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Issued: 1730 Monday 4th September 2006
Duty forecaster: Simon Keeling
Heat for many, rain for others, high pressure builds next week
The weather patterns are telling an interesting story over the coming few days. Low pressure will be dominating things until the end of the week, when high pressure takes over. Some parts of the country will be seeing rain, whilst others enjoy some late winter sunshine.
The forecasting problem is going to be picking out the detail and deciding which areas are set to fair best of all. At the moment the sequence of events seems to be that heavy rain will be passing through Scotland during Tuesday and Wednesday. At the same time central and southern England will experience some hot and sunny weather with temperatures into the mid-20's.
At the same time, higher pressure starts to build west of Ireland and this then slips eastwards. It then becomes centreal and eastern England's turn to have cloud and rain, some of it heavy. A strong northeast wind develops, and while the east may be damp, the west should be drier. All indications are then that into next weekend it should be drier with sunny spells.
Now, here's my problem with this scenario. I'm looking at a chart of sea temperature anomalies for the North Atlantic, most of which are showing as being above normal. There is an area west of Scotland with near normal temperatures. I have a suspicion that the high may not be as dominat and as long lasting as forecast models are suggesting and that we may get a more transitory period of settled weather, rather than anything prolonged. However, I may be wrong, so let's see what the next few days bring.
Whatever the weather, keep the sun shining!
Simon