Wet and windy conditions are no laughing matter
THERE will be no repeat here of the fit of giggles that convulsed Louise Lear, the BBC’s weather presenter, on air on Wednesday as she was describing gale-force gusts – instead, it is more of a resigned sigh, with little to smile about in the week ahead.
Today will see a divided country. The high pressure system coming up from the Azores will keep the South and South East a hot and humid 77F (25C), but further north, wet and windy conditions will be blowing in due to low pressure off the west coast of Scotland. Edinburgh will be among the best served, managing 66F (19C) for its festival-goers.
That low pressure will push South and East as the week begins, though it will weaken as it travels. The unsettled conditions of late have all been down to the jet stream, those powerful air currents in the high atmosphere from across the Atlantic. It has been zigzagging over the UK and creating the sunny-wet-sunny-wet cycle.
What we really want is for the jet stream to flatten out beyond the north coast of Scotland, leaving the whole country to enjoy warmer air sucked up from continental Europe, but the opposite may be on the cards.
Even bigger fluctuations in the jet stream, as it sits rooted over our heads, are predicted, heralding unseasonably cool conditions with the best chance of sun down on the South coast.
“Unseasonal” doesn’t quite do it when describing global weather statistics for 2015 just released by the US-based National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Based on data from 62 countries, it reports that last year was the warmest on record with surface temperatures up 0.1C on 2014, which was the previous high.