A taste of summer this week!

After a burst of warmth last week, temperatures fell closer to average at the weekend, with a little rain in places, but more notably a brisk and gusty wind.

However, as I mentioned on Twitter at the end of last week, the warmth is set to return for some of us in the coming days.

In fact, southern parts of the UK will experience levels of warmth that wouldn’t look out of place on a summer’s day, let alone spring.

Warm air from Spain

The cause of the forthcoming summer-like warmth across England and Wales during Tuesday and Wednesday is a feed of warm air from Spain.

At the moment, high pressure is sitting just to the east of the UK, with winds around it blowing in a clockwise direction.

This not only pushes the warm air towards us from Spain, but also keeps the weather settled and suppresses cloud formation – allowing the sunshine to shine.

Temperatures across southern and eastern parts of England and Wales will widely reach 18-23C on Tuesday and Wednesday, with south east England hitting 24C and 25C on each respective day.

This would make it the warmest day of the year so far, beating the 21.9C recorded in central London last Friday.

Warmth not for everyone

For the rest of the UK – north western parts of England and Wales, along with Scotland and Northern Ireland – temperatures are not going to be anywhere near as high.

This is because the warm air doesn’t reach these areas, along with the fact that cloud, rain and mist will be prevalent.

As a result, temperatures will generally sit in the range of 10-15C, which is much closer to where they should be at this time of year.

High pressure set to linger

Even though the warmth will fade by Thursday and Friday, high pressure is still set to be the driving force of our weather for the next week.

This means that apart from a few weather fronts brushing by, generally giving no more than a little rain, for much of the time it’ll be dry.

At the moment, another burst of summer-like warmth looks unlikely into next week, with the wind often coming from a cooler north to north easterly direction.

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