This is an in-depth Met Office UK Weather forecast for the next week and beyond 22/04/2025 – High pressure is set to follow after a changeable week. Bringing you this deep dive is Met Office meteorologist Alex Burkill.
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00:00Hello, happy Tuesday, happy Earth Day. Welcome to this week's Deep Dive. I'm Alex Berkiel,
00:06meteorologist and presenter here at the Met Office, and as we do every Tuesday, I'm coming
00:10to you from our headquarters here in Exeter. And as with every week, if you enjoy anything
00:15that I talk about today, make sure you hit the like button, share it with anyone else
00:18who you think might be interested in it, and do leave a comment because I will be answering
00:23some of those questions later on. And we do also answer some of the questions in our Weather
00:27Studio Live, which will be back this Friday with Honor and Aidan. We took a week off because
00:31of Good Friday, but yes, our Weather Studio Live is back this week. But we're here for
00:36the Deep Dive. What do I have to talk about? Well, we're over halfway through both spring
00:40and also through April, so I thought I'd take a little bit of a look back, and also, of
00:45course, a look ahead. So let's start that. First of all, I want to look through the weather
00:48we can expect through the next few days and a bit beyond. I don't want to go into too much
00:52detail because Honor will have the 10-day trend available on Wednesdays, so I don't want to
00:58tread on her toes too much. But nonetheless, let's have a little look. And currently, we
01:03have an area of low pressure just to the west-northwest of the UK. We're already seeing some of that
01:08rain pushing across parts of Northern Ireland. And that rain associated with that front is
01:14going to continue to make its way eastwards. And so as we go through this evening and overnight,
01:18we're going to see the cloud building, the rain pushing its way in. I'm going to zoom in
01:21a little bit and maybe just scroll back a little bit so we can see that heavy rain coming through.
01:26But yes, some fairly wet weather pushing its way through as we go through this evening and
01:31overnight. And then tomorrow, we see that eventually clearing away towards the east-southeast.
01:38Worth bearing in mind, if I just scroll back, that actually large parts of Scotland down the
01:42eastern-northeastern side of England as well, not really seeing much, if any, of that rain pushing
01:47through. So staying largely dry here. But for other places, it does look pretty wet as that pushes
01:54in. So how wet? Well, let's look at some of our rainfall totals. And here I have our 24-hour
02:00rainfall totals. If I just run these through as we go through Wednesday, and we will see
02:04a couple of things. So yeah, as we go through Wednesday, we can see some pretty high totals
02:08across this kind of southwestern half of the UK, if you will, across Northern Ireland, Wales,
02:15southern, southwestern England. That's where we're going to see the heaviest rain. We're
02:19talking quite widely in this area. 10 to 15 millimetres, locally 20 to 40, perhaps over
02:25the high ground of Northern Ireland, the Morns, we could see around 50 millimetres. Some models
02:30hinted at around 60 to 80. I think they're overdoing it a little bit. So I think the totals that I
02:35just said, more likely. So that's pretty wet. And there will be some blustery winds, but we
02:42shouldn't see too many impacts. That being said, a lot of that rain is going to be coming
02:45in just three to six hours. So a bit of surface flooding is possible. And as well as that,
02:52because of some of this coming through in time for morning rush hour, depending on where you
02:55are, that could cause some disruption. So do take care on the roads if you're heading out
02:59early. There could be some issues. We haven't got a warning issued at the moment. Not expecting
03:05any, but nonetheless, it is going to be a pretty wet picture as we go through this evening,
03:09overnight and early tomorrow. But thereafter, what happens? Well, let's get rid of the jet
03:14stream. It's not what I want to show at the moment. And if we just dart ahead to the early
03:19hours of Thursday, that's Wednesday evening. But if we run, oh, sorry, Wednesday, I meant,
03:26that's what confused me earlier. As we go through Wednesday, as we go through the end of Wednesday,
03:30and you can see, well, through the morning, through lunchtime, it clears away towards the east,
03:35southeast. Then behind it, there's just a scattering of showers following in behind.
03:39And then overnight Wednesday into Thursday, if I just pause it a little bit further on,
03:44let's go to Thursday morning, and we end up in a bit of a cold. So that's when we have
03:49the system that pushed through towards the east of us, another system, low pressure waiting out
03:54towards the west. And then instead, over the UK, we have a bit of a ridge, and so a quieter period.
03:59So Wednesday night into Thursday, it's looking pretty quiet, could be a bit chilly, first thing
04:05Thursday morning. But we're in between those systems. And then through Thursday itself, actually,
04:10a fairly decent day, a few showers here and there, but on the whole, largely fine. Otherwise,
04:17then our attention then turns to another system that's coming in from the west. So later Thursday,
04:22more wet weather pushing its way into Northern Ireland. And then the system's likely to track its
04:27way in as we go into Friday. But there are some question marks about this system.
04:32Our model, the Met Office Global model, which is the one that I have behind me here,
04:37that's a little bit too quick, I think, with how it progresses across the UK with this system that
04:42goes through on Friday. So I think if we looked at EC, it has everything a little bit further west,
04:47it's a bit slower bringing that system in. And so I think this rain really is more likely to be a bit
04:55more of a kind of Northern Ireland, Western Scotland, perhaps just about fringing into the
04:59far west of England and Wales as we go through Friday evening. Most places actually staying dry
05:04through much of Friday. Also worth bearing in mind, Friday morning could be even chillier than Thursday
05:09morning for some of us too. But back to Friday, eventually this system will push through. But
05:15similar to how it's not quite got the position right, I think our model's overdoing the rain amounts
05:20as it pushes eastwards across the UK as we go through into the weekend, I think really it's
05:25likely to break up quite a lot. And so I think some eastern parts aren't going to see a huge amount
05:30of that rain as it pushes through overnight Friday into Saturday. And so it's largely dry.
05:36But then that clears through and then there's another system out in the west. And again,
05:40the position of this, I think, is a little bit too far east. So once more, I think as we go through
05:46more so into Sunday, the next system comes through and we're going to see some wet weather towards the
05:52northwest of the UK. How much of that pushes its way across eastern parts and towards the south?
05:58Not really that sure. I think we're actually going to stay largely dry, but towards the northwest. So
06:02there's the potential that we could see both those two bands of rain, the one Friday into Saturday and
06:08then another one on Sunday pushing across. But really, I think a lot of it's perhaps going to be a bit
06:13further west-southwest than some of the model data that I have behind me may suggest. Still a little
06:19bit all to play for. One thing that I'm a bit more confident about, though, is high pressure towards
06:24the south-southeast. And that plays a part in the weather that we can expect next week. But before
06:28then, I just wanted to have a little look at our temperatures. And I think that's the wrong one.
06:33Let's get this up. And if I pick somewhere towards the south, for example, and here we have our max and
06:39our min temperatures as we go through the next few days, that doesn't quite show. There we go. That's a little
06:44bit better, more what I wanted to hint at. And you can see two things, really. After a little bit of a dip
06:50as we go through the middle of this week, our temperatures start to climb again as we go through towards
06:55the weekend and beginning of next week. So more likely to get into the low 20s. But also look at our overnight
07:01temperatures. We're only talking a degree or so. But yeah, Thursday night and more so, oh sorry, Thursday morning
07:06and more so Friday morning do look to be a little chilly, a little fresh compared to some of the
07:12other nights this week. Nothing extraordinary. If we just look further north, just for example,
07:16and the trend's similar, really. A gradual rise in our temperatures as we go through this week
07:22and also a slight dip in our overnight temperatures, both Thursday and Friday morning.
07:29But what happens thereafter, and like I said, I don't want to go too much on to what Honor will be
07:37talking about in her 10-day trend tomorrow, but just to capture it. And these are our various members.
07:45And when you take them all together, they show the most likely setups that we're going to see.
07:49And if I dart to this time next week, say, let's go a little bit further ahead.
07:57Here we go. Here's next Tuesday. Actually, let's not go that far. Let's go to Sunday. Let's go to Monday.
08:06And so the most likely setup is this one in the left-hand side of the screen. And it has that system
08:13that I mentioned coming in on Sunday, so pushing its way into northwestern parts. But actually,
08:18the high pressure across mainland Europe starts to build back in and feed its way in across the
08:24UK. And that would do two things. That would settle our weather down and actually bring in some more
08:29warm air, which is why we're starting to see temperatures rising as we go through into next
08:34week. And we're likely to continue to see them doing so. Worth bearing in mind that the second
08:39and third most likely scenarios for this next Monday have the frontal stuff towards the northwest
08:47the UK a little bit more across the country. So the highs a little bit less developed. But nonetheless,
08:52that's a slightly more favoured chance at the moment. Then as we go through and if we look towards
08:57Tuesday, I've gone too far ahead. Now we're looking at Wednesday, but the most likely setup and even the
09:05second, the third's not too dissimilar. The most and second most likely setups have high pressure well
09:12and truly across the UK. So the high that was here has fed its way in and then become more dominant.
09:17So I think there's a reasonable chance as we go through next week that we are going to see high
09:22pressure becoming more dominant. We talked about this. If you watched my 10-day trend last week,
09:26I talked about it happening around the end of this week through this weekend. And I think it's been
09:32pushed back ever so slightly. But nonetheless, I think as we go through next week, we are going to see
09:36that or beginning of next week, we are going to see that high pressure pushing its way in. What happens
09:41thereafter? And that's where there are some question marks. I've darted ahead to next Saturday, but they
09:46tell the story quite nicely. The most likely, albeit only 13% chance, they're not particularly high. We are
09:52looking, what, several days away, 10, 11 days away by this point, but still has high pressure across the UK.
10:01So there's a reasonable chance that the high pressure that's likely to dominate early next week could stick
10:07around through much next week and as we go into the beginning of May as well. However, there's also a reasonable
10:13chance, probably a similar amount of chance, to be honest, that some systems from the northwest could push their way
10:19in instead. And so we would see something a bit more changeable, particularly towards northern and western parts.
10:25All the time worth bearing in mind with this high that comes in, we could see some significant warmth across southern parts,
10:31in particular, that's pretty likely early to middle of next week. We're talking low to mid-20s, that kind of thing,
10:38with some settled weather. So feeling particularly fine to end April. And we could have some more fine,
10:44relatively warm weather as we go through into the beginning of May as well, but just some question marks
10:49as to exactly what's going to come in from the northwest. So either the high pressure will build and then stick around
10:54for a little while or could build and then retreat back as some fronts push through. So a little bit
11:00all to play for. If we just, whilst we're on that topic, if we just look at our multi-model probabilistic
11:06pressure trend, and you'll no doubt have seen these before if you're a regular deep dive or 10-day trend
11:11viewer, but in case you haven't, the reds indicating that high pressure is more likely as we go through the next
11:19two weeks. And you can see really the transition from the neutral setup, the greens, to the high
11:24pressure is always indicated to be late this week and as we go through this coming weekend. So although
11:31there's a weather system towards the northwest of the UK this weekend, the general pattern will be the
11:35high pressure that's coming its way in. And fairly strong idea that that high pressure is going to be
11:40more dominant as we go through next week and perhaps even into the beginning of May, albeit the percentages
11:46start to drop down. It's a very red picture behind me. Previous model runs have all been in agreement
11:52that high pressure is going to be the dominant story as we head through the end of April and into
11:57the beginning of May. But yes, still some question marks as to exactly how long it lasts. Honor will
12:01have more about that on today, tomorrow's 10-day trend. What else did I want to talk about? Let's look
12:08globally quickly then, because there's some severe weather happening on the other side of the Atlantic.
12:13And if we dart ahead across parts of America, we've already seen some fatal flooding in parts of
12:22Oklahoma in recent days. And there's more heavy, thundery rain to come across parts of Texas,
12:29Kansas and Oklahoma still. Fortunately, the heaviest rain looks like it'll be a little bit further west
12:34compared to where we've already seen it. Particularly as we go through kind of Thursday and towards the end
12:39of the week, we are going to see some significant rainfall totals. We're talking 50 to 100 millimetres
12:45in just a few hours. And some prolonged rain could lead to more than 200 millimetres in some places.
12:51Worth bearing in mind, in this part of America, the April average is only around 50 to 100 millimetres.
12:56So this is a substantial amount of rain. No wonder that we're going to see some further flooding.
13:01And this could cause some fairly disruptive, well, it's going to cause some disruption, could cause some
13:06major problems as well. It's not just the heavy rain that's going to cause some problems. Like I said,
13:10it's going to be thundery. And so we need to watch out for some large hail, also the risk of tornadoes.
13:16But I think it's the heavy rain that's most likely to cause some major impacts here.
13:21Back to the UK, though. And as I mentioned at the start, we are now well over halfway through April,
13:27and we are halfway through spring. So I just wanted to have a little gander,
13:31a little look at how we are doing statistics wise at this stage in the month. And this chart behind
13:37me looks at mean temperature through spring so far, and it's a cumulative chart. So it compares how we
13:42are for this stage of the month and so far through this month compared to previous records. The black
13:49line in the middle is our average based on the 1991 to 2020 data. The orange line at the top is the
13:55record. The blue line at the bottom is the record for the lowest. Orange at the top record for the
13:59height warmest. And the the dotted blue line is this current year with the orange shaded area showing
14:07that we are well above average for this stage in the month and have been really through sorry season
14:14through this whole season, it's been significantly warmer than average. And actually, if we look just
14:20where we are, we're currently just about above the record for this stage in spring. Now there is a lot
14:28of spring still to come. So you can't make too many bold statements. But technically, at this stage
14:35in spring, we haven't had a warmer first, like, what are we, 50 days of the season before since our
14:43records began. So it has been pretty warm indeed. Just to look at a similar chart, but this time for
14:48April, and it's a similar picture well above average, albeit nowhere near the record. The one thing that's
14:54worth bearing in mind is it's our maximum temperatures that have been so far above average,
14:59which have pushed us when you look at spring, so close to or just that little bit above the record.
15:04If we look at our minimum temperatures, and here I have the minimum temperature chart for April,
15:08and actually our minimum temperatures through the last two, three weeks or so, they've been nothing
15:13really to write home about. We've had some colder spells. So even when we had the fine settled weather
15:18during the first week, two weeks of April, at this time of year, fine settled weather by night means
15:25it's going to turn quite chilly, unless you have some really warm air around us, which we didn't. So
15:29although it was pleasantly warm by day, it was a bit chilly overnight. And so that's why when we look
15:34at our minimum temperatures so far this month, they're pretty much close to average, whereas our
15:39mean temperature and our maximum temperatures, they're way above, way above.
15:43What are we looking at rainfall wise? Oops, I've pressed the wrong button. And if we look similar
15:49chart, but this time looking our rainfall for spring so far, and you can see just how dry it's been
15:54through large chunks of March. That line is so flat, we had barely, barely any rain. And then again,
16:01we had a bit of rain and then another flat line through the first week or so of April. And then we've
16:07had a bit more unsettled weather recently, but well below the average line and not too far away,
16:13albeit not particularly close to the driest spring on record or dry spring for this point in this season
16:21on record. But if we look at our April and the first, the first 11 days, barely any rain. I think
16:28there was a little blip of rain around earlier on in the month, but barely any rain for the first 11
16:34days. And then yeah, last week, if you're on Easter holidays, you'll have no doubt been aware.
16:38They had some, we had some more unsettled weather that came through. And so it's well above the
16:45record now. I think the records, what's that about 16 or 17? Oops, I've darted back. Let's just get
16:50that chart back up. And the record, yeah, so we're now nowhere near the record for driest April. But
16:58nonetheless, it is still significantly drier than average. We do have more wet weather coming through
17:03as we go through tonight and later on this week. So, you know, we're going to see some
17:07of those totals rising again. But I think at the end of the month, it is going to be drier than
17:12average. Then the last thing on the rainfall stats I just wanted to highlight was the fact that it's
17:18really just been this chunk recently, which has brought some rain around. In fact, Good Friday in
17:23particular, the wettest day so far this April with a very wet day. I don't know what you were doing,
17:30but we were having a fence built and I felt sorry for the man building that because it was raining
17:35so heavily. Right, the last statistic that I wanted to look back at was our sunshine amounts. Here's our
17:42map for sunshine through the spring, but it doesn't paint that much of an interesting picture. So let's
17:47just look at April. And this map is comparing what we've seen so far through April to the average for
17:53the whole month. Now, we're only three weeks in this data up to and including yesterday, the 21st of
18:00the first three weeks of April compared to the whole month. And so we're less than three quarters
18:06of the way through 70% at this stage. But some places have already seen significantly more than the
18:12average for the whole month. The UK as a whole seen 106% of the average for the whole month. So we've
18:18already had 6% more than the average, even though we still have another 30%, another 10 days left or
18:26whatever of the month still to go. In fact, some parts of Western Scotland have seen even more than
18:31that. So it has been very dry. It's also been very sunny, which I'm sure you're aware of, particularly
18:37across, yeah, Western Scotland and down through parts of England as well. Largely sunny skies for many
18:44places. Yeah. Then what else did I want to talk about? I think the only thing I have left is to talk
18:52about the Lyrid meteor shower. So we get lots of meteor showers coming through the year. The Lyrid one, it's
18:59not the most dramatic of them. The Germanid one later on in the year has a few more meteor showers. But
19:04nonetheless, through its peak, you're looking at around 18 meteors coming through an hour. So a good chance of
19:11seeing something. And actually, whilst it appears from mid-April for a week or so, it's actually
19:18peaking around now. So the 22nd today is the peak. So tonight, more so Wednesday morning, that's when
19:25you have the greatest chance of seeing the Lyrid meteor shower. Now, meteor showers, particularly this
19:32one. What we have is there's a comet orbiting the sun. It's comet 1861 G1, or C, 1861 G1 Thatcher.
19:40And that's orbiting around the sun. And then behind it, it leaves a trail of dust particles. And it's as
19:45the Earth that's also orbiting around the sun moves through that trail of dust particles. And then as
19:53those dust particles, they're not particularly big, but as they then come through the atmosphere,
19:57they burn up because, well, they're traveling so quickly. We're talking around 50 kilometers per
20:04second. So really fast. As a result, as they hit the air, it doesn't have enough time to move out of
20:10the way. And so it just compresses and then heats up and it burns. And so it gets to temperatures of
20:16around 1600 Celsius. And so it becomes really hot, which is why we can see these these lights coming
20:23through all this light coming through because it's the burning of those dust particles traveling so
20:27fast through our atmosphere. Now, most of them burn up through the atmosphere, but if they they could
20:31reach the ground. And so then you could get a bit of meteorite arriving, but that's pretty unlikely.
20:36But nonetheless, it is a dramatic show. And a couple of things to bear in mind. So the Lyrid meteor
20:44shower gets its name from the Lyra constellation because all the meteor showers get their name from the
20:51constellation where the the materials appear to emanate from where they the radiant point. But
20:57actually, the Lyrid meteor shower, it doesn't actually its radiant point isn't around the Lyra
21:04constellation. It's actually slightly closer to the Hercules constellation. So maybe we really should
21:08rename it to the Herculid meteor shower. But anyway, but the Lyrid meteor shower, it's actually the
21:16oldest on record. There is there's data going back to 687 BC in China when they first spotted it. And
21:23obviously, that was way before the night sky was mapped out the way that it is now. And so that's
21:29why it got its name as the the Lyrid meteor shower. It's very close to the Lyrid meteor to the Lyra
21:34constellation that their neighbors Lyra and Hercules in the night sky. But what are the chances of seeing
21:39it? Well, let's have a little look. And if we go back to or go to the early hours of Wednesday morning,
21:45that's when you have the greatest chance, really. That's when it's going to be peaking.
21:49Fortunately, the moon is going to be below the horizon at this point. So that helps.
21:55Unfortunately, there is this big band of rain that I mentioned, and a lot of clouds and blustery winds
22:00in association with this. But once that rains come through, so across parts of South Wales, parts of
22:05the west country as well, there should be some clear sky, some dry weather around. Northern
22:10Ireland's looking pretty cloudy. Also across this kind of swathe of central into southeastern England,
22:16it's going to be cloudy and wet. But also across parts of northeast England, maybe the tip of East
22:21Anglia, and across large chunks of Scotland, a good deal of clear weather here. So a reasonable chance,
22:27albeit Orkney-Shetland here, there's another front, maybe more so Shetland than Orkney,
22:32another front lingering here. So less good there. But a fair amount of the country actually has a
22:38reasonable chance of some clear skies. So if you do want to see it, the advice, yeah, go out during
22:43the early hours, settle down for around 20 minutes, maybe sit in a deck chair or garden chair, recline
22:49back. You want to look up around 60% above the horizon, and let your eyes settle to the darkness.
22:55Ideally, you're away from any artificial sources of light. And then just look. And like I say,
23:01there's around 18 an hour, and you should be able to catch on. They'll look like a shooting star.
23:06Obviously, it's not a star. Stars don't really move. And not particularly quickly anyway. It's these
23:13dust particles coming from the trail from a comet. And we see those meteorols then burning up through
23:19our atmosphere. Do let me know if you see any of these, the Lyra meteor shower tonight. We'd love to
23:25see any pictures that you take. Otherwise, any questions you've had about anything that I've said today,
23:30do put them in the comments. And I'll try to answer some of them either today or Aidan and
23:33Anna can answer them at the end of the week on Friday in our Weather Studio Live, which will be
23:38back at 12.15 on our YouTube channel. As I mentioned already, Anna will be here with, or will be on
23:43YouTube with our 10-day trend tomorrow. And if you need to know a little bit more about what's
23:48happening over the next 14 days, well, why not check out my 14-day outlook video, which is available
23:53on our app. I'll be updating that shortly. Thank you so much for watching. Do hit the like button,
23:58share this with anyone you think might be interested in, and don't forget to subscribe. I'll see you
24:03again soon. Bye-bye.