Pack away the barbecue, Britain. The brief warmth we scraped together over the bank holiday weekend is on its way out, and temperatures are set to drop noticeably as we push into the working week.
After parts of the country saw highs nudging 20°C on Saturday and Sunday, forecasters are warning that a cooler Atlantic system is sweeping in from the northwest, dragging temperatures back down to the low teens by midweek. Northern England and Scotland will feel it first, with Wales and the Midlands following close behind.
It’s the sort of thing that has become almost tradition at this point. A bank holiday arrives, the sun makes a half-hearted appearance, everyone dusts off their garden furniture, and then Monday evening delivers a stiff breeze and the faint smell of rain to remind you exactly where you live.
The Met Office has flagged that Wednesday and Thursday are looking particularly grey, with outbreaks of rain likely across much of the north and west. Daytime highs in Manchester and Edinburgh could struggle to reach 12°C, a full eight degrees below what some areas enjoyed just days earlier.
“We’re seeing a fairly classic post-bank-holiday pattern,” one meteorologist noted this week. “The high pressure that gave us those warmer conditions has shifted east, and Atlantic air is filling the gap.”
The south and southeast will hold onto slightly milder conditions for a day or two longer, but even London is forecast to dip into the mid-teens by Thursday, with cloud rolling in and any sunny spells becoming increasingly brief.
There’s a silver lining if you’re not a fan of the heat: the cooler temperatures are expected to ease any pollen counts that spiked over the weekend, offering some relief to the millions of hay fever sufferers who spent the bank holiday sneezing their way through it.
Whether the mercury bounces back before the end of May is the real question. Long-range models are showing some promise for the final week of the month, but meteorologists are cautious about reading too much into forecasts that far out. Spring in Britain, as ever, keeps its cards close to its chest.
