From a late August chill to early September warmth
Yesterday, provisional figures released by the Met Office confirmed what we had all been thinking already. Summer 2012 has been wet – very wet.
Rainfall from 1 June until 29 August showed that this summer has been the wettest in 100 years and the second wettest in the UK since records began in 1910.
As if that wasn’t enough, before the ink even got a chance to dry on the pages of the record books, last night provided some more records to add to the archive.
Late August chill
Last night was unseasonably cold for August, with some places having their coldest August night ever recorded. Amongst those places setting new records were;
Braemar, Aberdeenshire: -2.4C
Aviemore, Highlands: -1.8C
Redesdale Camp, Northumberland: -0.7C
Bainbridge, North Yorkshire: 0.5C
Benson, Oxfordshire: 2.1C
Bradford, West Yorkshire: 2.8C
Even in central London the temperature fell to 8C, with the suburbs a couple of degrees lower than this.
The reason for this chilly night was some cold, dry air that was dragged across the UK from relatively far north. This combined with clear skies and light winds gave the perfect recipe for a late August chill.
However, it wasn’t cold enough to break the all-time record low temperature for the UK in August, which is -4.5C seen at Lagganlia, Invernessshire on 21 August 1973.
Early September warmth
After the late August chill, there’ll be a steady rise in temperature into the early part of next week. The reason for this is a south westerly wind bringing warmer air from the Atlantic Ocean.
Whilst the general trend into next week will be for high pressure to build, there will be a notable area of low pressure arriving to the north west of the UK on Monday which will contain the remnants of Hurricane Kirk.
Now before you get excited and think that I’m about to have my own Michael Fish moment, I can safely say that there is nothing to worry about.
It’s impossible for us to have a hurricane here because they need a sea temperature of around 26C to keep them alive. If you’ve dipped your toes in the sea, you don’t need me to tell you that the water around the UK is nowhere near that warm!
The low pressure on Monday will bring a spell of rain across north western parts of the UK with strong winds – especially across Scotland. However once this moves through, high pressure will dominate for the rest of the week with a fair amount of dry and fine weather for most places.
Temperatures next week will range from 15-21C for Scotland and Northern Ireland, with England and Wales around 18-24C.
Don’t forget, you can get the latest five day forecast on the Channel 4 Weather website. I also tweet regular updates on Twitter – @liamdutton