and starting to rise you
18:11 have a look on our graphs so some fairly disappointing days this week nothing
18:17 exceptionally low but temperatures just slowly rising as I move around into the
18:23 weekend and there's some uncertainty on cloud cover up across northern areas
18:29 and into the weekend so it may start to cool off a little bit and into Sunday
18:35 just with a bit more cloud around but generally we're expecting high pressure
18:39 to last for a fair while actually into and into the weekend and next week as
18:45 well but quite how long are we expecting it so and this is the pressure pattern
18:51 for the next two weeks so can't quite see my arrows are covering that but that
18:55 says Tuesday and the 28th that's today and Tuesday the 11th of June so that's
19:00 the next two weeks this is the pressure pattern so this shows you if you were
19:04 expecting lower or higher pressure to dominate so high pressures the Reds
19:09 blues the low pressure green is kind of somewhere in between so those
19:13 transitional periods and so low pressure is very much in charge today we're
19:18 starting to transition through Wednesday and Thursday that's why it's coming in
19:21 as green and then that high pressure building in from the West is that is the
19:28 reason for this strong red color the deep red color we've got quite high
19:32 percentages as well they've increased with time which is fairly typical you
19:37 get increasing confidence as you get closer to the time and so the numbers
19:41 increase so we're up to 100% 99% but even into Monday 94% chance of that
19:46 higher pressure still dominating the UK weather and actually I say the signal
19:52 lasts until about Tuesday that's when we've got quite high confidence that a
19:56 high pressure will be dominating and actually we haven't had a huge amount of
20:00 high confidence recently in the forecast you may have noticed the forecasts have
20:04 not necessarily always stood true they have chopped and changed with the
20:08 position of the high and the low and that is very typical for this time of
20:12 year in spring late spring early spring early summer and there aren't any
20:17 particularly strong global drivers and that's certainly the case at the moment
20:21 and so it has meant that the reliability of the forecast or the confidence in the
20:25 forecast has felt a little less but we've got pretty strong confidence or
20:30 higher confidence of this pit of this potent of this dryer and sunnier spell
20:37 all the way until Tuesday and then it's kind of next middle of next week when
20:41 things start to change slowly sometimes when high pressure builds in it can take
20:47 a while to move away which is good news for some and equally when we think it's
20:51 going to come in it can take a little while to build in and but once it
20:54 arrives it can take a little while to budge away and actually that's where
20:58 we've got quite a lot and the uncertainty starts to build in of when
21:01 that high is gonna we're gonna start to sink away so percentages go down we've
21:05 still got reds in charge and but then by the time we get to next weekend more in
21:11 the way of blues but they're still quite low percentages as well and this is the
21:15 multi model output so this uses lots of different models and it merges them
21:20 together and to give a mixed probability and actually lots of different models
21:24 are showing different things some of them want to keep hold of that high
21:27 pressure and some of them want to let go of it a bit a bit sooner so what kind of
21:34 setups can we expect for the next week from sort of Tuesday almost as I said
21:38 Tuesday this is kind of the most likely probably but pressure pattern from
21:42 Tuesday the 4th of June and it's a 49% probability it came in as but actually
21:48 the others in the group were pretty similar to this as well it's just
21:52 slightly as a high was a little bit further this way or this way and but
21:55 they generally give you the same pattern so Tuesday onwards we still got this high
21:59 pressure from the West if you're closer to the high pressure that's where you've
22:02 got that sinking air you're closer to it so it's likely to be drier and further
22:07 east you are the closer you are to that high pressure particularly the further
22:10 north and you are there's still low pressures up there so a source of
22:15 moisture which may bring a greater risk of showers potentially more in the way
22:19 of cloud and possibly some rain as well and actually that signal becomes of that
22:24 northerly area starting to see more in the way of cloud becomes a bit stronger
22:28 as the week goes on so this is by the time we get to Friday the 7th of June
22:32 this is one of the more likely probabilities this is only 16% but it's
22:37 the highest probability on that day and a few of them are showing a few
22:42 different things I think this is the general trend that will start to see
22:44 frontal systems starting to move in just to northern areas it will introduce as I
22:48 said some more moisture potentially a few showers we could see some stuff
22:51 across eastern areas but high pressures always closer to the south in all the
22:56 regimes that are coming through so I think this dry weather is like to last
22:59 longer across the south and whereas in the north it could turn a bit cloudier
23:03 and wetter sooner and after around Tuesday onwards so how does the trend
23:09 carry on all the way until next weekend so just a reminder we've got blues
23:14 coming in and by next weekend in that transitional period and as I said some
23:19 models want to just hold on to this high pressure so they're coming in with
23:22 things like this high pressure is still dominating but then others are coming in
23:28 or runs are coming in with something that looks a bit modest with low
23:32 pressure moving in and there's an increasing signal that we could start to
23:36 see a bit more in the way of mobility that's where the front's moving in from
23:39 the Atlantic and a bit more of a movable system rather than that blocked high
23:43 that's starting to come in for the next week so that's from the middle of the
23:47 June a middle of June onwards we could start to see a bit more mobility in our
23:52 weather pattern so the high is expected to last at least about five or six days
23:58 across the UK it's where we've got those deep reds I think across the south it
24:04 will last for a lot of next week as well but it's towards the end of the week and
24:08 the weekend when we could start to see that high eroding away and the low
24:12 pressures returning to the wetter weather but for the time being we've got
24:17 good news on the way for those that are wanting some summery weather
24:20 unfortunately for those that have been trying to enjoy it for half term is
24:24 coming a little late but you've still got a few days the next weekend as well
24:27 to enjoy it so I think plan your outdoor activities if you can for the latter
24:31 part of this week as things will improve but there's still some unsettled weather
24:35 to come for the next few days we do have thunderstorm warnings in force as well
24:39 and that's it for me thank you very much for joining me that's our summer
24:44 forecast or a look at the summer ahead and the first week of summer as well
24:49 have a great rest of your day I'll be around for the next for the 30 minutes
24:53 and around 430 till 5 o'clock to answer any of your questions and comments on
24:57 YouTube if you are watching soon after this release but otherwise I'll see you
25:01 next time and thank you very much for joining me bye bye
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