A quick look back at the weather maps for July showed high pressure strongly influenced our summer weather patterns. Provisional data for the UK from the Met Office suggests July 2018 was the joint second warmest and the sixth sunniest on record, but second sunniest in England. Most places recorded below average rainfall but extreme rain in Northern Ireland late in the month probably gave Aldergrove its wettest day on record.
The image above of a barchart from the Met Office showing how cold and warm it has been relative to the long term average, it shows the cold end to the winter then the warm spring and summer which followed.
The big question for August is what's going to happen to the high pressure. We start the month with the high pressure over the south and it's the first week when we'll see the highest temperatures. Parts of England will be noticeably hot and sunny in the first week with day time temperatures in the range 28 to 32 Celsius. At the same time, Atlantic low pressure will head east between Scotland and Iceland to bring cooler, unsettled days to Scotland and Northern Ireland. This will introduce cooler, fresher westerly winds to Ireland and the UK and most people in the south east of the countrywill welcome this less hot air.
The map shows top temperatures (Celsius) on 7 August from one of the weather models, and it highlights the huge gradient from north west to south east (map credit: MetDesk).
After a week or so of fresher, less humid air, the high pressure could make a return for the last 10 days or so of the month. This would likely bring predominantly dry and very warm weather, with above average sunshine levels and below average wind speeds.
In summary, we expect more high pressure than average across the UK and Ireland this August; something similar to the last couple months. Temperatures should outturn above average, especially in England.
We'll be back in a few weeks to see if there any signals for the weather patterns in September.
For more weather information you can follow our senior meteorologist, Simon Cardy on twitter weather_king.