The vast majority of the UK and Ireland has been basking in warm June sunshine today with afternoon highs widely soaring towards 21C (70F). As for inland western Scotland, temperatures in Ayrshire topped close to 24C which makes today, Scotland’s warmest of the year so far.

Over the next 12 hours we have some suttle changes as a weak low spinning off the NE coast of Scotland presents a fresher onshore breeze along the North Sea coast and this should encourage a low level cloud deck to spread inland across the UK overnight, reaching western areas by dawn Wednesday.

The good news is, this isn’t a breakdown in this glorious pattern and although we have more mixed skies, slightly cooler temperatures and some sharp showers across Scotland during Wednesday, we remain largely settled.

The GFS suggests thundery downpours across many parts of Scotland tomorrow and to a lesser extent Thursday while the ECMWF has little rain at all. The cap will be broken as 5,000ft temperatures cool a little so rather than fair weather cumulus, clouds will be able to climb into the colder upper levels of the atmosphere and may bring heavy downpours with perhaps embedded thunder, lightning and hail. However, this peaky feature NE of the UK looks set to drift away later Thursday and both models suggest a rebuilding of surface and upper level high pressure during the later stage of the week and that means an increase in sun and temperatures. In fact both GFS and ECMWF suggest WARMER 5,000ft temperatures by Saturday and Sunday which suggests we are on track for even warmer temperatures across Scotland and indeed right across the UK and Ireland than what was enjoyed today.

Here’s the ECMWF surface charts through 120 hours.

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Notice the 1028mb surface pressure over Scotland Saturday and with warmer 850mb temps (below), there is no reason it can’t be warmer this weekend with abundant sunshine on offer.

I stand by my original idea from a few days ago of the rebuilding of the ridge once the NE feature drifts away and 5,000ft temperatures recover and warm to greater levels that we have currently. Plentiful sunshine and fairly light winds (lighter along the North Sea coast), should support surface temperatures of 25 or even 26C over Scotland, perhaps 26 or 27C over central England both Saturday and Sunday. The Republic and Northern Ireland may push 25C.

The model is picking up on convective showers over the higher terrain (possible over the Highlands, Southern Uplands, Pennines) which wouldn’t be a surprise given the strength of surface warming but I recon the cap should hold over the Central Lowlands and down the heart of England.

Here’s the ECMWF upper chart/850 temps through 120 hours.

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As for when this pattern will break, well both GFS and ECMWF continue the warm, settled theme well into next week. This 10 day spell of sustained dry weather could well play a significant role in our July setup. Despite a likely return to cooler and more unsettled weather towards mid-June. The increasingly dry soils NOW may well set the stage for warmer temperatures and a longer duration settled spell ‘hot spell’ in July. This warmth may set us up very nicely indeed.

So, don’t fret when this pattern eventually breaks and it WILL break, because, the feedback may lead to the return of ridging, warmth and settled weather sooner rather than later and when it does get here, the warmth may not only be stronger but the spell may last longer! Remember the previous post on soil-atmosphere feedback? If you haven’t read it yet, please do.

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