Heatwave’s over but there are still warm days ahead
SINCE the climate in these isles is very adaptable, our language around weather is necessarily very loose.
We are forever peering over the horizon for something different. It only takes a day or two of high temperatures and the talk is about “the heatwave”.
That was the mood on the streets last week when the mercury touched 92F (33C) at Brize Norton in Oxfordshire. But at the Met Office, the scientists deploy their words much more precisely. For a heatwave, according to World Meteorological Organisation rules, it requires the daily maximum temperature to exceed the average maximum for any area by 5C for five consecutive days.
What is heading our way this week looks unlikely to hit that particular mark. It is going to be a case of slightly cooler but still very pleasant temperatures. So today the South East will hit highs of 75F (24C) and the rest of the country up to 68F (20C), depending on how far north you are.
That temperature pattern seems likely to continue through a week that will be distinctly average for the time of year.
The prevailing wind will remain a warm affair from the continent, bringing the best of the conditions to the South.
Further north and west, it will be fresher, with occasional rain and a bit more breeze with the jet stream, which pushes weather systems in from the Atlantic, particularly weak.
If the absence of a true heatwave disappoints, then it may spare us one unhappy consequence – some psychologists suggest that there is a correlation between hot tempers and high temperatures.