The warm sunshine will last in the west, feeling very warm midweek for Northern Ireland and western Scotland. Low 20sC for the weekend but flow off the North Sea complicates things further east.
August and the summer holidays are coming to an end. Schools in Scotland are already back and elsewhere there is a flurry of uniform and school shoe buying. Yet there is still the late August Bank Holiday to come. You might have hopes of fine weather with warm sunshine for a few days off. High pressure will bring a good deal of steady weather to the UK but there is not a heatwave for the weekend.
This does look rather dramatic but SE England's average August max. temperatures are around 21/22C and western Scotland, around 17C.
There is a settled week coming up with little rain. If you are holidaying in western Scotland or Northern Ireland, that was a good choice this week. Other parts of western Britain will see warm sunshine, but the east coast of England looks fresher, sometimes cloudy.
The main warmth will be for NW UK . Very warm for Northern Ireland, central & western Scotland and NW England mid-week. NW UK might reach 27C and certainly passes over their regional heatwave threshold of 25C on Tuesday/Wednesday maybe even Thursday. A cold front brings more cloud off the North Sea Wednesday night into Thursday and fresher conditions follow. The strong August sunshine will still appear for western parts into the weekend.
The summer months statistics will be out next week. There has been some warmth and even heat this summer but also a lot of rain, particularly for southern England. There were heatwave warnings in July as temperatures climbed to around 30C for Northern Ireland and southwestern Britain. County Tyrone saw the highest ever temperature recorded for Northern Ireland in that heatwave at 31.3C on the 21st July. But August has been more middle of the road, and we won’t see that high. August has often been mild at night but temperatures by day lurked around average.
Wet in the south, as it was in June 2021 for SE England, but very warm for Northern Ireland and parts for Scotland compared to average
Back in July, the air temperatures were well above the Met Office thresholds, but it was also warm overnight. That added to the heat stress for people, with particular concerns for the elderly and those with underlying health conditions. Now there isn’t as much daylight so there is longer for night-time cooling and the source of the air this weekend isn’t from north Africa.
What we will see is higher than average temperatures for Northern Ireland, western & central Scotland and NW England possibly Gwynedd too. Mid 20sC and up to 27 maybe 28C for western Scotland, Glasgow will feel very warm. These values do pass the Met Office heatwave thresholds we’ll have to see about Thursday for the 3 consecutive days. However, the night-time temperatures do dip away to the mid-teens.
Western areas fair well because of the high pressure parked over the UK. There will be enough flow east to west that the air will dry out over the Scottish mountains and Pennines. It warms further and thanks to the clear skies, there will be plenty of sunshine for NW UK. Further east, the breeze of the North Sea will bring down the temperatures at the coast. A cold front Wednesday night into Thursday will bring cloud, east coast dampness and then fresher air to more of Britain. Into the weekend a northerly flow keeps reappearing and adds tricky low cloud into the forecast for the north and east of Britain, maybe a scattering of showers for the SE on Saturday. This cloud and the low over Europe might be more significant for eastern England by Bank Holiday Monday.
In amongst this, there will be a lot of fine, dry weather with sunny spells and temperatures still in the 20sC. It’s not hot but the sunshine is still strong at this time of year where it appears. So, for Scarborough, Great Yarmouth and Margate at times it will feel fresh in the breeze as the cloud cover comes and goes. For Glasgow, Weston Super Mare, Porthmadog, Blackpool, Mull and inland Northern Ireland there will be plenty of warm sunshine coming up. So no sign of a heatwave bank holiday weekend for Wales and England but a very warm week coming up for Northern Ireland and western Scotland.
