- 7 weeks ago
This is an in-depth Met Office UK Weather forecast for the next week and beyond.
The recent rain has made up for the dry Spring and Summer for western parts of the UK but how much more rain is to come this week and are there signs of something different for Christmas?
Bringing you this deep dive is Met Office meteorologist Annie Shuttleworth.
The recent rain has made up for the dry Spring and Summer for western parts of the UK but how much more rain is to come this week and are there signs of something different for Christmas?
Bringing you this deep dive is Met Office meteorologist Annie Shuttleworth.
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NewsTranscript
00:00It's felt like all we've been talking about is rain over the past few months, but how
00:05much rain have we seen since the start of autumn and how much more rain is there to
00:09come this week? There's also a light at the end of the tunnel just in time for Christmas.
00:16I've got all of that to share with you today in this week's Deep Dive. Welcome along. I'm
00:20Annie. I'm a presenter and meteorologist here at Met Office HQ in Exeter. If you watch every
00:27week, welcome back. If you're new to these Deep Dives, we do them every Tuesday and they're
00:31an opportunity to talk about everything, the weather, in just a little bit more detail with
00:35a little bit more time. So please subscribe, comment on the videos if you enjoy them. Also
00:41comment if you've got any questions about what we talk about today or just anything else that's
00:45going on at the moment. We will read your comments and we might be answering your questions in
00:50our Weather Studio Live on Friday. But this week we are talking about the rain and as I
00:56said it has felt like it's been raining for months ever since September started or autumn
01:02started with a bang. Now throughout the year so far the UK as a whole has been running at a deficit
01:09for rain after a fairly exceptionally dry spring and summer. But since September we've seen some
01:16fairly continuous rainfall with some pretty notable events particularly storm Claudia and storm Bram just
01:22last week. Now how is the UK's rainfall accumulation looking at the moment? Well here you can see
01:27the this year so far 2025 obviously we're approaching the very end of the year and how it's been running
01:33compared to average. That's this thick straight dark black line that's the average and where we see
01:39that brown colour that's how much below average we've been so far this year and actually throughout the
01:44year as a whole the UK has been below average. Now it reached its driest point just at the end of the
01:52just before September and then since then we've seen a gradual increase in that in that difference
01:58between the average and 2025 a decrease in that difference. So it has become much closer to what
02:06we'd expect our average rainfall to be but we're still at a deficit for the UK as a whole. Now that's for the
02:12whole of the UK that doesn't paint the picture across more regional regionally. You can see that here in
02:19this map. Now it's pretty obvious there's quite a stark picture here you can see the difference between
02:25east to west. Western areas, eastern areas here are much drier than average still and east western areas
02:34are starting to become wetter than average. It's particularly parts of South Wales, Cornwall, North Wales as well as
02:42northwest England. Some areas of Northern Ireland and some far western areas of Scotland too. But particularly
02:49parts of northwest England that's where we've seen some very exceptional rainfall recently. Just the weekend gone we saw over
02:56three or 360 millimetres of rain accumulating in two days in Honister Pass in Cumbria. Now that's not far off the record for a two day rolling rainfall accumulation
03:06that we saw in 2009 in Storm Desmond. That was in Cumbria as well. So it's some pretty exceptional rainfall totals across parts of Cumbria. But it's across South Wales where we've seen repeating flooding issues.
03:18We've had a number of amber warnings over the past couple of months across parts of South Wales. And that's where we have already seen the December rainfall amount across parts of South Wales as well as Cumbria. But we've already seen the annual rainfall amount as well. Let's look in more detail here.
03:34Let's look in more detail for South Wales, southwest England for how the rainfall has accumulated this year compared to average. It's a similar trend compared to the UK that when we reached the end of summer we reached our sort of driest period. Now we haven't been as dry across western areas compared to eastern areas but we've still been drier than average for much of this year. But the rainfall we've seen since September has really made
04:04a big headway into bringing rainfall accumulations much closer to average. And in fact, just in the past few days we've gone above the average annual rainfall for this region. And that's because we've had a few events happen. As I said, Storm Claudia brought some intense flooding to Monmouth in particular.
04:22But we've also had Storm Bram as well bringing that flooding as well to a similar area. And the rainfall has really built up as we've seen our weather fronts moving in from the south and west. The rainfall totals have really built up across southwestern areas. So it's not just South Wales, it's parts of Devon and Cornwall that are also seeing some continuous flooding risks and issues as well. And actually, over the past three and a half months, since September until mid-December,
04:52we've seen the rainfall fall for this area fall. Now, of course, we're in the wettest period of the month. Autumn is always the wettest as well as winter. But we'd usually expect to see around 60% of the annual rainfall fall over autumn and winter. And we've seen 50% in just three and a half months. So we are ahead of the usual rate. And I think it's the amount of rainfall that we've seen in a short period of time that's led to those impacts that continued risk of flooding as well.
05:20And we're starting to see rivers react to groundwater react as well. And there have been a number of issues with drought and hose pipe bands across the UK over since the summer. And this is the latest UK hydrological outlook. This was from the beginning of December. Now, it says that anywhere west of this line has river flows and groundwater levels across the UK at normal levels or just above normal for the rest of December and into winter.
05:50And across the eastern side of this line, so parts of eastern England as well as much of northern Scotland, groundwater levels are still below their average amount and are likely to continue with that trend through the rest of the winter months.
06:04So that's why there's some big differences across the UK and as to water supply and why some areas still see some water restrictions.
06:12But it's definitely clear that across the west that there's continued risk of flooding. Water levels are recovering and we will continue to see further rainfall this week.
06:23And there are a number of warnings enforced for many western and southern parts of England. Let's have a closer look now at the weather for the rest of this week.
06:32So I'm going to start by showing you the bigger picture. Now, if you've watched any of our deep dives lately or 10 day trends, you'll know that we've been blaming everything on the jet stream.
06:40And it's the jet stream yet to blame for the consistently wet weather we're going to see through the rest of this week.
06:46You can see it's still really active as it moves across the Atlantic, pushing through low pressure systems, developing them, creating a breeding ground for these low pressure systems and sweeping weather fronts through.
06:57Now, I'll turn the jet stream off just so it's not too distracting so we can just see what the pressure system is going to be doing for the rest of this week.
07:03So throughout Wednesday, we'll see a weather front move through the UK. But just before it actually clears the east of the UK, we start to see a wave developing on it.
07:13You can see the weather front here kinking back up, that warm front developing there. That's because it's reversing direction.
07:19So the warm air is starting to rise there. It's just slowing down a little bit. There we go. Sped up again.
07:26And then that might take a little while to clear. There are some uncertainties on that. And there's also an occlusion here.
07:35Sometimes they don't bring many impacts, but we are expecting that occlusion to potentially bring some quite disruptive rain.
07:42But we'll eventually clear through at the end of Thursday. Then Friday, we've got low pressure nearby.
07:47It's still relatively unsettled, but definitely drier than Wednesday and Thursday. A lot of rain to come.
07:53And there are warnings in force. And then we've still got a fairly mobile jet stream into this weekend.
07:59A low pressure system then brings in the next weather front. This time, it brings quite a narrow band of intense rainfall that's moving in from the west once again.
08:10So it's going to be similar areas that have seen the rain over the past few months that will continue to see rain through the rest of this week and the weekend.
08:18As I said, there is a change on the way as we move into Christmas week, but we'll talk about that more in a minute.
08:23For now, let's put a few more details on the weather for the rest of this week.
08:29So I'm going to get the weather fronts on as well because they show the features quite nicely.
08:34So we've got that broad area of low pressure out to the north and west of the UK on Wednesday.
08:39That sweeps through these weather fronts. This is before that wave develops.
08:43Now, it's particularly across many southern and western areas of the UK where we'll see the most intense rainfall on Wednesday.
08:50And actually, once this cold front pushes through, we could see some what's called line convection, an intense band of very strong winds and a heavy downpour move through.
09:01So that could bring some fairly high totals. There's a bit of respite.
09:05It's a pretty short-lived affair through the early hours of Thursday before that wave pushes up to the across central areas of of England and across Wales.
09:16Again, it's South Wales once again seeing some of the heaviest rain.
09:20As I said, there is some uncertainty with how this wave works and plays out.
09:25So it's to do with how much of a feature it becomes. If it's a fairly flat feature, there's just a small kink, then basically the rain will continue to stream up from the south.
09:37Pretty similar in a way to what we saw on the weekend where you see the rain continually affecting the same area, which would bring probably some more intense downpours to parts of South Wales, depending on the exact position.
09:50But if we see this area of this wave become more of a defined feature, that could pivot the rain a little bit more consistently round, bringing pulses of rain.
10:01So we won't see as much persistent rain in one area falling.
10:06So that could bring slightly lower impacts.
10:08That's one we're watching. And we do have some really sensitive areas, particularly parts of Cornwall, South Wales.
10:14People are really starting to travel around for Christmas as well.
10:16So we're going to see probably further disruption through the rest of this week.
10:20There are warnings enforced for Wednesday and Thursday as well.
10:24That's not the only thing going on on Thursday, as if that wasn't enough.
10:28We've also got this occlusion. It's a completely separate feature, actually, that pushes in from the Atlantic.
10:33And we could also see some line convection developing on this feature.
10:37It moves into Northern Ireland and Scotland at first, being quite a nasty feature that does, could bring some heavy downpours once again to South Wales,
10:45South West England, and then it becomes a weaker feature as it pushes into the east.
10:50Then we're into showers for Friday across northern areas.
10:54Quite strong winds, actually.
10:55We could see gusts of 40 miles per hour across northwestern areas in those showers.
11:00A few showers across parts of the southwest, but nothing compared to the rain we're expecting through Wednesday and Thursday.
11:07Pretty dry day across eastern areas.
11:09And then Saturday, that's that next weather front.
11:13It comes through on Saturday.
11:15It's a pretty repetitive story, but it's an important one because, as I said, lots of people are travelling around and we are seeing some impacts from all this rain.
11:23So this weather front pushes through.
11:24It is a really narrow band, but again, it could bring an intense period of heavy rain.
11:28Now, we'll just put a few more details onto the rainfall for you just to see how those rainfall accumulations start to build up throughout the week.
11:40So Wednesday, the broad area of low pressure, you can see parts of western areas.
11:46It's southwest Scotland, northwest England, north Wales, south Wales, parts of Devon and Cornwall, particularly Dartmoor is being highlighted as well.
11:54We're seeing rainfall totals around 40 to 60 millimetres.
12:00And then on Thursday, that waving front just tops things up.
12:03This is how the rain's accumulating day on day.
12:05So you can see where it's going to be building up.
12:07And once again, it's very similar areas.
12:10We're starting to see 100 millimetres in excess of 100 millimetres by Thursday.
12:14Friday's a dry day, so there's very little change.
12:17Then Saturday just could be the final nail in the coffin for all that rain.
12:22So a lot of people are going to be on the roads on Saturday.
12:25So we are keeping keen interest on how the rain is doing.
12:28And I think it's just worth being aware that there is going to be delays to trains in particular, as well as a lot of water on the roads.
12:36There's some quite dangerous driving conditions.
12:38So if you're not travelling, make sure you make sure anyone you know who's travelling is aware.
12:43So, yes, more rain to come this week.
12:46As I said at the beginning, though, there is a little light at the end of this tunnel that could come just in time for Christmas.
12:54We are hoping here we've had a fairly consistent trend, consistent signs for the pattern to finally shift.
13:04For low pressure to be a thing of the past and high pressure to move in for the rest of December, most likely, actually, starting this weekend.
13:20Now, it's still a couple of days away.
13:21There's still a few differences on exactly where that high pressure could sit.
13:26And that does have knock-on effects to what the weather will bring, particularly over the Christmas period.
13:33But it does mean with high pressure moving in that we'll put a cap on any of that rainfall.
13:39It will keep the jet stream at bay.
13:42And it does mean that we will see some dry weather.
13:44Now, before I show you the most likely setups, I'm just going to show you kind of why that is starting to move it.
13:52Now, as I said, we are seeing at the moment a very mobile jet stream.
13:56That's because we've been driving a really strong temperature contrast between on the eastern side of the Atlantic, on the western side of the Atlantic.
14:05We've got a sharp contrast in temperatures.
14:09So I'll just put the air mass temperatures on here.
14:12You can see where we have this strong contrast of cold to warm.
14:15That's where you get the intense jet stream.
14:19And as we know, we've had some really, you may know, you may have heard, there's been some quite exceptional snowfall across parts of New York just this week.
14:26So it's still cold there, but that is set to change.
14:28I'll just turn the jet stream off.
14:30Now, through the rest of this week, there we go, from Friday onwards, we get this low pressure system moving up.
14:39And that starts to drag the warm air just slightly further north.
14:45You can see that warm air by the weekend starting to build up just further north across the Atlantic.
14:52And as if I could go on with this time, which I can't, you can see that warm air continuing to build up.
14:58And what that will do is start to build the higher pressure over parts of Europe and just generally across parts of Scandinavia as well by the time we get to the weekend.
15:14And that is going to block systems moving in from the west.
15:18And we're going to be starting to be influenced more by that high pressure rather than the low pressure.
15:24So there's a few different scenarios of what high pressure will be most dominant in our forecast.
15:32So we can just got to find this, which one we're going to look at.
15:39There we go.
15:39We turn that one on.
15:41That's what we're looking for.
15:42So this is for this week.
15:46So let's have a look for next week.
15:49There's Christmas Eve.
15:51Let's find Christmas Day or we missed it.
15:55There we go.
15:56So these are the three most likely scenarios for Christmas Day.
16:02The most likely scenario actually is 49% chance.
16:07So it's pretty high confidence that we're going to see this change from low pressure to high pressure.
16:11And 49% chance at over a week away is pretty high confidence compared to usual as well.
16:18But the slight differences between these will bring some subtle differences to the weather.
16:23So this one shows high pressure just centred pretty much across the UK, just slightly over the Irish Sea, the north and the north of the UK.
16:34That will bring in sort of northerly winds, really, and high pressure dominating.
16:38So that's going to really reduce any precipitation across the UK at all.
16:43Or the most likely, or the second most likely, is for high pressure to be more centred over Denmark, more over Scandinavian high.
16:51And that would bring in more easterly winds.
16:54And some more western areas would be closer to the area of low pressure or potentially some showery weather.
17:00These are only 12% notice as well.
17:02But I think we're looking at these to get a general idea of what the setup is going to be.
17:07The third one, though, is a high over northern France.
17:12So that would give us more of a southwesterly wind, a slightly milder direction.
17:16So all of these show high pressure dominating the weather and most slightly colder than average, but nothing exceptionally cold.
17:25So there is a very low chance of any widespread white Christmas at all at this time in any of these outcomes.
17:33And even if we do see an easterly or a northerly wind, what we can expect is a general downtrend in temperatures.
17:40That was the decider output.
17:44We can also have a look at the ECMWF ensemble output.
17:53So that's when we run the models multiple times and we look at the various outputs that we are expecting.
17:59And the spread in the different outputs gives you an idea of confidence or the idea of potential solutions.
18:08So this is for the pressure over the next two weeks.
18:14So this take over the next 10 days.
18:16Sorry, this takes us up to Christmas.
18:18And you can see if I move around the map, all of those lines are pointing upwards, pretty much all of them.
18:29So actually, if we look further north, so that's northern Scotland, the pressure, the scale shows higher pressure, a higher number on the scale.
18:41And all the lines are pointing upwards as you go further south, particularly more southwestern areas, at least into the start of next week.
18:51There are some that still have lower pressure actually dominating.
18:55So I think confidence is higher for more northern areas that we're going to see higher pressure dominating into the Christmas week.
19:04And across the east as well.
19:06It's a similar story to the west.
19:08A lot of the lines are trending upwards.
19:09As I said, it is quite high confidence we will see higher pressure dominating as well.
19:14So what does that mean for the weather?
19:16Well, as I said, high pressure means less rainfall as well, as the winds can also be lighter, which can lead to colder nights, a risk of frost and also a risk of fog as well.
19:31How cold will it be?
19:33And we can use these ECMWF lines to look at the temperature as well.
19:37As I said, if we get in that easterly wind, we're not going to be tapping into really cold air.
19:42There's not really any particularly cold air anywhere around us.
19:44So we're not going to see a sudden cold blast even any of those directions.
19:49But we're moving away from a southwesterly most likely, which is a very mild direction.
19:54That's why we've seen such mild weather at the moment.
19:58And we are going to, whatever the outcome, we will see temperatures most likely go on to a downward trend.
20:06And you can see that here.
20:07I'll move the dot around the map as well.
20:10It's a little bit messy.
20:11The lines go up and down because it's warmer in the day than colder in the night.
20:14So that's why we're seeing that diurnal range.
20:16That's why they're going up and down.
20:19And all of them are generally on the downward trend.
20:23Some of them going quite cold, actually.
20:25But a lot of them just staying in those sort of low single figures all the way through until Christmas.
20:34It's worth noting tonight, actually, there's a real dip on there.
20:38We're going to see a really cold night quite widely, particularly this evening.
20:43So we are expecting it to turn much colder across, turn colder than it is at the moment by the time we get to Christmas.
20:55And we will see a change from the very unsettled weather we've got at the moment to much drier and colder as well as more settled weather through that Christmas period.
21:09So there is some rain to come this week.
21:11As I said, we do have warnings in force through the rest of this week.
21:14Please check out our website and app if you want any more details on them.
21:19So it's a continued risk of flooding.
21:21Lots of rain still to come when everyone's travelling around.
21:24But hopefully this is some good news that there will be some dry weather in time for the Christmas period.
21:28A lot of people have it off.
21:29And I'm sure you are hoping to have some outdoor plans to meet up and enjoy the festivities.
21:36That's all I have time for today.
21:38As I said, if you've got any questions, make sure you leave a comment.
21:41And we will try and answer them in the Weather Studio Live this Friday.
21:45But thank you so much for joining me.
21:47Please share this video with anyone else you might think would be interested.
21:50Otherwise, I will see you next time.
21:51Bye bye.
21:52Bye bye.
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