- 20/05/2025
This is an in-depth Met Office UK Weather forecast for the next week and beyond 20/05/2025 .
A look at why it’s turning more unsettled in time for the bank holiday.
Bringing you this deep dive is Met Office meteorologist Alex Burkill.
A look at why it’s turning more unsettled in time for the bank holiday.
Bringing you this deep dive is Met Office meteorologist Alex Burkill.
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NewsTranscript
00:00Hello, thank you for joining me. Welcome to the latest Met Office Deep Dive. I'm Alex Burkle,
00:06presenter and meteorologist here at the Met Office and as always we're coming to you from our
00:10headquarters here in Exeter. And also as always do get those comments coming in, leave any questions
00:16that you have based on the deep dive today. Make sure you hit the like button and make sure you
00:20share this with anyone who you think might be interested in catching this video as well. Now
00:25lots to be talking about as we often have. You'll no doubt be aware that whilst we have had such a
00:32prolonged dry sunny period through much of May through much of spring there is going to be a
00:38change on the way in time for the bank holiday weekend in time for May for the half term period
00:44as well. So not great news for everyone, some welcome news for gardeners and farmers who are
00:48desperate for a bit of rain. I'll be talking all about what we've seen so far and what we're going
00:52to see through the next few days through the next few weeks as well. But first of all starting off
00:58and because I have the satellite imagery behind me there's just something I wanted to highlight.
01:03If I just put the radar on and this is for earlier on this morning I'm just going to zoom in a little
01:08bit and today the showers so through Tuesday the showers are most frequent across parts of the
01:16Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland unfortunately that darted away before I had a chance. But what you'll
01:22might notice on the radar imagery behind me is whilst there's a lot of rain a lot of showers across
01:28parts of the Republic of Ireland there aren't that many appearing across parts of Northern Ireland. But
01:34if I just show you quickly our forecast for today and actually we're going with quite a few showers
01:40some of them quite heavy possibly even thundery across parts of Northern Ireland. So where are they?
01:44Well actually we kind of have an outage of one of our radars at the moment. Our Caster Bay radar is out
01:52of action just there's some maintenance work going on. It should be up and running by the end of today
01:58once they've got things working again. But what you can see behind me here is our radar network
02:04that we currently have. Now the Caster Bay radar is here over the fairly central parts of Northern Ireland
02:10and you can see there's kind of a lack of information coming in this area where we have some showers today
02:17because of the fact that Caster Bay is out of order. But it's worth bearing in mind I mean we have Shannon
02:22over the Republic of Ireland and Munduff Hill over central parts of Scotland as well and so they're
02:27trying to fill in the gap. But the way our radars work the further away you are from the radar
02:34from the radar the higher the distance that it's going to be reading and as much as near the radar
02:41centre so for Shannon for example it will be capturing any rainfall and whatnot falling relatively near to
02:47the surface. But the further you get away it's only going to be capturing any rain or anything like that
02:54further high up and so for this part of Northern Ireland really these two states these two radars they're
03:01only really going to be capturing rain above 20 25 000 feet that's pretty high up so yes it will
03:07capture some of the more intense big maybe cumulonimbus clouds that have developed anything
03:13coming from those but it's not necessarily going to be capturing many of what it's probably not going
03:19to be capturing many of those lower showers so a fair few showers that will have popped up through
03:24today across Northern Ireland won't be captured by our radar but fortunately we have other ways of
03:30observing things we have satellite data that will help provide things provide information about
03:36what's going on as well as ground-based stations so surface-based observation data from various weather
03:43stations on the ground as well they'll be providing information too and so in terms of the knock-on effect
03:50it's it's going to be relatively minimal to our actual forecast going forward for many reasons one
03:55because we do have other sources of information of what any showers may be doing and also because
04:01because of the very nature of the showers they're hit and miss and often they might not develop the
04:07way the model expects and so the model just copes yes it takes on information about what's happened
04:13and then we'll adjust the forecast for the next few hours accordingly but beyond that really it goes back
04:18to what it was always expecting to happen so uh the the impact really of the fact that one of our radars
04:25is out of order at the moment albeit only for a short period of time it's not going to have too much of
04:30an impact on our forecast going further forward i just wanted to highlight that just in case you were
04:35looking at our radar imagery and wondering where those showers across Northern Ireland that we've been
04:39talking about had got to but now let's look further ahead and look at the picture that we have as we go
04:46through the rest of this week and into uh well into the long bank holiday weekend i've put the bigger
04:51picture up first of all but i didn't want that i wanted to just quickly dart through the next 24 hours
04:57or so because we do have some wet weather around like i said showers across Northern Ireland Republic
05:02of Ireland some of them heavy as we go through today but let's start through into tomorrow i've
05:06gone a little bit too far forward so i'm just going to run it back but we do have some hefty rain
05:12that's coming in across parts of southwest England south Wales in particular as we go through the
05:18early hours of tomorrow morning it kind of swivels around pushes a bit further eastwards and then at
05:22the same time we have a system coming down from the north and that's going to bring the focus of some
05:27pretty intense showers as well across parts of yes Wales uh central southern southeastern England as we go
05:34through tomorrow afternoon so a bit of a wet start across some southwestern parts in particular a lot of
05:39that rain clears away but then plenty of showers feeding in across some more central areas and
05:44some of these could be on the heavy side could be some rumbles of thunder could be some hail we're
05:48talking 10 50 millimeters in just a few hours not really enough to cause any major problems especially
05:55because of how dry it's been recently so shouldn't cause too many issues but nonetheless a bit of wet
06:00weather on the cards for many places where we haven't seen a huge amount recently large chunks of the
06:05uk though through tomorrow actually another decent day and temperatures well similar to today for
06:10some places so again mid-20s feeling or low to mid-20s so feeling pretty warm indeed notice the wind
06:15direction so like we've seen so far through well many weeks really northy coastal areas will always be
06:21that bit fresher and that's the story as well if we dart ahead to thursday fewer showers on offer it's a
06:26drier day but still a few showers dotted around and the winds coming in from the north but what happens
06:31there after and some questions actually no before i get there uh one other thing that i wanted to
06:36mention before we look at the longer period is the fact uh is regards is with regards to our temperatures
06:43if we just uh look at our minimum temperatures through the next few nights i'm just going to dart
06:48a few nights ahead and actually thurs uh thursday mornings this is wednesday night uh into thursday on
06:55the left hand side a bit chilly in some places but thursday night into friday so the second box
07:02that shows that it is going to be pretty fresh pretty chilly for quite a few places we could
07:06even have a touch of frost we're so close to the start of meteorological summer and yet i'm talking
07:11about the fact that there could be a little bit of frost in places when we wake up on friday morning
07:17mainly rural spots not your towns and cities most places most built-up areas are going to hold up
07:23several degrees above freezing but there is the potential for a touch of frost first thing on friday
07:29morning not great news for gardeners especially with all the dry weather albeit there is some rain
07:33to come through the next week or so thereafter then whilst the eastern part still a bit of a chilly
07:39start for on saturday morning thereafter we see our temperatures rising so probably friday morning
07:45likely to be the last frost of the season and it's a pretty late one sorry there's a fly buzzing around
07:50my face uh it's a pretty late frost in the season but yes likely to be the last one of this season
07:55so until autumn winter time now but let's look further ahead then and what is going on now i already
08:03highlighted the fact that we are going to see a bit of a change in our weather no surprise the uh
08:08the dry settled weather that we've had for such a long period of time couldn't last forever and
08:13yes we are going to see something more changeable a bit more unsettled coming through as we go through
08:18the bank holiday weekend and um why is this well a couple of reasons let's look at the the jet stream
08:25well jet streams pushing it jet streaks really the the jet stream is not particularly strong at the
08:30moment there's one jet streak coming down here heading towards scandinavia and that's going to be driving
08:36an area of low pressure over parts of scandinavia but otherwise it's not going to cause too many
08:44problems but it is going to be influencing our weather a little bit apologies my laptop went off i
08:49thought i put it on do not disturb um but the other jet stream is out in the atlantic and this is going to
08:55be strengthening but why is it going to be strengthening well let's look at what's happening across the us and
09:00actually there is a bit of a temperature gradient as you normally get there's some colder air across
09:07northern parts of north america and something markedly warmer something hotter across more
09:12southern parts and it's this temperature gradient that's driving this jet stream now it's not unusual
09:18to get this kind of gradient but in fact during the winter months it's it's an even steeper gradient so
09:24whilst it is driving the jet it's not going to be really intense just a bit different to what we've
09:29seen of late but actually we can already see the influence of that temperature gradient if we look
09:35at our rainfall amounts because there's some pretty severe convection kicking off over parts of the us
09:41some intense sundry downpours some hefty showers building and that's all due to some intense convection
09:48that is developing we can see that in a different chart i've shown this chart before um albeit different
09:53model data or similar chart to this if you've watched many of our deep dives now credit to dr alicia
09:58and blendly um who's pretty active on social media this is from her website and what this is showing
10:04is the pattern going higher up in the atmosphere and if we look over the us just to draw your attention
10:10here's the uk but if we're drawing our attention to the what's happening in the us and you can see the
10:16winds spreading out now remember this is the pattern for what's going on higher up in the atmosphere and
10:22so these arrows spreading out show that we have divergence aloft so the the air is spreading out
10:29slightly higher up in the atmosphere now why is this happening well because we have that severe
10:33convection that i just mentioned so the the the air is rising it's leading to those intense shower
10:40clouds the the cumulonimbus the big storm clouds developing so that's why we're going to see some
10:45hefty downpours there and then as the air rises it then eventually spreads out higher up in the atmosphere
10:51and you can see that here with this model data that we have so some divergence aloft indicating
10:56that we have some severe convection and that goes in line with that temperature contrast and then that
11:01strengthening jet stream that i mentioned as well so we have a jet stream strengthening and then there's
11:08low pressure just to the east of the us and if i run this through actually i think when i practiced this
11:14when i ran it through it went a bit too slowly so i am just going to scroll it along and you can see
11:19the low pressure it gets a bit modified but eventually it does start to head towards the uk and
11:27as we go towards the back end of the week you can see that low pressure system the same one that was
11:33just a bit further west right now it is developing a bit further and as it gets towards us friday saturday
11:40time we're going to see that low pressure pretty close to the uk now as you would expect this kind
11:47of setup there are always going to be some question marks so there are the question marks as to exactly
11:53how progressive this feature is how quickly it pushes through and how intense it's going to be
11:58because it's being modified quite a lot over the atlantic that will be causing us a few little headaches
12:03but what we can be pretty confident about is the fact that we are going to see some more changeable
12:08unsettled weather pushing its way through as we go through this uh long weekend particularly saturday
12:14into sunday likely to see a front marching its way across and so there will be some wet weather in
12:20association with this if i just put the rainfall on let's get rid of the jet stream for now and put our
12:24winds on instead and you can see yes as we go through i'll just start back as we go through saturday
12:31let's run it forward saturday and overnight into sunday most places we'll see some wet some blustery
12:40weather pushing its way in now eastern southeastern parts likely to see that rain arriving a little bit
12:46later so could have a largely dry day on saturday the rain not really arriving until sunday and the
12:51rain won't probably won't be as heavy here meanwhile further north and west greater chance you have of
12:56some heavier rain and also some stronger blustery winds a couple of things that we need to bear in
13:01mind obviously there's been such a prolonged dry sunny period lots of people have been enjoying it
13:07lots of people making outdoor plans at this time of year the may bank holiday or the late may bank holiday
13:13there are lots of outdoor plans lots of travel so we don't have any warnings at the moment but
13:19and whilst the weather doesn't look especially severe we do need to take into account the fact that
13:24yeah there could be tents up there could be gazebos other uh temporary outdoor structures lots more
13:30travel happening because of the bank holiday weekend because it's the start of half term for many as well
13:35as that could influence things so yeah no warnings at the moment but definitely one to watch like i said
13:40several activities i mean uh radio one's one big weekend's happening in liverpool this weekend and
13:46it's a bit of a shame after we've had so much dry weather recently for us now to have something a bit
13:52wetter in time for that not ideal but i'm sure if you are going you'll be able to make the most of
13:57it and enjoy all the various acts but what happens thereafter and a couple of things that i want to show
14:04you to illustrate that and uh well let's start off looking at our multi-model probabilistic pressure
14:10trend you'll have no doubt seen one of these before if you haven't well this must be one of your first
14:14deep dives and you've probably not watched a 10-day trend before but what they indicate as you may well be aware
14:20reds indicating higher pressure higher pressure means more settled generally and blues indicating
14:26lower pressure and we're running forward in time from left to right on the left hand side we have
14:31today and then all the way we're going to uh with 25th of june so over a month's worth of forecast data
14:38here and we're going back in time in terms of model runs so the more recent model run at the top but
14:45what you can see is even over the last week or so when it comes to what the models have been showing
14:50they've all been in good agreement that high pressure would be in charge at the moment which
14:55it is and that's why it's so settled albeit with some changeable weather across southern parts
15:00as we go through tomorrow but generally high pressure the main story and then as we go through
15:05the bank holiday weekend a change to something more unsettled to be honest you can spot half term can't you just
15:11look at it it is here this blue period and so that's not the news many kids many parents many
15:19teachers would be hoping for but yet more changeable weather to come as we go through next week but
15:25looking further ahead and i don't want to uh uh linger on this too long because i'll be treading
15:30on the toes of honor who's doing the 10-day trend tomorrow but yeah as we go further ahead towards the
15:35back end of uh next week question marks as to what we can expect and beyond as we go deeper into june
15:42reds are reappearing again relatively good agreement among the models that we should see a return through
15:48that first week of june um of something a bit more settled a bit drier to develop now if this comes off
15:56we can look at it in a different way actually let's get some ecmwf data this is our anomaly
16:01charts uh pressure anomaly charts from ecmwf and is for this week it's not showing a huge amount but
16:08if i dart ahead to the following week and low pressure more likely or lower than average
16:14pressure particularly towards the north of the uk so some unsettled weather coming through a westerly
16:19flow so western northwestern parts always bearing the brunt of the the heaviest rain the blustery weather
16:25towards the south southeast a greater chance of staying largely dry but if we go further ahead and
16:31deeper into june less of a strong signal so hints of higher pressure trying to build in from the
16:37south and actually if we go then into the second week of june and this indicates that higher than
16:42average pressure more likely across the country and so we should see our weather settling down and
16:47there's one more chart that i wanted to highlight uh to show you to highlight this and it's uh everyone's
16:53favorite it's a hovmoller diagram now this one's a bit of a tricky one to get your head round but
16:59this black line shows where we're at zero degrees east and you so this is where the uk is and this
17:05is looking at what the picture or what the the weather's doing higher up but uh it's indicating
17:11where we have lower and higher pressure back in time so here we have the 20th of april so a few weeks
17:17away ago and then this black horizontal line is uh today's date and so we're currently here if you will
17:24but as we go further in the future by going down you can see a few things the high pressure that we've
17:30had around us the yellows the oranges of late that's uh clearing away and instead we have lower
17:38pressure which goes in line with what i've just said there's something more changeable as we go
17:42through the bank holiday weekend and through may half term with uh high pressure instead building
17:48somewhere around 40 50 degrees east so what's that that's probably around western russia somewhere
17:53we're likely to see higher pressure here and in fact that's not actually too dissimilar to what we've
17:58had recently in as much as some sort of blocking a high albeit that blocking high just 40 50 degrees
18:05further east and so then that allows for the uh the more changeable and set of weather to push in
18:10across the uk so there's still high around it's just not in the same place as it has been through much
18:16of spring so far but towards the very end of the month start of june we're seeing some yellows and
18:21oranges again on that zero degree line and so we could see something more settled so really
18:27i think it's fair to say that this weekend next week definitely looking more unsettled more changeable
18:33than it has been of late that's no surprise and there will be some wet some windy weather could be
18:38quite heavy at times there will be some dry periods mixed in with that so not total washout every day
18:44it could just be some showers so definitely one to keep on top of the forecast with particularly
18:48if you're hoping to enjoy any outdoor plans as we go through the long weekend or through half term but
18:55then there are signs as we go deeper into june that we could see the return of something a bit
19:00drier now it probably won't be quite as prolonged a dry sunny period that we've had through recent weeks
19:09there will probably be some wetter days here and there but i think on the whole at least as we go
19:13through a large chunk of june there should be a decent amount of dry fine sunny weather on off earth
19:19let's uh let's watch this space though let's see where we're at in a couple of weeks time
19:25cool i think that's everything that i want to say for the forecast for what's going to happen going
19:29forward but before i go i did just want to touch on the uh what's happened so far this spring you'll no
19:36doubt be aware that it has been so dry so sunny recently we've already released a fair few stats
19:42about sunshine at the moment but i just want to show you our rainfall uh totals this map for spring so
19:49far now this covers this compares this spring so far with the average for the whole of spring so at this
19:56stage you'd expect around 87 percent of the average rainfall but you can see the browns indicating that
20:03the vast majority of the country has had substantially less rain than 87 percent it's been very dry
20:11indeed lots places in the sub 30 percent category some places close to average over some parts of
20:16cornwall far west of scotland and over northern ireland much closer to average but many places
20:21it has been so exceptionally dry and actually if we look at where we're at for this stage in the
20:28season compared to records and if you've not seen this chart before we have our rainfall data going
20:35through the season the total data and the black line in the middle is the average the amber line is
20:42the record for the wettest the blue line is the record for the driest and then this dark blue dotted line
20:49is this spring and what you can see is actually over the past couple of days because it's been
20:56so dry recently through much of the well through the season but even just through the last like couple
21:01of weeks because we've seen barely any rain we've actually now for this stage in the season it's the
21:08driest this stage in spring that we've had on record records going back many many years but with some
21:17wetter weather on the way a bit of rain through today some showers bit of rain across southern parts
21:21on wednesday and then more wet weather to come as we go through this weekend and next week i'm
21:27expecting that line that we're currently on to go above the record so i don't think it's going to end
21:33up as being the driest spring on record it's still going to be dry but i think the the last week or so
21:38of the season is going to skew the statistics a little bit but that's that's the nature of statistics
21:43that's why we look at these whole seasons um anyway but sunshine one thing that we can't go back
21:50and change is the sunshine that we've already recorded and this is a map showing sunshine
21:55amounts and you can see that lots of places off the chart in terms of how much sunshine we've already
22:00seen and this again is comparing this spring to the average for the whole season and we're only 87
22:07percent of the way through the season so it's pretty remarkable that at just 87 of the way through
22:14we've already seen well over the average in fact you'll have no doubt been aware you've probably seen
22:19the statistic that we've already had more sunshine so far this spring than we did through the whole of
22:25last summer and summer on average is sunnier than um than spring it has around 50 50 hours i think
22:34more sunshine on average than we do in an average spring so the fact that we'd seen that record
22:41so early on in spring is pretty remarkable actually a few more stats to go alongside this so we're
22:46currently lying uh to be the uh in or currently this spring has already seen the second highest amount
22:54of sunshine for any spring on record we're way off the uh the sunniest spring on record which was in 2020
23:02so currently we've had 572 hours of sunshine this spring and the record is 626 so it's not out of
23:10the question there is still quite a while to go but with more changeable weather on the cards
23:15it's definitely one that we we will be watching we'll update you uh in around 11 or 12 days time as
23:21to whether or not we do get to the sunniest but it's already the second sunniest on record and already
23:28this spring would be the in the top 20 sunniest summers i know it's not a summer it's a spring and
23:35we're not comparing like we like different lengths of different number of days etc but um just how much
23:41sunshine that we've already seen would put it in the top 20 summers and i've already said that summers
23:47on average uh we have around 50 more hours of sunshine compared to an average spring so it really has been
23:54exceptionally sunny so far this spring and the stats don't lie like i said though more changeable weather
24:01on the cards as we go through this weekend and next week so whilst there will be some sunshine around
24:05it's definitely not going to be as sunny as it has been and definitely not as dry either one benefit
24:11though we'll say goodbye to those chilly fresh nights we're going to see those temperatures rising
24:15so some benefits in many ways as well and some people will be hoping for some of that rain
24:21gardeners farmers really could do with a bit of wet weather so good news for them now that's
24:26everything that i wanted to talk to you about today thank you so much for joining me as always do get
24:31those questions coming in i'll try to answer some of them straight away uh through tuesday afternoon
24:35tuesday evening and i'll also answer a few more on friday when i'll be here with alex deacon for the
24:41weather studio live so do check us out at 12 15 on friday and i'll be answering some of those questions
24:47he'll also have a quiz for me to do some of his quizzes can be a little hit and miss so i'm feeling
24:53a little anxious about that one just hoping that i get at least one question right honor will be here
24:58with tomorrow's 10 day trend do check that out if you want to know a little bit more as to what we
25:02can expect through the half term period otherwise uh yeah hit the like button subscribe and share this
25:09with as many people as you can and i'll see you again soon bye
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