How much longer will the dry and sunny weather last?
Blue skies over Ullapool on Saturday morning
- Published
After a very warm and dry start to spring, a significant change in the weather pattern could bring a return to rain and showers next week.
It is currently the driest spring in over a century but there are still a couple of weeks of May to go.
We have already had more sunshine this spring than the whole of summer last year.
But - spoiler alert - there is likely to be a big change in the weather pattern just in time for the Spring Bank Holiday weekend at the end of May.
Mixed fortunes this weekend
After a cloudy start to Saturday morning for some warm shunshine has been developing fairly widely again. UV levels are forecast to be high across the whole country.
Most places will be dry and sunny again on Sunday. North Sea coasts are likely to be cloudy and here it will feel cool in a north-easterly wind.
Away from these eastern coasts, maximum temperatures will reach 21C, with western Scotland and Northern Ireland being a couple of degrees warmer.
Late in the day the first signs of a small change will be the development of a few isolated showers or thunderstorms in south-west Scotland and north-west England.
High pressure back over the Azores and a stronger jet stream brings rain
Signs of change next week
It has been so dry and sunny this spring because of the influence of areas of high pressure.
Rather than sitting right over the UK, high pressure is centred over Iceland at the start of the week. While many places will still be dry, there is the chance of a few showers as high pressure weakens at times.
But more significantly, we could start to see a change in the weather pattern later in the week.
The high pressure block is likely to get squeezed away as a stronger jet stream sweeps across the Atlantic. The first weather front, bringing a band of cloud and rain, is forecast for late Friday in the northwest of the UK. However, the timing of the breakdown to wetter conditons, and how much rain will fall is still open to change this far ahead.
Bank holiday washout?
Shifting a blocked pattern can take longer than expected but once a change arrives then the floodgates tend to open - so to speak.
Most of our wet weather tends to come in from the Atlantic, and that is where it is coming from over the bank holiday weekend.
Westerly winds and areas of low pressure are expected to sweep showers or longer spells of rain across the whole country at times.
Most of the rain will be in northern and western areas - ironically, where we have seen the best of the dry and sunny weather recently.
Lots of heavy showers on the late May bank holiday last year
Is the Spring Bank Holiday normally wet?
Looking back over the last 20 years at the late May bank holiday, only seven were dry or mostly dry. There were a highest number of years when the weather was wet or mostly wet.
And with the arrival of more cloud and rain for the last week of this month, it may not turn out to be the driest and sunniest spring on record.
You can see how the weather will change where you are on the BBC Weather app.
