The official start of summer brings warm and sunny weather after a long spring
Well 1st June arrived, the start to Summer (according to the Met Office) and it seems the weather was paying attention.
Like flicking a switch, the warm sunny weather we have all been craving, arrived.
Thursday was the warmest day of the year so far, with 25C at Lee-on-Solent in Hampshire.
It seems we missed spring, but I’m not complaining.
Why has it been so sunny?
High pressure is the simple answer.
The jet stream has moved to our north, allowing warm air to push up from France and Spain.
High pressure has deflected weather fronts to our north keeping us dry and sunny.
The good news (if you like warm and sunny) is that it’ll stay with most of us all weekend.
What’s the forecast?
Both days are pretty similar and also very similar to much of this week, there are some subtle changes.
By night mist, low cloud and fog will reform and roll into central areas from the North Sea.
By day the sunshine will soon get to work ‘punching’ holes in the cloud and ‘burning it back ‘ to eastern coasts.
Here will stay fairly cloudy, grey and cool most of the weekend with temperatures around 16C.
Away from the east there will be lots of beautiful warm sunshine, unbroken blues skies for many.
It’ll also be dry for most places.
For northern England and Scotland there will still be a low risk of a few scattered showers.
One thing that is more uncertain are thunderstorms developing in France, they are likely to push into the Channel islands and may move into southern or southwest England.
Any showers will be few and far between.
Winds will mostly be light allowing the temperature to climb to a warm 19-22C widely.
If that’s too hot then head to the coasts where the onshore winds and sea breeze will help to give a fresher 18C.
What ever you do have a great weekend, take hay fever tablets as pollen levels remain moderate to high in the south and sun cream is a must - UV levels will be up to high in the south with the sun as strong as it is in France and northern Italy.
I can smell the barbecues already...
Other things to watch out for this weekend:
The international space station - the skies will be clear making for perfect viewing.
It will be passing every night, two or three times, roughly between 10pm and 3am.
There are loads of apps to check what time, how strong it will be and where to look.
It looks like a slow moving white light moving through the sky, I’ve seen it once when astronaut Chris Hadfield was on board.
I follow him on twitter, his photos of Earth are amazing, it’s crazy to think we can see them and they can see us.
Hurricanes
The hurricane season is under way (started 1st June).
The first of the Atlantic hurricane season was named Tropical storm Andrea on Wednesday, it brought heavy rain and flooding to Cuba and is now crossing Florida, bringing the risk of tornadoes.
Orlando, Florida has collected 81mm of rain, over 3 inches, in the 24 hours to 1am our time today and Tampa 86mm.
The hurricane season runs from 1st June to 30 November.
The peak is from the end of August to the start of September.
This year both the Met Office and NOAA are forecasting an above average season with more named storms and hurricanes than normal.
Where do the Hurricane names come from?
A panel of people from the National hurricane centre come up with the names.
They are in alphabetical order, alternating girl, boy, girl etc.
There are 6 lists which rotate around every year.
If there are more than 21 storms they start using the greek alphabet.
If a hurricane has caused major devastation then it will be removed from the list, never to be used again, like Katrina and a new one will replace it.
I have to wait until next year to have my name used.
These are the names for the 2013 season: Andrea, Barry, Chantal, Dorian, Erin, Fernand, Gabrielle, Humberto, Ingrid, Jerry, Karen, Lorenzo, Melissa, Nestor, Olga, Pablo, Rebekah, Sebastien, Tanya, Van and Wendy.
What about next week?
High pressure has been deflecting the weather fronts, from Monday they try to battle back.
The remnants of 'Andrea' might be just what is needed to finally cause the 'breakdown' to allow the cooler and wet weather to return.
As usual this transition in the weather has lots of question marks, it could be quite a slow progress.