Rain rain go away: How the Jetstream is blocking a UK summer
This month people expected the weather to turn itself around, but there's no sign of summer making a dramatic recovery just yet. After the wettest June in more than a century, the rain today is still all over us just like Italian footballer 'Pirlo' was in Euro 2012.
Summer is here and for the time being it's a case of put up or jet off to our near neighbours Spain and Italy who are on the right side of the Jetstream.
So what is the Jetstream and why is it a big factor for why the weather is so dismally bad, making us a bunch of miserable Brits? Think of it like a ribbon of fast flowing wind miles and miles wide, meandering west to east about 7 miles above the earth's surface. It's position is crucial for us to have a summer worth remembering like the one of '76 my peers always talk about.
Right now its too far south, sitting to the west of Britain, stretching down past France and then across northern Spain. Here's the bit worth remembering for those of us who crave sunny and warm July evenings!
The Jetstream is blocking all the summer heat coming up from the near continent, acting like an invisible barrier bouncing the warm air back to where it came from. So whilst it holds off areas of high pressure that would rescue summer, it's letting in the infamous unsettled weather which comes in off the Atlantic Ocean, crossing over us with nothing to stand in its way.
So as we head into the weekend, this is why that last minute dash to the beach won't be calling you just yet. The forecast for the rest of the month is hard to pin down. A spell of fine weather won't buck the trend just yet but being optimistic the Met Office say there is some sign of an improvement as we head towards August. Don't put your brollies and wellies away just yet.