Continuing to look at the forecast for Easter weekend.
Previously, we had a look at Easters past, why the date of Easter Sunday moves about so much and so can produce very different weathers. Here's today's update
Kinda cool, in the cold sense
So how is the forecast for Good Friday through to Easter Monday shaping up?
The GFS has a high pressure bringing some settled weather over Good Friday and Saturday, with a milder flow from the south developing. Temperatures do seem to rise by Bank holiday Monday with high teens showing on the charts. That would feel nice and be a good end to the long weekend, so there is still hope. This relies on the Low pressure being well away from the UK and the high building enough to keep the briks northerly flow between the two pressure centres, away from the UK. Other models don't move so fast.
However, the ECMWF has a much more mobile set up for Good Friday with blustery winds and unsettled weather moving in from the Atlantic, much like the rest of this week. Saturday looks rubbish with wind, rain and a cold northerly flow. Beyond that it’s whether the low pressure bringing the unsettled weather shifts away eastwards and the high pressure out to the west can move in and dislodge the cool north flow. So this model has a much cooler output.
I had a quick look at our new GEFS ensembles v Climate average maps, found in Netweather Extra. It uses an American model output The Global Ensemble Forecast System (GEFS). This is a weather forecast model made up of 21 separate forecasts, or ‘ensemble members’. By varying one parameter slightly and re-running the model, it changes the outputs but they are then all grouped together in an ensemble and looked at, for themes or clusters. Climatologically, the SE of England might expect to be around 13 C at the start of April, This output shows what the GEFS thinks will happened over a 2 or 3 day period. Good Friday and Saturday fall on 3rd and 4th April and Easter Sunday and Monday fall 5th and 6th.
And it looks colder than average around Good Friday, more mid blues over the UK and then slightly cooler than average for Easter Sunday for SE Britain and around average for most. Nothing special or record breaking.
It is a forecast for a bank holiday weekend and they often are tricky over the UK.
