Settling down for the start of September?

The weather during the past few weeks has been pretty mixed across the UK. Whilst there’s been some wet and breezy weather at times, we’ve also had the hottest day of 2012 so far – reaching 32.4C at Cavendish, Suffolk on Saturday 18 August.

At the end of July, I wrote in a blog that I thought August would be a changeable month, although not as bad as we experienced in July.

This was because I expected the jet stream to wriggle around more, rather than get stuck to the south of the UK. As a result of this, whilst I anticipated further rain at times, I felt that there would be a better chance of warmer, sunnier spells in between – exactly what came to fruition.

Now that the end of August is approaching, I thought I’d take a look ahead to see what September holds. Whilst September is a month during which we see the transition to autumn, there’s still the potential to have weather more akin to summer.

First week of September

The last few days of August look unsettled, with low pressure bringing brisk winds and further showers or longer spells of rain at times. However, towards the end of the week, there are signs of high pressure building across the UK.

The reason for this is that the jet stream is heading northwards to sit to the northwest of us. This means that low pressure systems will generally be steered towards Orkney, Shetland and Scandinavia.

So, for the first week of September, the weather for most places will be settled with a fair amount of dry weather. Cloud amounts will tend to vary, but some sunshine is expected, with temperatures in the range of 19-26C.

As always, there will be a few exceptions. Weather fronts may temporarily move into Scotland and Northern Ireland bringing some occasional wet and windy weather, but even here, there’ll be some sunshine.

Rest of September

During the second week of September there are hints that the jet stream will move southwards again with a return to more unsettled weather.

However, as with August, I don’t think that the jet stream will get stuck in the same place. It’s likely to wriggle around leaving us with some wind and rain, but also drier and bright spells sandwiched in between.

As always, I’ll keep you up to date on the latest developments here on my blog or you can follow me on Twitter for frequent weather updates – @liamdutton