Much of Europe braced for a heatwave

There’s no doubt that summer in the UK this year has been very disappointing. After the wettest June on record, July was pretty much a washout and, whilst August so far has been relatively better, it’s unlikely to win a medal.

As I’ve mentioned throughout the summer, the cause of the unsettled weather has been the position of the jet stream.

This summer the jet stream has spent most of the time sitting to the south of us, which has meant that a conveyor belt of low pressure systems have arrived on our shores.

Heavy rain, strong winds and flooding have dominated the headlines since April, and we have gone from the midst of a widespread drought to suddenly being overwhelmed with the amount of rain falling from the sky.

Jet stream distributing heat

As well as determining where rain-bearing weather systems go, the jet stream also controls the distribution of heat around our planet.

This works in a fairly logical way. The key thing to remember is that the poles are cold and the equator is very warm. So when the jet stream dives southwards, it brings a scoop of colder polar air with it and when it heads northwards it brings a scoop of hotter sub-tropical air.

Given that for much of this summer the jet stream has been diving southwards around the UK, this explains why it has been cooler than average as well as being very wet.

European heatwave

During the next few days, the jet stream is set to head northwards over much of Europe. What this will do is scoop up a huge plume of hot air from northern Africa and push it over most of the continent.

This will bring an extensive heatwave across Europe from this weekend onwards. Daytime temperatures in many areas south of Scandinavia will reach 30-35C, with parts of the Mediterranean approaching 40C, locally more. Nighttime temperatures will struggle to dip much below 18C.

Darker orange colours covering much of Europe on Sunday suggesting temperatures of 30-40C

With high pressure also in place, this heat could well last for much of next week, resulting in heat stress – particularly for the young and elderly. There will no doubt be an increased demand on power supplies as people turn on fans and air conditioning to keep cool.

Will the UK get hotter?

At the moment, it looks like it’ll be a case of so near yet so far. The hot air does give a glancing blow to central and eastern parts of England this weekend where temperatures could reach 30C.

However, the hot air gets swept away by a cold front on Sunday, with temperatures coming back down to a more comfortable 20-25C.

Don’t forget you can get the latest five day forecast on the Channel 4 Weather website or you can chat to me about the weather on Twitter – @liamdutton