Heat Continues Retreat SouthAdded : Saturday at 15:10 If you take a look at the latest 850mb temperatures across Western Europe :-
You can see the heat parked to the South of the UK. In fact, the real heat is now across Northern Africa where it should be at this time of the year.
The weather patterns show the flattening of that ridge in the North Atlantic which is allowing low pressure systems to rattle in from the Atlantic bringing the UK a warm day followed by cooler, fresher conditions as the low pressure systems pass through.
Back to the question and it's worth remembering that we are now heading into the second half of August. This is where the sun loses its power quite quickly at our latitudes and as a result for us to obtain temperatures into the low to mid 30s would require a significant amount of advection of warmer air from Southern climes.
During mid July, if you put a stagnant airmass over the UK and no cloud cover then you can expect temperatures into the low 30s, but by the middle of August and the same scenario would produce perhaps 27c at a push. Give it another couple of weeks and 24 or 25c would be the expected maxima.
That said, we can still draw in warm air from the South at this time of the year and September in recent years has proven that the warm weather can always make a comeback.
By the end of next week and the jet it starting to look a little more zonal :-
Which would keep temperatures around average for this time of the year.
So, will the heat return? It's possible that we could see some more bursts of warm air from the South or Southwest over the next few weeks, but the sustained heat we saw during July would require something a little more special than just high pressure to the Southwest of the UK at this time of the year.
Also, meteorological Autumn starts in just under three weeks. Just saying...
METEOROLOGIST : MARSH |