Ever wondered why our forecasts for 5 days and beyond are written on the scale of the UK as a whole? When looking at forecasts beyond five days into the future the chaotic nature of the atmosphere starts to come into play - small events currently over the Atlantic can have potentially significant impacts on our weather in the UK in several days' time. Therefore whilst we can still forecast the general feel of the weather to a relatively high level of accuracy using our ensemble models, it becomes harder to offer local detail to as high a level of accuracy as our shorter range forecasts. For this reason our text forecasts for 5 days and beyond are written on the scale of the UK as a whole.
Long range forecast
Long range forecast
Wednesday 22 May - Friday 31 May
There is a lot of uncertainty in this period, initially the UK will be in-between low pressure over the near continent trying to keep things unsettled and potentially thundery, and high pressure to the west or northwest which would settle things down. This likely lending itself to a period of rain or showers or even thunderstorms in places mainly in the south and east whilst more settled conditions to the northwest. Later into the period increasingly settled conditions more likely for most, though southern or eastern areas remain occasionally less settled with showers or rain though there will be some sunshine between times, the best of this in western parts. Temperatures are likely to be a little above average, but some large spatial differences are likely.
Saturday 1 Jun - Saturday 15 Jun
There is nothing to suggest that conditions will be massively different to climatology at the end of the current month and though the first half of June. That said, both temperatures and rainfall are more-likely to be a little above average overall, with further rain or showers (possibly heavy/thundery at times) but also some spells of warm sunshine.
Why isn't there more detail in the long range forecast?
Our long range forecast (which is updated on a daily basis) provides an indication of how the weather might change, or be different from normal, (i.e. warmer, colder, wetter, drier) across the whole UK. Met Office meteorologists consider output from a range of weather models when writing these forecasts. These models include those from the Met Office as well as models from other global forecasting centres such as the European Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecasts ( ECMWF).