It’s yet another wet, windy, chilly day here across central Scotland but as your well aware by now, there is better weather on the way, well could it be any worse?

As of this writing we not only have a very distinct NW-SE weather and temperature contrast depending upon what side of the front your on but the Scottish mountains are dictating things too. A strong to near gale-force cold wind is making for a miserable afternoon on the Atlantic facing upslopes. While on the lee side it’s warm and sunny east of the Grampians with 21-22C. Cavendish, Suffolk has warmed to 28C.

Radar as of 2.15pm.

Notice the amount of rain on the windward side of the Scottish hills but nothing on their lee side. Here, sunshine and warmth prevails.

The SW flow has been quite strong today, particularly so over the Cairngorms where we’ve seen gusts to 96 mph.

As has been the case for some time, the northern extension of the Azores high has largely kept the southern half of the UK dry but Scotland has been beneath the jet and moisture stream. The good news is this sinks southward and weakens today. Weakens enough that by the time it reaches Southeast England, there won’t be any rain on it.

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For the high to push north, we need to cast our eyes across to the other side of the Atlantic, a system coming off Canada will deepen significantly south of Greenland and as it does so it pushes the jet south. By doing so and given the ripple effect in our atmosphere, what goes down must come up further downstream.

Confidence remains very high on a surge of heat next week while it also remains pretty high on thunderstorms breaking out mid next week as a system forms at the base of the N Atlantic trough and lifts up towards Ireland.

Despite a likely break in the heat mid next week, are we going back to what we’ve seen throughout July and the first part of August? Not necessarily. Modelling suggests that our height field increases and holds beyond the next 5 to 10 days even hinting at a warmer, drier final 10 days to August widely, including Scotland and Ireland.

GFS ensemble 5-day mean 500mb height anomaly

7-day mean precipitation anomaly

5-day 2m temperature anomaly

CFSv2 looks promising for Sept just like the previous two following a disappointing August.

See today’s video.

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