This is an in-depth Met Office UK and international Weather forecast for the next week and beyond. How long will the spring sunshine last and how much rain will fall in Spain? Bringing you this deep dive is Met Office meteorologist Alex Deakin.
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NewsTranscript
00:00Spring sunshine by the bucket load. If you like blue skies it has been a
00:05bobby-dazzler of a day today. But how long will the sunshine last? How warm
00:10will it get? Where's the rain? Clue? It's in Spain and Portugal. And we'll have
00:16quite an international flavor to this week's Deep Dive because we're also
00:19going to be looking at the severe weather in the United States. Tornadoes
00:23yes, but plenty more besides as we will find out. Welcome along to the Met Office
00:29Deep Dive. My name's Alex Deakin. Thank you very much for being there. Please
00:33leave a comment. Most importantly give us a like and share the love. Let other
00:38MetHeads know that we are here. Every week we dive into some kind of
00:44meteorological majesty and take a really close look at various aspects of the
00:50weather in the UK. But also as we'll see particularly this week things going on
00:55around the world. Let us know in the comments if you like that. If you'd rather
00:58focus on the UK. If you like the international side of things. Let us know
01:02what you want to hear about. We will try and tailor our deep dives going forward
01:06to what you require. We do read, try and read all of the comments and try and
01:12respond to some of them as well. So do please leave a comment. Do please give us
01:16a like and do please share this amongst your friends and family and as I say
01:21fellow MetHeads. Lots and lots and lots to talk about as always. Let's start with
01:27the bigger picture. Here's the satellite image. It's kind of telling the story
01:31quite nicely. If we fast forward to the here and now. Well largely clear skies
01:37across the UK. Look at that. Yeah there's a little bit of Stratocume lingering
01:42across. Stratocumulus lingering across Shetland. It was a cloudy start for
01:46Northern Ireland. But even here it's brightening up for many places. It has
01:49been a sparkling day of sunshine. We'll talk about the UK weather in a moment
01:54because first of all I want to draw your attention further south. It has been a
01:57very wet spell over Iberia. I was fortunate enough to be there a couple of
02:01weeks ago. Got very wet and windy. And well there's more of that to come. We've
02:06seen this plume of cloud bringing further rain. And well out in the
02:11Atlantic. Just look at that. You can tell by that. That's not great
02:15weather. That big dip. That is an area of low pressure. And that is going to bring
02:20more wet and windy weather to Spain and Portugal over the next couple of days.
02:24And it's all to do with a dip in the jet stream. The jet stream is driving
02:28its way southwards and helping to develop that low pressure in here. And
02:32it's all slowly but surely heading its way towards Iberia. We're going to see
02:36more wet weather here over the next day or so. How much wet weather? Well let's
02:41take a closer look at what's going on and the rainfall accumulations. Let's
02:48zoom in a little bit on that. Let's put them on as blocks and we can really see
02:53we've got some heavy rain. This is the 24 hour rainfall accumulations. You can
02:57see some quite heavy pulse of rain across eastern parts of Spain and just
03:01to the north of Madrid. That's happening at the moment. But if we zoom out a
03:05little bit and focus in on Portugal and play through towards Wednesday. Look at
03:13these tower blocks building up. Heavy rain really building up on the coastline
03:18there. Pretty wet also across the Algarve. Those amounts in that 75 greater
03:25than 75 millimetres up to 100 millimetres of rainfall. That basically
03:29equates to the whole March average if not higher for this part of the world. So
03:34yeah months worth of rain likely to fall in a day or so. Not just wet but also
03:39very windy too. So that rain will then spread steadily. It won't be as heavy
03:44across Spain but further pulses of rain to come here particularly across parts
03:48of southern Spain as we go through Wednesday and into Thursday. So yes
03:52some very wet conditions for Spain and Portugal. Weather system has actually
03:56been named as Storm Martinho by the Portuguese Weather Service and you can
04:01see why because again as we just play through that. Let's take the jet stream
04:04off. Just see that weather system coming in. Look at the isobars really
04:08squidging together there. That's tonight. The strongest winds tonight and
04:12tomorrow on that Portuguese coastline. That is not going to be very pleasant.
04:19Don't want to be playing golf in it. Don't want to be out in it at all. Look at that
04:21with those strong winds really coming up from the southeast across Spain and
04:26Portugal tonight and tomorrow morning. So not just wet not just potentially a
04:31month's worth of rain falling in a day or so but also very gusty winds as we go
04:35through the course of tonight and into tomorrow. So yeah stays very windy
04:40throughout Wednesday and into Wednesday night. That low gradually then spills its
04:44way further north. Further circulation has developed because the jet stream is
04:49still in that area still helping to develop low-pressure systems. So yeah
04:53pretty wet week across Spain and Portugal and it has been a pretty wet
04:57month all in all as well. Eventually you'll notice as we run through the rest
05:03of this week that that low-pressure system is just starting to creep further
05:08north and creep towards the UK and that will mix things up for us as we head
05:12towards the weekend. But we'll have more on that in a moment. So yes very wet in
05:18Spain and Portugal but I said quite a big international flavor to this week's
05:23deep dive because now we're heading over to the United States. But not just me
05:28talking about this because earlier on I had a chat with Deputy Chief Meteorologist
05:33Dan Holley. He popped in to talk about what's been happening in the United
05:37States. Severe weather outbreak over the weekend when he was actually on shift. So
05:42earlier on I had a chat with Dan Holley. Dan thank you very much for joining us
05:47here. This is your first deep dive. It is it's nice to be here. Do you want to tell
05:50everyone what your role is here at the Met Office and where people may have
05:53seen you before? Yes so I'm a Deputy Chief Meteorologist here working in the
05:57expert weather hub and we look at UK and global weather. Hence we're here talking
06:01about global weather here. My previous job well I did a variety of things but
06:05one of my roles was as a weather presenter for BBC Look East. So some of
06:09our viewers may recognize me back in the day on TV in the East of England. Yeah
06:13it's great to have you back on camera as a first time on the deep dive. First of
06:17many hopefully. Now you were working over the weekend and we're here to talk about
06:22what happens stateside. Some pretty serious weather. Yeah it certainly was a
06:26busy weekend. If we start off by looking at the bigger picture then as to what
06:31was happening because we had a variety of hazards, a multi hazard event. We quite
06:34often use the term multi hazard in the UK but I think this takes it to a whole
06:38new level doesn't it? So essentially on Friday we had this area of low pressure
06:42tracking across the southern portions of the plains. This is for early Saturday so
06:47by this stage it's moved up towards the northern plains and this brought very
06:50strong winds with blowing dust, wildfires, power cuts, that sort of thing across the
06:56southern plains. It also brought a tornado outbreak later in the day on
06:58Friday further east and then if we run this animation through into Saturday
07:02itself you'll see this second low develops on the trailing cold front and
07:06this brought another spell of tornadoes across the southern states, the Gulf
07:10States here. So these bright colours that's a lot of heavy rain and within
07:13that band that's where we saw the worst of the tornadoes but but those strong
07:17winds that was the initial problem across further north. Yeah really tight
07:22pressure gradient on the southern flank. You can see the isobars really squeezing
07:25on the southern flank and you know some of the gusts of wind that we saw within
07:28that. Amarillo in the Texas panhandle so somewhere around here had a gust of 83
07:34miles an hour. Amarillo has a population roughly the same as Hull so gives you an
07:39idea. Oh a place I know well. I knew you'd like that stat. So yeah and then a little bit
07:44further south in Lubbock which is in West Texas they had a gust of 81 and I
07:47think that's its strongest gust there since 1976 so unusually strong winds.
07:52Yeah goodness. Obviously causing a lot of power cuts because of the strong winds as
07:56well. And other other hazards that we saw obviously this is this is an image
08:00that we've got from OK Weather Watch. What are we seeing here? What are we not
08:05seeing? Well exactly this this was taken actually by a friend of mine who lives
08:09in Oklahoma and he chases storms he you know he knows his stuff. Oh wow. He was
08:13chasing on Friday last week and obviously this dust storm developed
08:17because of those strong winds and you can see the visibility massively drops
08:21you cannot see very much ahead of you. You can't even see vehicles going the
08:24other way on the other side of the road. So understandably this led to a lot of
08:28accidents both in Texas and Kansas sadly led to some fatalities actually with
08:32multiple vehicles colliding in these conditions. And actually if we look at
08:35the satellite sequence you'll see this dust being picked up thanks to these
08:40very strong winds. So again let's orient it. So that's the where are we? Which
08:44states which? So we've got Oklahoma here. Right. That's Texas there. That's the top bit of
08:48Texas. That's right. Yeah okay. And then we've got Kansas, Nebraska, Colorado etc. We'll come
08:53on to what else is going on in the satellite sequence in a moment but just
08:56focusing further south you can see all this sort of dirty brown color here
09:00coming out across Texas up into Oklahoma. That's all that dust being picked up
09:04originating from say New Mexico over here but they're being transported a
09:08long way northwards. Hundreds if not thousands of miles across there. Yeah I did a very
09:13quick calculation on Friday evening actually looking at how much of this
09:16area was covered by dust at any one time and it was larger than the UK. Wow. Which
09:20is just mind-boggling that many parts of the US were covered by dust. Very
09:25poor air quality as you can imagine with all of this blowing around as well. So you
09:29can see that that's the low there. That's the second one that developed and it
09:32just picked up those winds. And what are these these little crosses on here that
09:36we're seeing? They're lightning flashes. They are indeed yes. You can see the
09:39thunderstorms erupting on what is effectively a dry line. The US is quite
09:43unique actually. It has a synoptic feature called a dry line which you
09:46don't tend to find in many parts of the world and that's essentially a boundary
09:49between very warm moist air from the Gulf and much drier air coming in from
09:54the desert southwest. So usually you can't really see very much. You know in
09:58the UK when we get a weather front you see a band of clouds and rain. In the US
10:02you have these boundaries but they're not that visible until you get these
10:05thunderstorms erupting along them and then suddenly you can see there's
10:08clearly a boundary in here that's working its way through. And that's called a dry line. Yes.
10:12And it's where the moist air hits the the drier the drier air. Yeah that's
10:18right yeah very common in the US because obviously it's very dry and hot over the
10:21desert southwest and much more humid. It's like a frontal boundary with the two air masses but it's
10:25got a specific name because it's because it's so well-defined. That's right. Yeah
10:28dry line not heard that before. Okay so we've got the dust, we've got the
10:32thunderstorms, what else what else did we see? Always ongoing I guess. It is indeed yeah.
10:38So you know we had some significant wildfires in Oklahoma. Some local
10:43meteorologists in the area have described this as the worst wildfire
10:46outbreak they've ever seen in terms of the number of fires on one day. I think
10:50it was something like 130 fires. Around 300 properties have been destroyed just
10:55in the state of Oklahoma and something like 12 counties had a state of
10:58emergency declared because of the wildfires on Friday. And obviously these
11:02are being fanned by those incredibly strong winds we've already talked about.
11:05The air is very dry. In fact there was one weather station just east of
11:10Oklahoma City that recorded a relative humidity of just 2%. Oh my goodness.
11:14That's how dry the air was on Friday and on top of that it was 22 degrees so hot
11:19and dry and incredibly windy as well. So you know perfect conditions for fires.
11:23That's partly because I guess if you go back to the satellite that the winds the
11:27lows coming here the winds and the the Rockies you've got the Rockies here
11:30right so the air is coming over the Rockies and drying out as it as it
11:34descends. Yes and obviously a very dry source down in the desert southwest as
11:37well so yeah incredibly dry air and you know that's what fires need really and
11:42they spread so quickly during the course of Friday and sadly a lot of
11:47people have lost their homes because of this in Oklahoma. And it's really ongoing
11:50there's still many of these fires still burning. Yeah I mean when you've got
11:54very strong winds obviously it's very hard to contain the fires but you need
11:58to evacuate people who are in the path of the fires as well. Now in fact if we
12:02go back to the satellite picture there's some little nuances you can pick out in
12:05the wind direction. So down here across Oklahoma we've got a southwesterly wind
12:09this is actually a smoke plume just here so southwesterly wind so initially
12:15the fires are moving in one direction but if you get a weak front coming
12:19through which we see you see this plume here coming down from the northwest
12:22that's a sudden change in wind direction and so it's a real challenge for
12:27firefighters to keep on top of that sudden shift in wind because suddenly
12:30the fire will move in a different direction. So yeah a really difficult day
12:34and obviously because it's so windy you can't get aircraft up to try and put
12:37water down as well until the winds calm down later in the day so for many
12:41reasons it was a really difficult day to get on top of. Incidentally these black
12:45dots you just saw briefly there they'll come back on the infrared
12:48they are the the wildfires they become more visible on the infrared. So this is
12:52the visible so this is visible and then when sun sets then you can see there's
12:55black patches in there on the infrared that's actual fires burning. Yeah that's
12:59right incredible how many they are and how big they are as well. Yeah that's I
13:03mean that is a huge I mean that's that's that Texas is what 20 times the
13:07size of the UK or something isn't it. They are absolutely vast and yeah you can see
13:13some smoke plumes coming in here so much you can see from one satellite picture.
13:16Yeah I just thought this was a stunning picture because there's so much going on.
13:19So much going on just yeah just on Friday must have been a fun night
13:23shift just watching all this develop whilst at the same time being
13:26terrifying part of our job. We haven't even touched on the tornadoes so
13:30should we should we look at those? Oh no we've got more yes we've got one more to
13:34show the wildfires. What's this? Well this was a bit of an odd sort of event really
13:38so a wildfire went past this weather station in Oklahoma and briefly it
13:43recorded a temperature it says here 173 Fahrenheit which is I think about 78
13:48Celsius and then it went offline unsurprisingly and you can see from from
13:53the pictures. Yeah we can we can actually hopefully have a little zoom in on that
13:56you can see so this is this is kit that's just been melted by the wildfires
14:00I mean it shows up pretty well doesn't it yeah it's all warped and stuff so
14:03incredible they will have to obviously replace those instruments but yeah
14:07incredible to see that it recorded temperatures near 80 Celsius as the
14:11wildfire went through. Unbelievable and yes there was also
14:17tornadoes. Yeah so we saw those thunderstorms erupting on the satellite
14:21sequence we had two waves of tornadoes one on Friday evening those were a bit
14:25further north across the Midwest area and then these ones these pictures we've
14:29got here are from Mississippi on Saturday right three tornadoes have been
14:34rated EF4 which is the scale goes from zero to five zero to five one of them
14:41has been estimated wind speeds of 190 miles an hour top-end EF4 they're still
14:46investigating it takes days if not weeks especially when you get so many we had
14:49something like 90 tornadoes I think from from this event that we know of so far
14:54so after an event usually meteorologists from the National Weather Service will
14:58go out and look at the damage and try and plot the path of these things and
15:03try and work out the strength and they have to bear in mind not all properties
15:07are built particularly well so you know you could look at a flattened house and
15:11think oh that looks devastating but actually the house may have been
15:14poorly constructed some houses aren't even anchored into the ground in some
15:18cases. So it's quite hard then to retrospectively have to know what the
15:22foundations were before you can work out how strong the winds are. So it takes
15:26time obviously yeah try and work out where this sits on the scale of winds
15:30but at the moment 190 is the highest I've seen so far. Another one here which is
15:35yeah again hard to tell how far away that is but it looks like it looks a
15:40very wide. Yes you can certainly see the left-hand edge. This picture kind of
15:47captures it fairly well actually because a lot of the tornadoes this time of year
15:50tend to be in the Gulf States further south where it's very humid the cloud
15:54base is very low they often get rain wrapped and as you can see there are a
15:57lot of trees and hills in this part of the world a lot of pine trees so getting
16:01a visible view of the tornado is very difficult and very hard to sort of chase
16:07them if you like because they tend to move through very quickly as well and
16:10sadly you know the population is denser in the southern states and also because
16:15you're near the Gulf you've got this plentiful moisture all day long so it's
16:18not as dependent on the sort of sunshine heating the ground that you would see
16:22elsewhere in the US. Right. So you can get tornadoes any time of the day in the
16:25south whereas the further north you go they tend to be more sort of late
16:28afternoon or the evening time so this these can kill quite a few people at
16:32night especially because you can't see them coming. Yeah nighttime tornadoes are
16:36way more dangerous aren't they because and they are there's indications that
16:39nighttime tornadoes are becoming more more frequent as well with with climate
16:43change. Yeah. Very interesting stuff and this is one more picture here to show
16:48you the devastation. Yeah I mean you know there's only so many words you can say
16:53about this really it kind of speaks for itself just how devastating some of
16:57these things can be and how communities can be just you know completely destroyed
17:01in a matter of well less than a minute. Yeah yes absolutely devastating scenes
17:06there and and you know the potential for more severe weather in the United States
17:10over over the rest of this week if we if we take a look at what is happening over
17:14there now and see it's it's not the same kind of setup but it's similar in a
17:21low low pressure in a similar kind of place at the moment and if we play
17:25through that so this is the jet stream there's a low pressure here but actually
17:29the jet kind of intensifies this this limb of the of the of the a new low
17:33kind of spawns out of it because of the because of the flow over the Rockies.
17:37Yeah that's right I mean this is late later on today and again you can see the
17:40isobars squeezing together as we've already said the wildfires are still
17:44ongoing in some areas and we're probably going to see more today because
17:48the winds are going to be picking up again very dry air once again coming in
17:51from the desert southwest so parts of the southern plains today are under
17:55alert for wildfires. Are they? Yes for Tuesday. Yeah and as this low
18:01continues to trundle northeast well we might get some severe weather severe
18:04thunderstorms up in towards the Midwest and the Great Lakes not to the extent
18:08that we saw at the weekend but another wave of thunderstorms with that and
18:12possibly more once we get to the weekend as well. You can see that yeah as the low
18:15of those isobars really squeezing together so that wind just picking up
18:19and again just drawing in the the dry air from over the Rockies it's all to do
18:24you know that it's all about Tornado Alley and it's it's just because of the
18:28setup of the United States and the way the land is we'd actually take
18:31everything off we can maybe look at the States and just see how how that works
18:37because you've got you've got the Rockies here so they've got the the air
18:41coming over the Rockies is very dry and you get the the air coming up from from
18:45the Gulf of Mexico and it's where they combine. Yeah it's a very unique setup
18:50that allows repeated episodes of these severe thunderstorms every year really
18:54and what you tend to find is very hot air over the higher terrain in the
18:58southwest not necessarily over the Rockies but it's higher ground right
19:02here that comes out across very moist air at low levels and acts as a lid
19:06initially called a cap and then you get an upper trough in the jet stream coming
19:10in and that tends to release the energy that's been building up under that cap
19:14as you get the sort of daytime heating going on and you get these thunderstorms
19:17so this is kind of the beginning of the storm season I mean you can get
19:20tornadoes anytime of the year if you've got the right ingredients but the
19:22ingredients come together much more frequently when you get into sort of
19:25March April May onwards. So you've got that warm moist air at low levels you've
19:29got that air higher higher up in the atmosphere and warm air obviously wants
19:34to rise and it tries to rise and it just it's capped initially but then pop
19:39it goes and that's the way expression loaded gun comes from. Exactly. The
19:42atmosphere is like a loaded gun you hear that quite a lot from from the States
19:45and then bang it just goes and and you get the thunderstorms as we've seen and
19:50we can show you the how it changes through through the year so what are we
19:55looking at here? Yeah so these are plots from the Storm Prediction Center and
19:58it's looking at historical events and the probability of a tornado within a
20:0325 kilometer radius. Worth noting that the numbers on the scale here are
20:08incredibly small. Yes yeah you might not be able to read that but the whites like
20:110.1% and this this kind of mid red is 1%. So you know anywhere it's a very low
20:19probability of getting a tornado but what we can see here this is for the
20:22mid of mid March and then we've got mid April up here mid May mid June just to
20:27show the progression through the the spring and early summer and you can see
20:30you know the probabilities at this time of year are mainly in the Gulf States
20:33where we saw most of the tornadoes over the weekend and then as we go deeper
20:37into the season and the jet stream starts to move further north through the
20:40spring and summer we see that focus shifting further north while also
20:44increasing we start to get these darker colors appearing focusing on the central
20:48plains once we get through to sort of mid May and then once we get into June
20:52it starts moving a bit further north and by July actually the risk starts
20:55expanding up into Canada as well so Canada can get its fair share of
20:58supercells and thunderstorms once we get to the summer. But more likely later in the summer
21:02in the summer rather than the spring which is you know people always
21:06associate May with like the peak of the tornado season and it is shifting again
21:10with with climate change the suggestion that it's getting earlier or the start
21:14of the of the season is getting earlier as well as those increasing chance of
21:18seeing them more. We're seeing you know temperatures in the UK like 20 degree
21:22thresholds getting reached earlier on average as our climate continues to warm
21:26as well. What's particularly unique if we quickly go back to the satellite
21:31animation for this part of the the world anyway and we zoom in on what's going on
21:36down in the Gulf States in particular and just sort of concentrate on what the
21:41clouds are doing in the low levels down here. Should be playing through there we
21:45go. So if we focus on what the clouds are doing over say Alabama
21:49Mississippi etc at low levels we've got these small cumuliform clouds which are
21:54forming. You see the streaks, the cloud streaks there. Yeah I mean a classic sort of fair
21:58weather cloud bubbling up but if you watch their motion they're running
22:01south to north streaming in from the Gulf so that's indicative at low levels
22:04of all this warm moisture coming in from the Gulf and streaming further north
22:08into the US. But what we also notice if you look a little bit higher up if you
22:11like you can see this sort of wispy cirrus cloud every now and again there's
22:14a band of it here and that's running from west to east. So just by looking at
22:18the satellite picture you can already tell the winds are doing different
22:21things at different levels and this obviously tells you there's a lot of
22:24what's called windshare where the wind changes direction or speed as you go up
22:28through the atmosphere and that's the kind of ingredients you need along with
22:31the instability to generate these rotating thunderstorms that produce low
22:35levels of winds coming from the Gulf higher up they're coming in from from
22:38from the West and it's that combination that shift and yeah that's so clear on
22:43that satellite image absolutely fascinating stuff. There are the
22:46thunderstorms breaking out. All the lightning strikes associated with them
22:49as well. Yeah absolutely incredible. I could watch that loop for hours. There's just so much going on.
22:53It's just incredible. Well I say small part of the United States but it's actually quite a large part of the states. Dan thank you so much for
23:04coming in absolutely fascinating to have you on really really insightful stuff
23:08there on that. Yeah it's been good fun. Severe weather in the United States
23:11obviously you know serious weather ongoing and will continue to go and the
23:16team upstairs the operational meteorologist and the guidance unit will be
23:19continuing to look at this over the next few days and we'll continue to have
23:23updates but thank you so much for coming and offering your insight and thank you
23:27to your getting all that imagery from your friend. I hope you stay safe over in the
23:30United States. He's very busy at the moment. I bet he is. Busiest time of the year.
23:34Dan thank you so much for coming in and please do come back again
23:39sometime. Yeah pleasure thank you. Great to have Dan pop into the deep dive
23:42earlier. Do let us know if you enjoy that kind of stuff. Really insightful I
23:47thought. So let us know in the comments if you like the international flavor to
23:51these deep dives or say any other suggestions. Please do hit the like and
23:55the subscribe button if you're not already subscribed to our channel. But
23:58I'm sure you already are because you're a proper Met head because you're this
24:00far into the deep dive. So thank you again for being there. We really do
24:04appreciate it. Okay we've covered Spain, Portugal, we've covered North America.
24:08Let's focus a little bit on the United Kingdom because it is a pretty
24:12interesting week of weather especially if you like spring sunshine. I mentioned
24:16earlier glorious blue sky day for the vast majority on Tuesday. All thanks to
24:21this area of high pressure. But we are in for a change. Slow and subtle changes
24:26over the rest of this week. The highest slinking away down to the south. The jet
24:31stream is still here anchoring these areas of low pressure pushing them in
24:34towards Portugal. It kind of almost gets cut off. Kind of almost circulates back
24:40in on itself like an Oxbow Lake there for a time during Wednesday. But it
24:46doesn't quite fully get into that circulation. It actually then reorientates
24:51itself later this week into more of a more of a trough. And what we start to
24:55see is this low pressure system developing push northwards by the jet
25:00stream slowly but surely encroaching up towards the United Kingdom. So if we put
25:05the satellite picture back on and go through this sequence again you can see
25:09that the storms developing across Spain and Portugal as we went through the
25:13course of the weekend. A few heavy showers here. This next weather system
25:16coming in this that's with us now. But the cloud that's stuck in here from this
25:21circulation is going to get pushed northwards earlier. So back to the here
25:26and now at the time of recording, Tuesday, this cloud is going to drift further north. So while it's been clear for the vast
25:33majority today we are going to see more clouds spilling north. But we're still
25:37being influenced by the high pressure system at the moment and will continue
25:40to do so through Wednesday and Thursday. By the time we get to Thursday the high
25:46has moved down here. The low is still here which means the winds have switched
25:50direction. So take the jet stream off. Let's look at the winds at the surface.
25:55Coming in from the east at the moment or for most of this week they've been
26:01coming in from the east tapping into some cool air. Still quite chilly over
26:05northern Europe as you'd expected this time of year. So we've been drawing in
26:08cooler air. But as the high slinks south we cut off that colder air and gradually
26:15the winds start to switch direction. So that by Wednesday and Thursday we see
26:20the winds are now coming up more from the from the southeast. So that is going
26:24to draw in warmer air from down here. So we are going to get things warming up a
26:29little bit both by day and by night eventually. So it is going to turn warmer.
26:34Thursday is probably going to be the peak of the warmth and we could reach 20
26:37degrees Celsius. Let's look at the temperatures over the next few days.
26:42Let's generally look at the weather pattern of the next few days. So there's
26:44the high slinking away. We've got the easterly wind at the moment which is why
26:47it's pretty chilly still on the east coast right now. Wednesday we go forward.
26:53We see a bit more cloud spilling in. The winds still coming in from the south
26:58generally pushing up there across the northeast of Scotland. So anywhere where
27:02there's a breeze still coming in from the coast still going to be on the
27:04chilly side. But by the time we get to Thursday there's more cloud spilling in
27:09and might just be able to make out a few dots of showers as the low is getting
27:12closer. The air is destabilizing a little bit. Some of that cloud shearing ahead
27:17from Spain and Portugal. So yeah generally turning a little cloudier. But
27:20still for the vast majority Wednesday Thursday nice days hazy sunshine. Only
27:25a very small chance of seeing a shower. But look at the temperatures. By the
27:28time we get to Thursday we're up to 14 15 16 degrees at least. And I reckon we
27:34could easily get up to 18 90 maybe 20 degrees Celsius. That's looking at the
27:39temperatures overnight now and we'll see those rising quite a bit. So while it
27:44will be cold tonight with the clear skies could get down to minus six or
27:48minus seven. By the time we're getting into Thursday night Friday night the
27:52winds coming up from the southeast. So although they'll be still quite a bit of
27:55clear skies those temperatures will be ticking up quite a bit over the next few
28:00days. So yeah temperatures gradually rising still cold on the east coast
28:04today. Even here turning milder there Thursday's temperatures are set 16 17 18
28:10easily. We could easily peak at 20 degrees somewhere across the southeast
28:14in this area as is typical. By the time we get to Friday there's a big question
28:18mark. So we are going to see a change. The weather patterns are shifting as
28:22that low gets closer to us. But the timing of it there's quite a bit of
28:26uncertainty more so than usual. Let me show you what the Met Office computer
28:32model is expecting. This is the rainfall building up over the next few days. Dry
28:37dry pretty dry small chance of a shower. But by the time we get to Friday well
28:41much more in the way of rain covering the UK. But how likely is that. Well
28:47let's put the rainfall off just take that off and go through by the time we
28:54get to Friday. This is what the Met Office model wants to do. So it's
28:58pushing up a lot of rain through Friday morning that band of rain coming up
29:04some pretty heavy bursts in that as well and extending all the way up to the
29:07Western Isles of Scotland on that. And then it just gets wetter as we go
29:10through the weekend and actually developing quite a nasty looking area of
29:14low pressure across the UK on Sunday. So that is moving northwards. That
29:20would suggest some quite heavy rain. But if you look at other computer models
29:24they're not really in agreement with this. And I can show you a couple of
29:27examples of that. So this is the EC the European model courtesy of windy dot
29:32com. That's where the European model has the rain on Friday. So yeah it's in
29:37a similar position across Wales southwestern but it's not as intense and
29:41it certainly isn't as extensive further north across western parts of
29:44Scotland. So that's a clue that our model is perhaps overdoing it. And if
29:50we look at GFS the American model at lower resolution but it has the same
29:54weather pattern and that low is gradually edging its way northwards. But
29:58by now on this model on the American model the GFS model. Well there's only a
30:03bit of rain really across Devon and Cornwall most of it's in southern parts
30:06of Ireland. Wales is largely dry and certainly western Scotland is dry and
30:10fine. And one more example Icon the German model which again has a similar
30:14setup. So all of these are agreeing all these computer models are agreeing about
30:18the weather pattern with a lot low heading up from Spain Portugal and being
30:23in the southwest. But look at that that's completely dry across the UK midday on
30:27Friday. So there is a fair bit of uncertainty about what will happen as we
30:30go through Friday and into the weekend. But all the models are agreeing that low
30:34is approaching and we will see some wet weather moving its way northwards by the
30:39time we get to Friday as that low then comes in spreads northwards. But the
30:44detail of where we see the rain how much rain we see. Well that's open to a bit of
30:49doubt. It is going to gradually get wetter through the course of the weekend.
30:52But if you've got plans particularly on Friday I suspect large parts of central
30:56and eastern Britain will still be fine and dry on Friday. But it is going to
31:00turn more showery from the southwest. How heavy that rain is and how intense that
31:04low is I say open to a bit of doubt. But we think that the UK model our model is
31:08overdoing it at the moment. If you want more details on that if you do have
31:12plans for this weekend then I suggest you subscribe and then you won't miss
31:16tomorrow's 10-day trend. Should be a good one with Aiden. So Aiden will be
31:19recording that on Wednesday. That'll be available on Wednesday afternoon. That
31:22will have more details about the uncertainty. Why there's uncertainty and
31:26what we can expect into the weekend. But generally speaking if you like it fine
31:30and sunny enjoy the next couple of days because it is going to change as we head
31:34into the course of the weekend. We are going to see things turning wetter and
31:38well perhaps we could do with that because it has been a very dry month so
31:45far. Quick look at the stats. We are just beyond halfway through March and this is
31:50the accumulation of the rainfall through the month averaged across the whole of
31:56the UK. And that is quite stark. That is a very dry month. So this black line
32:01through the middle that's the average. Well over 100 years worth of data. That's
32:06the wettest March on record. That red line at the top. The driest March on
32:10record. This blue line at the bottom. And these grey shaded areas representing 90%
32:16and 95%. And you can just about make out where we are now in this current month.
32:20March 2025 is in that bottom 5%. Oh top 5% in terms of driest. Bottom 5% in
32:28terms of rainfall. Depends which way you look at it. But yeah in the in the most
32:31extreme 5% in terms of how dry it has been so far. That is going to change as
32:37we see wetter weather coming in. And it you know not really that useful to look
32:41at the stats halfway through a month always. But that is so stark that I
32:45thought I would show it. Because it is really quite interesting. It has been a
32:49very dry March. Main reason for that just high pressure position of the jet
32:52stream. We've had higher pressure across parts of the south. At the start of the
32:55month we're expecting perhaps a bit more in the way of westerly winds to bring a
32:59bit more in the way of wetter weather. But one of the reasons for that is
33:02perhaps not happening is because La Nina has weakened. We were expecting La Nina.
33:06It's been a very weak La Nina and now it's weakened further. La Nina at the end
33:10of winter can generate or is associated with more westerly winds and wetter
33:15weather for the UK. But that's we haven't seen that. So one of the reasons behind
33:19that suggestion could be that weakened La Nina is part of it. We also had an
33:24SSW, Sudden Stratospheric Warming, what the weekend before last. That also
33:29promotes blocking weather patterns and slow moving weather patterns like we've
33:33seen. But that takes at least a week or so to come down through the atmosphere. So
33:37we're not really seeing the effects of that. But it does suggest that we could
33:40see continued patterns like this for the rest of the month. So yeah plenty to get
33:46our teeth into even though it has been a very dry month. But there's also some
33:51regional variations and just backing up that high pressure has been dominant
33:54across the south. This is the map of the UK as a whole. Now bear in mind key
34:00points to factor out. This is compared to the average for the whole month.
34:04So you would expect it to be drier than average at this stage because we're only
34:0870 up to yesterday. So the 17 days in. So we're just over halfway. So you'd expect
34:13you would normally expect at this time in the month 55% of average. And that is
34:20this first shade of brown here that between 50 and 75. And there are pockets
34:25across northern Scotland that are in that bracket because it has been wetter
34:30here. So much closer to average across northern Scotland because generally
34:35higher pressure has been hanging on across the south. And we've had spells of
34:38wet weather. We've also had northerly winds bringing some showers down into
34:41this part of the world which is why also parts of what North Yorkshire are much
34:45closer to average. But generally speaking we've had higher pressure. There's blocked
34:48weather patterns which is one of the reasons why it has been a very dry March
34:53so far. And another way of looking at that is looking at the temperatures.
34:57These are the minimum temperatures. I thought I'd show this because it was
35:00nice. Someone suggested it looked like the French flag which it does if you go
35:04like that. If you look at it normally it looks more like the Dutch flag to be
35:07fair. Or if you're of a certain age looks a bit more like Neapolitan ice cream.
35:12It's gone a bit mouldy. But yeah minimum temperatures showing that the northern
35:17parts of the UK well above average so far this month when compared to the
35:21to the average. Whereas in the south it has been a lot colder. And again
35:24suggesting we've had higher pressure here. Clearer skies at night allowing
35:28those temperatures to fall away. Low pressure systems and rain bands
35:32drifting across the north keeping the keeping the cloudier skies the windier
35:35conditions which helps to keep those minimum temperatures up at night. So
35:39quite interesting stats so far through this month. Again want to keep an eye
35:44through the rest of the month because yeah we are looking at some wetter
35:47weather into the weekend. But beyond that well it's likely to be quite a
35:51static weather pattern whether that's high pressure or low pressure. The
35:55jury is out. But we are looking potentially at quite static weather
35:58patterns for the rest of the month. One more thing to show you on this week's
36:03deep dive. This is dust dust spreading north from Sahara. This is for Friday.
36:11Again one of our Deputy Chief Meteorologist pointed this out to me.
36:16Dust plume heading its way up from the Sahara. So the potential on Friday for
36:22levels of dust across parts of southern Britain parts of South Wales southern
36:26England in particular. And actually if you look at the cross section through
36:29that the levels of dust actually quite low in the atmosphere. So this is a
36:34cross section through the atmosphere around to two to three degrees west. And
36:41if we play through that with a little bit of a zoom in on it so it's a little
36:44bit clearer. But that those yellow higher concentrations between about nine
36:48hundred and fifty and eight hundred hectopascal. So what's that between
36:51about five hundred meters and two kilometers up. So it's quite low. This
36:56isn't quite high in the sky. It's quite low in the sky. This this dust plume
37:01that's heading its way northwards and you can tell below pressures in here and
37:05it's drawing up ahead of it. Those southerly winds which is bringing the
37:09dust those strong winds because it's quite an intense area of low pressure
37:13could draw quite a bit of dust so it might make sunsets a little hazier a
37:17little bit more spectacular towards the end of the week. So that's something to
37:20keep an eye on. This is for Friday. Don't forget excellence. Well plenty going
37:26on then in this week's deep dive. I hope you enjoyed it. Please do keep those
37:30comments coming. Let us know which bit you like which bit you don't like any
37:34other suggestions for any other content that you'd like us to contemplate. As
37:39I mentioned Aiden's deep dive. No Aiden's 10 day trend tomorrow. This was
37:45the deep dive. Aiden's 10 day trend tomorrow should be a good one. Don't
37:49forget to tune in to the weather studio live this Friday. It's Aiden and me
37:52doing it this week. So yeah be a good quiz on that. That's a Friday at twelve
37:57fifteen. Don't forget the sunscreen if you're sensitive. UV levels at the
38:02moment are about three or four. And I made a video about UV and we posted that
38:07the weekend. So we'll put that in the chat as well. So you can check out that
38:10and find out a little bit more about UV because it's as strong now the sun as it
38:13is towards the end of September. So yeah something to to be aware of even though
38:19it is nice and sunny. Something else to be aware of is the equinox on Thursday
38:23at one minute past nine. So after that however you measure it spring has
38:29started. Okay that's it from me. Thank you very much for watching this week's deep
38:33dive. I'll see you again soon.