- 5 weeks ago
This is the Met Office UK Weather forecast for the next 10 days 19/08/2026. After more than two months of no measurable rainfall in Wisley, Surrey and a similar dry streak for many other locations across southern England and Wales, rain was finally recorded falling from the sky on Tuesday night. Does this mark the beginning of the end of this extraordinary summer? Or just a temporary respite? Bringing you this 10 day weather forecast is Aidan McGivern.
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You may also enjoy:
– Deep dive in-depth forecasts https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLGVVqeJodR_ZGnhyYdlEpdYrjZ-Pmj2rt
– Podcasts exploring weather and climate https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLGVVqeJodR_brL5mcfsqI4cu42ueHttv0
– Daily weather forecasts https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLGVVqeJodR_Zew9xGAqYVtGjYHau-E2yL
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NewsTranscript
00:00Hi there, welcome to the Met Office 10-day trend.
00:03I imagine many people across the south of the UK enjoy the sensation of rain falling
00:07from the sky overnight and into the start of Wednesday.
00:11And we certainly saw rain widely across the south of the UK, where it has been so severely
00:17lacking during the last two months.
00:19In fact, Wisley and Surrey tops the table in terms of the length of its dry streak.
00:24The 62-day dry streak came to an end as 1.6mm of rain fell on Tuesday night.
00:331.6mm of rain obviously isn't going to solve the drought situation overnight, but of course
00:40it's better than nothing.
00:41The question is, has the seal now been broken?
00:45Does this mark the beginning of the end of an extraordinary summer?
00:50And it has been an extraordinary summer.
00:53This map here shows how much maximum temperatures averaged across the UK have been above the
01:01normal.
01:01And you can see most of England and Wales, two degrees above average or more.
01:05Some parts of England have been more than four degrees above average for their maximum temperatures.
01:12Closer to average Western Scotland, where it's also been wetter than average.
01:15The only part of the UK where it's been wetter than average so far compared with summer as
01:19a whole.
01:19For most of the UK, it's been a remarkably dry summer so far, especially across England
01:24and Wales.
01:24Some places, less than a third of their summer rainfall.
01:28Close now to the end of the season, which of course ends on the 31st of August when you
01:34talk about meteorological summer.
01:36So, we need, by my calculations, an awful lot of rain to make up for the severe lack of
01:43wet weather of the past two months.
01:46And to answer my previous question, has the seal been broken?
01:51Well, one short answer to that is that the weather patterns have indeed changed, but we're
01:57unlikely to see the amount of rain we need, certainly in the next week to 10 days.
02:03What we are likely to see is something closer to normal as far as UK summer weather is concerned.
02:10It might be difficult to remember what a normal UK summer feels like, but the jet stream has
02:15dipped south.
02:16Low pressure has replaced high pressure, and so it's going to be considerably cooler over
02:22the next few days.
02:24In fact, temperatures dipping below average for a few days later this week.
02:27And with low pressure over the top of us, with low pressure in the upper atmosphere over
02:32the top of us and the jet stream to the south of us, there'll be frequent showers, not just
02:36where we've seen plenty of rain, the far northwest, but across all parts of the UK during the next
02:41couple of days.
02:42However, as is typical for a UK summer, rain will come in the form of showers.
02:47And we're expecting the liveliest showers on Thursday morning to affect northern and central
02:51England, parts of Wales, some thunderstorms thrown in, some hail, as well as torrential but
02:57highly variable rain.
02:59The showers will sink south, even affecting parts of the south and southeast by the afternoon.
03:04Fewer showers towards the north compared with Wednesday, still some around, and this
03:09cool northerly breeze making it feel very different compared with the summer so far, of
03:15course.
03:15Temperatures in the south close to average, temperatures further north a little below average.
03:21In fact, it's going to turn a touch on the chilly side for some places overnight.
03:26Temperatures heading towards the low single figures for some sheltered glens of Scotland,
03:31for example.
03:32More widely, 8 to 10 or 11 Celsius in the north.
03:37Touch heading up towards the low teens in the south.
03:42And plenty of clear spells, actually, for the start of Friday.
03:45Showers becoming more confined to the east and the west of the country, with the central
03:52spine, seeing predominantly sunny spells with this brisk northerly breeze.
03:58Plenty of showers for Northern Ireland.
04:00Wales in the southwest seeing the heaviest downpours.
04:03Again, the old thunderstorm thrown in.
04:05Also some showers in the east.
04:07Look at those temperatures.
04:08With the northerly breeze and that cooler start, we're looking at highs of mid-teens in places,
04:15perhaps even just stretching into the low 20s.
04:19But that's such a contrast compared with summer so far, where maximum temperatures in the south
04:25have been averaging the mid to high 20s remarkably.
04:29So how do those temperatures compare with average?
04:32This map shows widely below average by several degrees in some northern and eastern parts of the country.
04:39And that's, again, something we've really not seen much of during the summer so far.
04:45Friday and Saturday mark the nadir in temperatures through this week, as the jet stream is well to the south
04:52of the UK.
04:52So there's cooler air affecting many parts of France as well, where there has also been an extraordinary summer.
04:59Even more extraordinary in some respects than the UK's summer.
05:02But through the weekend, high pressure starts to build in once again.
05:08If you're worried about another heatwave, don't be.
05:10I'll explain why we're not going to get one in the next 7 to 10 days in a moment.
05:14However, that high pressure is going to kill off a lot of those showers gradually through the weekend.
05:19So, yeah, we'll start off again on the cool side on Saturday.
05:22Some sunny spells, but also still with this cool air mass, this north-to-northwest of the airflow.
05:28Showers confined to coastal areas, not quite as heavy as Friday showers.
05:32And plenty of dry and clear spells in between.
05:36Rather a lot of cloud, not extensive sunshine.
05:39And you'll see how the temperatures, again, are below average, widely mid-to-high teens in the north, low 20s
05:45further south.
05:46So a welcome, fresh feel for many of us, where, especially in the south, people have been sick of the
05:56relentless heatwaves.
05:57In the south on Sunday, we start with some sunshine, again, a cool feel to things.
06:01A bit more cloud builds towards the north and northwest.
06:04Some showery rain reaching western Scotland, Northern Ireland, the northwest of England.
06:09Not a huge amount, however.
06:11And staying dry once again in the south as that high pressure dominates things once again.
06:16So how much rain does that all add up to over the next few days?
06:21Well, this map shows the rolling rain accumulations from the time of recording, Wednesday afternoon, right the way through to
06:26the weekend.
06:28And it shows the speckled nature of the showers for many parts of the country.
06:32So highly variable from place to place.
06:34Yeah, some places will get 30 to 50 millimetres of rain across parts of England and Wales,
06:39especially to the north and west of England and west Wales.
06:42Scotland and Northern Ireland seeing more even distribution of rainfall totals.
06:47And again, 30 to 50 millimetres in places.
06:50But there are some parts of central and south-eastern England where there are still whites on the map.
06:55So hardly any rain during the next five days.
06:58It just shows that hit and miss, that variable nature of the rainfall.
07:01I wouldn't take the exact position of the wetter areas and drier areas too literally,
07:06because, of course, showers are so hit and miss.
07:09Either way, those showers are easing through the weekend.
07:11We've got high pressure in place as we end the weekend and go into next week.
07:15But will it bring another heatwave, as I've already suggested?
07:18No, because it's more likely to be fleeting.
07:21As you can see, that high pressure gets squeezed away by two lows.
07:25There's one low dipping to the south out to the west of the UK.
07:29Jetstream dipping south as well.
07:31Another low creeping up from the south.
07:33Could bring some showers to the south on Monday.
07:36And the high, meanwhile, all the time gets pushed out to the east of the UK.
07:43However, it's at this point that various computer models start to differ.
07:47We don't just look at one computer model run when we're talking about weather beyond five, six, seven days.
07:51We look at lots of computer model runs because of chaos theory.
07:55The idea that subtle changes at the start of a forecast can diverge significantly beyond four, five, six days' time.
08:02And you end up with very big differences later on in the forecast.
08:06So we look at these different computer model runs that have different starting conditions.
08:12Now, the European model is run 51 times.
08:15On the top, we've got the control run, which has the best possible starting conditions,
08:19the best information fed to it at the start.
08:21The bottom panel here shows member 14, which has slightly different starting conditions,
08:28which gives us an idea of how much these two model runs will vary as we go into next week.
08:34As you can see, they start off very similar.
08:36High pressure to the east, low pressure dipping to the west of the UK.
08:42And that means that a dry start to next week is likely across many parts of the UK.
08:48And the low pressure to the west is slow moving.
08:51Because of its position, we're likely to see temperatures rising early part of next week.
08:57Not likely to be a heat wave, but ending up above average by Tuesday, Wednesday.
09:04With that low pressure to the west as well, we're likely to see cloudier skies
09:08and perhaps a better chance of showers or longer spells of rain towards the west and the south
09:12early to middle part of next week.
09:15But it's from the middle part of next week that these two scenarios differ significantly.
09:20One subtle change you can see is that this low elongates out to the west in the Atlantic.
09:25There's an even deeper low, an ex-tropical feature moving up in this scenario.
09:30And if I play them forward from the middle of next week,
09:33what you can see is something quite active develops on the bottom panel, this member 14.
09:38And by Friday the 28th of August, there are significant differences between the two.
09:43Not huge differences because they both have low pressure over the UK.
09:46They both have wetter and breezier weather over the UK by the end of next week.
09:52But this one obviously has much wetter and windier weather across the UK
09:56and further shifted towards the south.
09:58So, these emerging differences are visible in these two computer model runs.
10:04And, so you don't have to, I looked through every single one of the 51 computer model runs from the
10:10European model.
10:11And what I noticed was that most of them had some form of low pressure close to the UK
10:16later next week and into the bank holiday weekend.
10:20Very few of them had high pressure.
10:22Where they differed was the timing of the onset of the low, the track of the low, the depth of
10:27the low.
10:27All those kinds of differences that you'd expect when looking beyond six or seven days' time.
10:32So, what can we say?
10:33Looking towards the bank holiday weekend, it's more likely that we'll have low pressure close to the UK.
10:40Now, the top version here, that has low pressure moving away
10:44and a ridge of high pressure building by the bank holiday.
10:47This one keeps the low pressure.
10:48So, more likely to have low pressure close to the UK.
10:52But exactly where it's going to bring its unsettled weather,
10:55that's the key source of uncertainty later next week and into the bank holiday weekend.
11:00We don't just look at the European model, we look at lots of other models.
11:03And this shows a summary of all those computer model runs.
11:07It shows the top three most likely weather patterns for Wednesday the 26th of August.
11:12And the most likely, 55% chance, has high pressure over Scandinavia.
11:17Low pressure, well to the west of the UK.
11:20And this brown area of western Scotland indicates drier than average weather for western Scotland,
11:25as that low to the west takes its time coming in.
11:29But the second most likely has that low already over the UK,
11:33with widespread blues indicating widespread above-average rainfall.
11:36So, this, the middle of next week, is the main area of uncertainty.
11:41How quickly will that low move in from the west and bring some significant rain and wind?
11:47Even by Friday, we've got the same weather pattern as the most likely.
11:52Keeping that low out to the west, we've got the same weather pattern as the second most likely,
11:57having that low over the UK.
11:59So, it may take all week next week for low pressure from the Atlantic to arrive over the UK
12:05and bring spells of rain and wind.
12:08But either way, for that bank holiday weekend,
12:10what many of the computer models are suggesting is low pressure will be dominant.
12:14Here's the most likely, albeit only a 14% chance.
12:17Here's the second most likely.
12:18Again, low pressure, lots of blues on the map, spells of rain and wind.
12:24But it is a long way off.
12:26So, we're going to be keeping up dates right here.
12:28And what we can say for sure is the next seven days
12:31will look like a return to more typical weather for the summer for the UK.
12:35Some relief from the heat, some relief from the dry spells.
12:39But, yeah, we're going to need an awful lot of rain
12:41to make up for what we've seen through the summer so far.
12:45We'll keep updated, as always, on our YouTube channel.
12:46That's all from me for now. Bye-bye.
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