- 4 months ago
This is an in-depth Met Office UK Weather forecast for the next week and beyond 09/09/2025 – A look at this weekend’s deep low, the Atlantic hurricane season and sea temperatures. Bringing you this deep dive is Met Office meteorologist Alex Burkill.
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00:00Hello, very good day to you. I'm Alex Burkill, meteorologist and presenter here at the Met Office.
00:06And it's Tuesday, which means it's time for another deep dive. Plenty to talk through today.
00:11I'm going to be looking at sea surface temperatures, the hurricane season in the Atlantic, and also something a bit global too.
00:17But first, I will be covering the weather for the UK.
00:21Now, as always, leave any questions you have, leave any comments, and we will be answering some of them in the Weather Studio Live on Friday.
00:28It will be on her and me. She'll be posing the questions to me this Friday.
00:32Remember, you can catch that at 12.15 live or watch it back any time after Friday if you miss it during the lunchtime.
00:40Otherwise, also hit the like button, hit the share button.
00:43I don't like asking you to do that, but if you make sure that you do, then maybe I'll stop asking.
00:49So do me a favour. Then let's look at the UK weather.
00:52And it's fair to say it's quite unsettled, not totally unsettled, actually across many parts of the UK.
00:57Today is a largely fine day, but the jet stream is pushing in.
01:02We have our polar front jet, which is the driving force for more changeable, unsettled weather to come as we go through this week.
01:09There will be rain. There will be some heavy, perhaps even thundery showers, even some blustery winds.
01:14Let's look a bit at the detail.
01:15Now, Anna's doing the 10-day trend tomorrow, and I don't want to tread on her toes too much.
01:22She gets angry if I do, and I don't like making Anna angry.
01:25But I do need to mention the weather that's happening across the UK at the moment.
01:29Let's look at the overview quickly.
01:31And there is, yeah, like I say, the jet stream pushing its way across.
01:35As we go through into Wednesday, that's going to be driving this weather system through.
01:39And so that's going to lead to rain for many places, even the rain spreading across eastern areas.
01:45And all the time through this week, the wet weather is generally coming in from the west.
01:50So eastern areas, most of the time, avoiding the heaviest rain.
01:53But actually on Wednesday, most places will see some wet weather at times.
01:57Then as we go through into Thursday, we have this low pressure in control still.
02:02And that's going to bring quite a blustery, showery thing, particularly towards the northwest.
02:07Plenty of showers piling in from the west.
02:08And that occlusion coming around, that could bring some more persistent rain.
02:12And that's the similar thing that we take into Friday, really.
02:15There will be more showers coming through because of this low pressure just to the north-northwest of the UK.
02:21But how much rain are we going to see?
02:24Well, here we have our rainfall totals for the next few days.
02:27But I want to dive into things in a little bit more detail.
02:30Now, if we put on our three hourly rainfall totals for tomorrow and just run it through,
02:35and you can see there will be these heavy, showery bursts pushing their way northeastwards across many places.
02:41Now, we're looking at the potential for 10 to 20 millimetres in an hour or so, maybe 30 millimetres in an hour.
02:47And if you get any of those heavy bursts of rain building up,
02:51well, a few places could see quite a bit more than that throughout the day as a whole,
02:55particularly across some western parts of Scotland, southern Scotland.
02:58Here we could see some high rainfall totals, 50 millimetres, maybe even a little bit more.
03:03And I think the thing that I wanted to draw your attention to, particularly as we go through later Wednesday,
03:08I already mentioned it, but that wet weather is pushing its way across pretty much the whole of the country.
03:13So most places will see some heavy, showery rain.
03:16Now, it's not a really wide band of rain.
03:19If I just get the UK picture up, it's not a wide band of rain as such.
03:25It's quite a showery mess.
03:27So even within this, it is going to be hit and miss the rain.
03:30And so there will be some drier periods and not necessarily everywhere will see the rain,
03:35but it's going to be quite widespread.
03:37So my point just being eastern parts, which don't get a lot of the rain through this week
03:43and haven't had a huge amount recently, they will see some at times through tomorrow.
03:48Then as we run through, and as I mentioned already,
03:51so the wet weather pushes its way from west to east and northeastwards.
03:55There's a band of heavier rain as we go through the start of the night, but that clears through.
03:59And then we end up in this showery setup.
04:01And because of the low pressure here, the wind's coming from the west, northwest.
04:05It's always across western parts where the showers will be most frequent.
04:08A few towards the east, but much fewer than across western parts.
04:12They won't be as heavy.
04:13They won't be as intense.
04:14They won't be as thundery.
04:16And I alluded to it earlier, the occlusion that's wrapping around
04:19is going to bring some more persistent rain into parts of Scotland.
04:23And then it's a similar day really on Friday.
04:26More showers coming in from the west, northwest, and still some more persistent rain
04:30across parts of Scotland at times too.
04:33Perhaps slightly fewer showers maybe as we go through Friday
04:37and the more persistent rain clearing through Scotland as we go through the early hours.
04:40But generally another showery and quite blustery day.
04:45I did want to show you the winds.
04:48And actually we can use this one if we...
04:50So these are our gusts for the next few days.
04:53And yes, there are some blustery winds as the system comes through on Wednesday,
04:58but not especially strong.
05:00But by Thursday and Friday, particularly across western parts of Scotland,
05:05even towards Orkney and Shetland as well,
05:08some stronger scales perhaps touching close to severe.
05:12So a windy spell.
05:13Most places it's going to be quite blustery,
05:15but the strongest winds will be across parts of the northwest of the UK.
05:20But then to understand what's going to happen through this weekend,
05:26and as we often see, it's worth looking at what's happening the other side of the Atlantic
05:30because we are watching an area of low pressure that's developing.
05:34It's around Thursday time that it looks like it's going to start to develop
05:39on the eastern side of the U.S.
05:40And then it pushes its way eastwards.
05:43It's going to get caught up in this jet stream that I mentioned earlier
05:46and then come across the Atlantic.
05:48Now, if you caught my week ahead forecast, which went out on Monday,
05:52it was a good one.
05:52If you missed it, you should go check it out.
05:54But if you did catch that, you'd have seen me talk about the fact that
05:57the model run at the time from the Met Office
05:59wanted for this low to go across the jet
06:02and move from the warmer southern side to the colder northerly side.
06:07And when it does this, that leads to it deepening quite quickly and intensifying.
06:12And so then that was indicating of the potentials for some very wet and windy weather
06:16as we go through particularly Sunday.
06:19However, the latest Met Office model wants to keep the low on the southern,
06:24the warmer side of the jet and keeps it as quite a flabby feature.
06:28And so as we go through this weekend, I mean, Saturday at the moment actually looks
06:32mostly fine for many places.
06:34There will be some showery rain, but mostly fine nonetheless.
06:36But then this low comes across mainly towards southern parts of the UK as we go through Sunday.
06:43Now, if this comes off, yes, there would be some wet and windy weather across southern parts,
06:48but nothing especially unsettled, just a wet and relatively windy day for some.
06:55However, this isn't the forecast track that we think is most likely now.
07:01So we've taken it on board that the Met Office model, the most recent one, is suggesting this.
07:05But we've looked at previous models and we've looked at other models, ECMWF, GFS, for example.
07:11And the majority of them are more in line with what the older Met Office model was saying
07:16in as much as the low is likely to come across the jet stream,
07:20end up on the colder northern side on the left exit region.
07:24And then it's likely to intensify and deepen as it comes closer towards the UK.
07:28Now, we can see that if we look at our postage stamps from ECMWF for this coming Sunday at midday.
07:36And the majority of them, not all of them, but the majority of them have a pretty deep area of low pressure
07:43somewhere towards the northwest of the UK.
07:47So take Member 21, for example.
07:50It looks like it's got, you know, a relatively deep area of low pressure just to the west of Scotland,
07:57maybe the north of Northern Ireland.
07:58And a lot of them have something very similar.
08:01Some of them are a bit more developmental.
08:03Member 20, for example, brings it a little bit further across, as does 19, actually.
08:08Albeit that one doesn't look anywhere near as deep as some of the others.
08:11And a few of them are more in line with the most up-to-date, the most recent Met Office model,
08:16which keeps it all a little bit less developed and a little bit further south.
08:20But the majority of models going for a fairly deep area of low pressure,
08:25but most likely to stay towards the northwest of the UK.
08:28So we've kind of ended up with the chance of three possible scenarios as we go through this weekend,
08:34particularly Sunday and into Monday.
08:36So the most preferred solution, we're going with around a 70% chance of this happening,
08:41is for a deep low to develop, come across the Atlantic,
08:45and then end up somewhere just to the northwest of the UK.
08:48Now, this will be quite a mature feature, but it's going to bring, or if it comes off,
08:52it would bring some wet and some windy weather,
08:54particularly to parts of the west, northwest of the UK,
08:58and also maybe the far north of Scotland.
09:00We're talking gales, maybe even severe gales in some places.
09:03And there'll be some wet weather sweeping through as that comes in,
09:08and then some hefty showers falling in behind.
09:11The second most likely solution, we're going with around a 20% chance for this,
09:16is more in line with the most recent Met Office model.
09:19So a less developed low, a slightly shallower feature,
09:24tracking somewhere around the south of the UK, southern half of the UK at least.
09:28And yes, that would bring some wet and even windy weather across southern coastal parts in particular.
09:33That's where we're most likely to see the strong winds in that setup.
09:37And further north, we're just talking sunshine and showers, really.
09:41And you'd wonder what all the fuss was about, to be honest.
09:44But then the other possibility, this only has around a 10% chance,
09:48but this is for a deeper, more developed feature,
09:52a deeper low to come actually track across the country,
09:56push northeastwards across the UK.
09:58Now, if this comes off, and remember, it's only around a 10% chance,
10:01but if this comes off, well, then it could be very wet,
10:04and it could be very windy quite widely.
10:06It could cause some issues, could be particularly hazardous,
10:10and, you know, we're not at storm naming stage at the moment.
10:15It's too far ahead.
10:16Confidence, not anywhere near high enough.
10:18But if this came off, then we would need to be looking at naming a storm.
10:22However, the other two, we probably wouldn't need to.
10:25So one to keep on top of, because it could be particularly severe,
10:30or it could just be, you know, some usual autumnal, relatively wet, relatively windy weather,
10:37and exactly where we see the heaviest rain and strongest winds,
10:39well, that's still all to play for.
10:41Now, as we look further ahead, so as we go through into September,
10:46there are signs that the generally unsettled theme is going to continue,
10:49although more so as we go through the third week of September,
10:53perhaps signs of higher pressure at times towards the south,
10:57so it could be some quieter spells,
10:59albeit they don't look like they're going to be big blocking highs that will last for ages,
11:03might just be some temporary ridges.
11:04But if it's drier, I know we've been crying out for wet weather through much of the summer,
11:09but I'm sure some people are now hoping for something a bit drier.
11:12If that's what you're after, well, across southern parts,
11:14there may be something on offer as we go through deeper into the month.
11:18But more on that if you watch my 14-day outlook,
11:21which will be available on the Met Office app later on today.
11:26Now, what else did I want to talk about?
11:28Let's cover sea surface temperatures.
11:30Now, I've already talked about sea surface temperatures in previous deep dives,
11:33and also on the summer 2025 special that went out last week
11:37when I was joined by Dr. Mark McCarthy, and we touched on them then.
11:41But I still think it's quite important to cover them
11:43because we're around the peak in sea surface temperatures at the moment.
11:48I say that because if we look at the northern hemisphere and the Atlantic even,
11:56then yes, it is usually early September when we see the peak in sea surface temperatures.
12:00And here behind me, I have a graph plotting sea surface temperatures
12:04through the northern hemisphere, well, 20 north to 60 north,
12:09so kind of that middle chunk of the northern hemisphere,
12:11for the last, since 1980, and including this year, so the last 46 years.
12:17And the bold red line is 2025, and then the other lines are various years.
12:23And what you can see is 2025 has been consistently warmer than, well, warmer than average, for sure,
12:31and one of the warmest years in this period.
12:34Actually, it's not quite the warmest at the moment, but nonetheless, it is very high.
12:39And you can actually see that peak in the temperatures for, on average,
12:46the peak in this curve comes at the very end of August, beginning of September.
12:49But now you probably know this, but in case you don't, the reason why the peak in sea surface temperatures
12:55comes a bit later than the peak in our air temperature and our land temperature
13:01is because water takes a bit longer, it takes more energy to heat up than the land does.
13:07And so there's this delay.
13:09And so that's why the sea surface temperatures stay warmer or continue to get warmer for that little bit longer.
13:15And that's why they're at their coldest during, well, early spring, really, end of winter, early spring,
13:23by which time the air, the land's actually starting to warm up.
13:27So there's always this little bit of a delay.
13:30But interestingly, across the UK, if we look much closer to home,
13:35and actually just the seas around the immediate coastline,
13:39the peak, on average, is actually a few weeks earlier.
13:43It's more around the middle of August,
13:46as when, on average, we see the highest temperatures.
13:49And the reason for that is because the seas around the UK are relatively shallow,
13:55definitely in comparison to the middle of the Atlantic.
13:57And as a result, the delay is less.
14:02And so it's less pronounced.
14:03And so, yes, usually the peak in our sea surface temperatures
14:07around the immediate UK coastline is in the middle of August.
14:11But actually, it wasn't this year.
14:12This year was a little bit earlier.
14:14It was in the middle of July.
14:15That's when it peaked around 16.7 Celsius.
14:19Well, above average, I talked earlier about marine heat waves.
14:22We've had several of them.
14:23And that has a knock-on effect on marine life, sea life.
14:28Some species are able to adapt and move and live around the British seas,
14:33British coasts better than they could have done before.
14:36But other species, cod, for example, can't.
14:38And they migrate, move further north.
14:41But nonetheless, my point being,
14:43temperatures through 2025 have been consistently very high,
14:49either the highest in this record period, going back to 1980,
14:52or one of the highest, if not.
14:55Now, they're not currently quite the highest.
14:57They've just about dipped below 16 Celsius.
15:00But for this stage in the year, they're not quite the highest.
15:02They're behind a few years.
15:04Last year, 2023, and also 2003, I think,
15:08are years that have been warmer than it at this stage in the year.
15:12But I just wanted to touch on the fact that the seas are still pretty warm.
15:16And you can see that as well if we get our anomaly chart for the sea surface temperatures.
15:22And you can see many places nearby are around a degree or so above average for this stage.
15:28This chart is from figures from yesterday, so from September the 8th.
15:32So these are comparing actual readings with the 1982 to 2011 baseline.
15:42All right.
15:43Now, talk about sea surface temperatures.
15:45The warm seas often have a knock-on effect on hurricanes.
15:49And in fact, you need the warm seas in order for hurricanes to develop.
15:52And actually, at this time of year, we're getting very close to, traditionally, statistically,
15:57the peak in the hurricane season in the Atlantic.
16:01But actually, things currently are very quiet.
16:03Now, this chart plots the climatology in this bluey-violet-coloured line
16:09in terms of activity in the North Atlantic when it comes to tropical storms and hurricanes.
16:17And what you can see during the winter months and spring months, there's not very much activity generally.
16:24And then it starts to pick up as we go through into summer.
16:27And then it really picks up through the very end of summer, beginning of autumn,
16:30before levelling out again as we head into winter.
16:33Now, the light blue line is this year.
16:36And it got off to a quite slow start and then suddenly picked up,
16:40jumped up because of Hurricane Erin just a little while ago.
16:45But then since then, it has levelled out again because things have quietened down,
16:50which is an interesting one because, yeah, statistically, we're pretty much at the peak.
16:55In fact, if I show you this chart, which plots all the tropical storms, hurricanes,
17:00major hurricanes in the Atlantic throughout the year.
17:04And you can see, really, it is this early September period.
17:07I think technically this coming Thursday is the peak day statistically when it comes to activity in the Atlantic.
17:16But it's really quiet currently this year.
17:19Well, why is that?
17:19Well, there are a couple of things at play and still a little bit uncertain, to be honest.
17:26But last week, there was a low developing in the Atlantic.
17:30And lots of models wanted it to develop into a tropical system.
17:37In fact, I think the NHC at one point had it at around a 90% chance of developing.
17:42But that never really happened.
17:44It kind of fizzled out.
17:45And interestingly, the Google AI DeepMind model was the first to highlight that.
17:50Actually, no, it's not going to develop into anything tropical.
17:54It's just going to fizzle out and not become much of a feature at all.
17:58And then eventually, the other models caught up and that was right.
18:01And we're now in a quiet phase.
18:03But why didn't it develop?
18:06And that's a tricky one.
18:08There was a pulse of the Madden-Julian oscillation, which would have worked for deepening the feature.
18:14There wasn't much wind shear.
18:15So that would have contributed to it deepening.
18:19Well, that wouldn't have hindered its deepening either.
18:21But I've been reading some things and they're suggesting that the air is quite dry at the moment and the air is also quite stable.
18:29And now you need the instability and the moisture in the air.
18:33You need the instability for the parcels of air to rise up.
18:36And then as they rise up, they condense out, assuming they have that moisture.
18:40And it's that process of condensing out that leads to the energy, which then leads to the hurricanes developing or the tropical storms.
18:48And so without the instability, without the moisture, then you're not going to get that process and create that energy.
18:53So it's probably due to a combination of things.
18:56But the drier air, the less unstable, the more stable air as well, those combined have led to it.
19:03But you would imagine that most of the models would have had a grasp of that.
19:06So it's interesting that the Google AI model captured it better quickly, more quickly than the others.
19:13And that's also the case when it came to Hurricane Erin.
19:16The Google AI DeepMind model was also the first to track it.
19:20So we'll get the track so well, keeping it or pushing it further northwest up towards Iceland rather than more across the Atlantic.
19:29But how long is the quiet spell in terms of the hurricane season going to last?
19:34Well, there are some signs of, well, there's a lot of activity currently over parts of Africa, West Africa.
19:40And when we get that, then that can often lead to tropical lows developing in the Atlantic and then pushing northwestwards.
19:47And that's what a number of models here.
19:49Here I have a chart indicating the potential for lows to develop as highlighted by a number of different models,
19:55including that Google model that I mentioned, the DeepMind, which is the orange symbols.
20:01And so, yeah, there are some signs that we could see something developing there, also some signs to the east of the U.S. as well.
20:08So I think, you know, things are going to stay quiet for the next week or so,
20:12but then probably going to see something a bit more active as we go through later on.
20:16But I thought it was interesting that even though statistically we're coming up to the peak in the Atlantic hurricane season,
20:23it's quite the opposite this year.
20:26Then one last thing that I wanted to talk about, and let's look globally,
20:31because whilst there is some unsettled weather in the U.K.,
20:35it's a very wet picture across parts of Pakistan and Western India.
20:41Now we have a monsoon low here, which has developed, and it's brought already a substantial amount of rain,
20:46and it's going to continue to bring some further heavy rain as we go through the rest of today and into tomorrow.
20:53In just that 48-hour period, some places could see 50 to 100 millimetres of rain,
20:57which means through the whole event, some places could be looking at around 250 to 350 millimetres of rain,
21:04which is well over double the average September rainfall for some of these places.
21:10So no wonder there have been some reports of flooding and landslides,
21:15and we're going to see further issues as well as a result of the very wet weather.
21:20Whilst the rain will clear away as we go through later on in the week,
21:24by Thursday time really the worst of it will have cleared away into the ocean,
21:29there is going to be a bit of a delayed response when it comes to the river catchments,
21:34and they're looking particularly high across parts of Pakistan.
21:37Some of the rivers will be looking at a kind of a 1 in 10, 1 in 20 year event for those kind of levels,
21:43and actually across some parts of India it could be closer to a 1 in 50, 1 in 100 year event when it comes to those river levels,
21:50so particularly high, so that could lead to some further flooding as well.
21:54Fortunately, if we're trying to find something that's slightly less bad,
21:58fortunately, if I just roll back,
22:00the heaviest rain is going to be over some inland areas,
22:05but fortunately it's not pushing too far inland,
22:07not going over the really, really higher ground,
22:10and if it had done, then that would have led to more rain,
22:13and also led to even more of a response when it comes to the river catchments,
22:18and that would have lasted even longer.
22:20So yes, there will be a short delay whilst the river levels continue to rise for a little while,
22:26but if the heaviest rain had pushed further up over the higher ground,
22:30then that would have lasted even longer.
22:32So things could have been even more severe if things had been just ever so slightly different.
22:39So that's me done.
22:40Yeah, I think that's everything that I wanted to cover today.
22:44So remember, yeah, it's quite unsettled through this week across the UK,
22:48and we are keeping a close eye on what's going to happen as we go through,
22:51particularly the back end of this coming weekend with the low pressure moving in,
22:55but exactly how deep it's going to be and the track it takes,
22:57well, that's still all to play for.
22:59Like I said, Honor will be here tomorrow with the 10-day trend.
23:03Honor and I will both be here on Friday with the Weather Studio Live at 12.15,
23:07so do get those questions coming in.
23:09Hit the like button, hit the share button, and also make sure you subscribe.
23:13If you're watching this on YouTube, don't forget,
23:15you could have watched this on Spotify instead because we are there as well.
23:19Thank you so much for watching,
23:20and I do want to give a shout-out to my wife's gran, Vivian,
23:23who sadly passed away this morning.
23:25So she was my biggest fan and will be sorely missed.
23:28Thank you so much for watching.
23:29I'll see you again soon.
23:30Bye-bye.
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