Chill out with the rest of us during the bank holiday
If you have been camping overnight, commiserations. Unseasonably low temperatures afflicted most of the UK in the wee small hours, with just 2C (35F) in the central belt of Scotland and no more than 8C (46F) in the south-east corner of England. And the bank holiday weather is unlikely to offer much to warm you up.
The cool northerly wind will ease a little today, but its bite will still be sufficient to negate the usually warming presence of high pressure over much of the UK. At least it will be largely dry, with the odd sunny spell, but expect nothing more than 18C (64F) in London, 17C (63F) in the West, and just 16C (61F) on the exposed eastern seaboard from Newcastle to Norwich.
There will be little change on bank holiday Monday. High pressure is still in control, so the rain will largely keep away, but the skies will turn blue only intermittently, with the temperatures, if anything, slightly down on today’s. Later tomorrow, thick cloud will start piling into Northern Ireland and by Tuesday a wave of rain will be washing down western Britain. The further east you are, the better your prospects.
And as the schools head back, hopes for a burst of warm sunshine to enable anxiety-reducing outdoor classes are looking at best 50-50. The remnants of Hurricane Laura, which battered the coast of Louisiana at the end of last week, are heading our way, churning up things out in the Atlantic and making forecasting hard. We may retain the high pressure and see settled benign conditions. Or the tail end of a hurricane may catapult low-pressure system laden with rain and wind on to our shores. Time will tell.