Gentle February sunshine offers a glimpse of spring
FEBRUARY has a pretty bad reputation as weather goes. The best usually said of it is that it is the darkness to be endured before the dawn of spring. Well, it has certainly been playing against type the past few days, with plenty of bright sunshine and mild temperatures in most parts.
Some of those green shoots of spring have even been coaxed out of the ground in our gardens. And, at least for the first part of the week ahead, that gentler, nurturing face of February will be on display.
A weak weather system will work its way west to east across the country overnight, so today will start out cloudy and damp in northerly and westerly parts, but there should be dry, sunny conditions in the south and east. London and Belfast top the temperature charts at 52F (11C), but everywhere else is only a notch or two behind at a uniform 48F (9C).
The drivers of our weather at the moment are high pressure and the mild winds coming in from the Atlantic. Out over Scandinavia something much more severe lurks but, despite its best efforts in the first half of the working week to blow in on us on easterly gales, it looks as if it will continue to be rebuffed. The skies may get a little more cloudy and less sunny, but there should be none of that uncomfortable bite in the air.
Later on in the week, things are a little more uncertain. It could be more of the same, or an Arctic blast could be upon us. It is all, as ever, down to the kinks in the jet stream.
The weather can seem utterly impervious to our moods, but in South Africa last week it was, for once, in step with the national spirit.
As widespread celebrations took place to welcome a new president in Cyril Ramaphosa, the skies over Cape Town opened after remaining tightly closed for three years and poured down some rain to relieve what has been a crippling drought.