While there will always been something ready to pounce on a little detail, the overall summer 2014 forecast is playing out quite nicely thus far. By that I mean it’s been a mixed bag of high pressure bringing warm sunshine as well as spells of cool and unsettled like we have now.

It’s been a fairly decent summer so far by UK and Ireland standards with the ridge/trough axis flexing back and fourth between Atlantic and continent and despite a trough in the mean 500mb heights through the next 1-2 week period, ridging will play a part in our pattern. Low pressure that does influence isn’t and won’t have the same impacts as two summers ago when we saw UK-wide cloud and rain. This summer’s ‘lows’ are bringing more sun and showers.

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My original summer forecast always stated that this summer would be no washout like 2012 nor a July 2013 with endless warm to hot sunshine. I believed this summer would be more mixed, more unsettled than last but it would be a pretty ‘good summer’ for the majority.

Low pressure currently anchored between Iceland and Scotland did produce some strong wind and heavy rain as I thought but the front responsible also weakened as it dove south, so folks in more southerly locales may be asking, what happened to the wind and rain predicted, the answer to that is, it was always a more northerly event in terms of strong wind and rain but there has been a fair few showers, even longer spells of rain further south and we have that in the southeast corner today as the front moves into the near continent.

We’ve yet to reach the half way point of the summer and although it looks rather mixed looking out over the next couple of weeks, it remains ‘mixed’ with a trough dominant in the 10-20 day mean but if you look between the lines, ridging pushes in and then lifts out.

What I’m interested to see as we head towards mid-July is whether the upper air pattern can slow down through the second half of summer with the influence of the El Nino and the time of year. Weak Nino summers with warmth surrounding the UK and cold out over the N Atlantic can lead to a warmer, drier second half.

As for the here and now, expect further heavy, slow moving downpours along with plenty of warm sunshine. That low between Scotland and Iceland isn’t going far through the next 72 hours but notice in the GFS surface charts below have the ridge that’s over the Atlantic pushing out the low through the second half of the upcoming work week. This ‘should’ settled things down over Ireland and the UK with less showers, more sun.

GFS surface charts.

03 hrs

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With the NAO projected to stay predominantly neutral, the ‘progressive’ setup shall remain.

NCEP ‘blocking’ charts how the ridge sliding from the Atlantic to the UK through the second half of this week, then low pressure returns before building back towards the end of the 14 day period.

Despite the heavy downpours, the CFSv2 has a dry July for the UK and Ireland, wetter in the NW next month.

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Tags: summer forecast, uk summer 2014 forecast