All eyes are looking up at the skies and wondering what is going to happen to the weather this bank holiday weekend. After days of grey skies, downpours and cool winds, there is concern that this will be yet another August bank holiday washout. It is a fairly complicated weather picture, though, and best summed up in the familiar phrase this summer — changeable conditions, meaning a mixture of sunshine and blustery showers for many places. Yet there is some good news because high pressure is gradually building up next week, bringing plenty of dry sunny weather, although chilly at night. But the outlook for most of September looks like another mixed bag of weather.
It comes as little surprise that August has been far wetter than average. Even though it is one of our wetter months, it is going to end up significantly more so than normal as a result of torrential downpours and persistent rainfall. Among that gloom, though, there were some very warm days, and temperatures have been surprisingly resilient, close to average so far in central England. August may end up as the warmest month of the year.
Much of the blame for this summer’s wild fluctuations in the weather has been pinned on the jet stream, the ribbon of high-altitude wind that stirs up and steers depressions across the Atlantic. For much of the summer it has been driving depressions across the UK, bringing bouts of wind and rain. However, as the track of the jet stream has wobbled around it has given some respite, with sunny spells over much of the country.
Yet the jet stream is simply the battlefront between cold air from the north clashing with warm air from the south.
What sets the pattern of where these two giant air masses meet depends on global weather and ocean patterns, such as the North Atlantic, Arctic and even Pacific. This makes any attempt to give long-range predictions of the summer especially difficult.
Advertisement