Britain is an island... RIght, got that out of the way. This week we will see high pressure become a dominant factor in the weather as it resides across the British Isles and doesn't really move very far. You would have thought that weather forecasters would rejoice. After all, this must mean our job becomes nice and easy and we can confidently say that everywhere will see blue skies and sunshine with light winds and get to watch all the World Cup matches right?
The trouble is, that if we were a continental region then that would probably be the case, but as an island we also have plenty of moisture around the shores in the form of the North Sea, Irish Sea, English Channel as well as the Atlantic which all bring a few more physics equations into the forecasting melting pot.
To understand what's happening you need to understand the physics behind mechanisms such as condensation and energy transfer. Today we have high pressure across the UK, there is an inversion at around 1,000ft which is capping the warmth near the surface. As this warmer air gets trapped near the surface it moves around thanks to the sea breeze effect and across parts of the East coast it comes into contact with a cooler North Sea. The result of warm air and cool surfaces is exactly the same physics process as the one which steams up your mirror in the bathroom in the morning.
As a result, it's likely we will see low cloud and fog developing in the North Sea off the Northeast coast of England later this evening then drift slightly inland before being burnt off early tomorrow morning but this could be rather dense for a time across parts of East Yorkshire and East Lincolnshire as well as parts of North Norfolk.
So, high pressure means less work for meteorologists right? Wrong.
METEOROLOGIST : STILLBUSYWORKING
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