With sunshine and highs of 23C in the south east and brighter spells anticipated elsewhere, July is getting off to a warm start for some this weekend. Rain is expected in the north.
Many people will have sun on Friday, but there may also be a few showers; however, the Met Office predicts that most of them will end by this evening.
Following a string of heatwaves that saw temperatures top 40C in countries like France and Spain, as well as the warmest day of the year so far being recorded in Britain, most of Europe had a record-breaking June.
But the first weekend of July won’t compare, with Saturday expected to start off cloudy and rainy in the north and west before rains start to spread there later.
The sunniest part of the day, with highs in the south east of 23C, will spread to the south west and Wales by midday.
All save the north of Scotland, which will experience clouds and some rain, will be dry by Saturday night.
The weather on Sunday is expected to be sunnier, especially in the south and Wales, however there may be a few light showers in the north during lunchtime before they dry off by the evening.
This weekend, temperatures in the south will stay in the 20s, with highs of 22C in London and the south on both Saturday and Sunday.
In cities like Birmingham and Manchester, the temperature will fall to 18C.
But by next Friday, temperatures in areas of the south and London are expected to hit 27C, so things will start to heat up.
The absence of rain is expected at Wimbledon today, which is excellent news for tennis lovers.
Play is unlikely to be interrupted while visitors to SW19 enjoy highs of 22C with slight cloud cover.
After a sweltering June that included the warmest day of the year thus far, when the thermometer reached to 32C in several parts of the south, the lower temperatures have followed.
Europe had record-breaking temperatures last month, with highs of 37°C reported in Germany and Italy and 32.5°C in Norway, the highest temperature ever recorded in Europe inside the Arctic Circle.
According to a recent Met Office analysis, climate change has increased the likelihood of record-breaking Junes in western Europe by a factor of ten over the past 20 years.
According to scientists, the sixth month of the year now only occurs once every 66 years when high record temperatures occur.
They happened only once every 723 years in 2003.
‘Attribution studies analyze the influence of climate change on present events and how they could be more likely in the future, depending on projected greenhouse gas emissions,’ said Dr. Nikos Christidis, the Met Office’s climate change attribution scientist.
“Our most recent analysis examined how, during the last 20 years, the likelihood of the warmest June on record in western Europe has evolved.
“We determined that the likelihood of encountering such record-breaking 2003 temperatures again has increased by more than ten times in only two decades.”
“We also projected how the probability would alter in the future if we don’t cut greenhouse gas emissions using our extreme event attribution approach.”
This demonstrated that by the end of the century, record-breaking Junes like the one in 2003 might occur every two to three years.