Arctic plunge set to send us an August chill

It’s not an easy task being a weatherman when summer fails to deliver an acceptable amount of sunshine and warmth to our shores.

June was duller and wetter than normal, with some parts of England, Wales and eastern Scotland having double their average rainfall.

July was drier than normal in the places that had a soaking June, but temperatures have been nothing special, with any notable heat lasting no more than a few days.

August began on a wet note, with many southern parts of England and Wales having more rain in a day than they saw through the whole of dry July.

You get the picture… Summer this year hasn’t been great, which means that news of a plunge of Arctic air across the UK and much of Europe next week will not be welcome.

Arctic plunge

Whilst temperatures will pick up a little this weekend – especially across England and Wales – next week will see them fall significantly towards Wednesday and Thursday.

Once again, our weather friend and foe, the jet stream, is wiggling around quite a bit during the next week.

Having moved from west to east during the first few days of August, the jet stream will meander quite far north towards Iceland, before diving southwards over the UK in the middle of next week.

This will open the gates to a plunge of chilly Arctic air diving southwards across not only us, but also much of Europe.

It will effectively shunt any summer heat to the far south of Iberia, the Greek islands and Turkey.

August chill next week

Daytime temperatures across much of Europe – including the UK – will be 5-10C below average, with some spots 15C below normal.

Next Thursday will see daytime temperatures reaching just 12-17C across England and Wales, with 9-14C across Scotland and Northern Ireland.

At night, temperatures will widely fall into single figures, with a good chance of seeing a touch of frost in rural areas in the north of the UK.

What about the rest of August?

The cool weather will last a few days, before temperatures start to pick up to closer to normal during the weekend after next.

However, looking further ahead towards the rest of August, the changeable weather looks set to continue, with little prospect of any prolonged spells of sunshine or notable warmth.

Some newspapers still seem to be going on about a heatwave, but they’ve been saying that all summer and nothing has happened so far. Read into that what you will…

Don’t forget, you can get the latest forecast on the Channel 4 Weather website. I’ll also be posting regular updates on Twitter – @liamdutton