A sharp boundary seperates the cool Atlantic air over the British Isles, northern France, west Germany up through Scandinavia with the hot, maritime-continental air dominating Poland, Russia the Southeast of Europe . Along this boundary which acts like a trigger, brought a line of intense thunderstorms across Poland and the Ukraine in recent days with even the cancellation of the France v Ukraine match. As the ridge expands westwards, so the boundary shifts west as temps soar across Poland and into much of Germany by midweek. However, as this increasingly hot air, centred over the Mediteranean pumps hot, humid air north, it on’t gets so far, coming up against the resistence of the NW trough. As cold air pushes southeastwards in the mid and upper levels and hot, humid air flows up from the south, this sets the stage from potentially destructive thunderstorms erupting across the Alps, Germany and by Wednesday the Low Countries. East of the front, the air becomes too warm in the upper levels for storms or even clouds to form and so the sun shines strong and temps push well into the upper 80s and low 90s, even 100s across interior areas of Poland and later this week, southern Germany.

Be aware of torrential rain, dangerous lightning, damaging winds and even a tornado can’t be ruled out. By Wednesday these cells, will impact a line from southern France up through Belgium and the Netherlands as temps soar into low 90s F immediately east of the front where strong southerly winds draw Saharan air across the Med where it becomes humid as well as hot over minalnd central Europe. Immediately west of the front, say over the Netherlands, it’s likely to only reach 70F Wednesday.

According to the ECMWF model, the heat looks to eventually ease over the eastern side of the continent by the weekend as the heat core backs west across the Med Sea, focusing over Spain where 100s F become common away from the coast.

As well as the heat focusing on Spain by the weekend, ridging looks to try working northwards up through France and possibly into the UK early NEXT WEEK while a trough begins to show itself dropping out of Scandinavia down into SE Europe.

As stated in yesterday’s post, IF this is the sign of an end of June-start of July warm spell, it’s likely to be last only a mere week at best as this pattern continues to look cool for Britain in the long term.

Like I saw in the 7-10 days leading up to the warm spell at the close of May, this is the first signs of this model trying to build a western ridge and an eastern trough but it does flatten out the amplification, poushing the heat down across the Med while Atlantic air flows across much of the Europe mainland. Interestingly, the model trys to oush the ridge northwards early next week into the UK. This falls nicely in line with the NAO ensemble run where it brings it back to at least neutral by the end of the month.

Here is a look at the ECMWF model for the next 7 days. Notice the westward migration of the heat and the southward backing down of the heat over Germany by the weekend as Atlantic air returns.