The Queen may need an umbrella at birthday picnic
IF YOU are worn out by a week’s weather that has felt more appropriate to the Tropics than north-west Europe – humid, airless, low skies, thunder and sudden downpours – then you can breathe again. Don’t expect much sun, though. Temperatures will drop and the air will freshen, but the rain will remain with us.
That means that the 10,000 guests gathered at today’s 90th birthday picnic for the Queen on The Mall may need one of her trademark birdcage umbrellas as they tuck into the Pimm’s and pork pies. It will be 66F (19C) in London and 60F (16C) in Glasgow, as a thick band of rain sweeps over the country from the South West.
The humidity of late has been caused by the jet stream. The ribbon of strong winds in the high atmosphere that blows west to east across the Atlantic has been spinning like a skipping rope. Last week it was over our heads far to the north of Scotland. This coming week it will swing under our feet into southern Europe, leaving the UK open to colder air from the north.
A low-pressure system will sit becalmed over the whole country, with temperatures failing everywhere to get much above 64F (18C), with no wind to speak of and plenty more rain.
If we find ourselves praying for a decent gust to blow away all this unseasonably miserable June weather, down in the South Atlantic, on the British Overseas Territory of St Helena, they are doing the opposite.
The opening of its longed for new £285 million airport has been delayed indefinitely because winds there are too strong to allow planes to land safely. You would have thought the planners might have anticipated that.