Weather news and views from Brian Gaze.
The weather is mixed at the moment but it will turn more settled in the coming days. Temperatures are also set to rise and for a time it is likely to be very warm, particularly in the southern half of the UK.
The forecast chart below is from today's GFS 06z model. It shows surface pressure and 850hPa temperatures on Thursday 28th May. high pressure is centred just to the northeast of the UK. That leaves us under a warmish southerly flow, although the real heat is still a long way to the south. In much of northern Europe it's quite a cool picture with winds coming from a northerly direction.
There is uncertainty about the exact positioning of the high pressure area. Nonetheless, it looks set to have a major influence on the UK's weather during the rest of this month.
The GFS 06z 10 day temperature anomaly chart below illustrates things quite well. Blue shading indicates cooler than average temperatures over much of Europe. The warmer than average conditions are restricted to the far north and parts of the west.
Over the 10 day period the UK is forecast to be a little warmer than average. The GFS tends to underestimate temperatures so I wouldn't be surprised if the anomaly comes out a little higher. Nonetheless, the pattern for the UK suggests warmth rather than heat at this stage.
Another consideration is rainfall, or rather the lack of it. Lawns are already turning yellow in much of the country due to weeks of dry weather. Growers and farmers have sprinklers working overtime! Are things set to change?
With high pressure in charge there is likely to a lot more dry weather around. Its positioning suggests the wettest conditions will be in the north west. The GFS 06z chart below shows forecast rainfall in mm for the next 10 days. One point to note is areas of low pressure could potentially begin approaching from the south or southwest if the high pressure becomes centred farther northeast.
Some of the computer models are pointing towards wetter and more changeable conditions in early June, perhaps the start of the European Monsoon season? It is something to keep an eye on but at the moment the focus is on dry conditions away from the north west for much of the next week or two.
High pressure is excepted to bring a lot of dry weather for the rest of May. Through the first half of next week it is likely to become very warm. Later on temperatures may drop back a little as high pressure centres to the northeast of the UK. Nonetheless, it is expected to remain on the warm side of average. By early June it could begin to turn more changeable but forecast confidence in that is currently low.
PS: Icon global charts should be available in the next few days on TWO. Once updating they will appear on the Model Inventory below the ICON EU (DWD) link. Icon Global datasets use a different grid system to most of the other models so integrating them has been a little challenging. On top of that they're running on TWO's brand new Ubuntu server unlike the other the models which run on the two Windows 2016 servers.
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