UK weather: forecasters predict hottest summer in 12 years

Britain will bask in above-average
temperatures for next few months, says Met Office

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The  UK “could enjoy the hottest summer in 12 years, with
the sun expected to last until August”, says HuffPost.

With the country “still basking in the glow of the warmest and
sunniest May on record”, the Met Office is now predicting that
the good weather will last throughout most of June, July and
August, says The Guardian.

There will be a slight “blip” over the next ten days, when
conditions are likely to be changeable, but according to the Met
Office, “more settled and drier weather” and above-average
temperatures should follow.

“The probability that the UK-average temperature for the summer
months will fall into the warmest of the Met Office’s five
temperature categories is 40%, while the chance it will fall into
the coldest category is just 5%,” The Guardian
adds.  

Met Office press officer Charles Powell told the newspaper that
the forecaster’s three-month outlook was based on a range of
information, including sea surface temperatures, and stressed that
it should be treated with caution.

Nevertheless, TheWeatherOutlook forecaster Brian Gaze told the
Daily Mirror: “The warmest summer since 2006 is
a possibility, after recent years saw a series of disappointing
summers.

“June to August only needs to be 1C above average for it to
happen.”

Leon Brown, head of meteorological operations at The Weather Channel, was even more optimistic,
saying that “33C is expected by early July”.

Asked about predictions that this could be the hottest summer in
more than a decade, a Met Office spokesperson told The Independent: “I don’t want to say that it
is unrealistic but what we know is that the average temperature in
June is 13 degrees Celsius and the greater likelihood is that it
will be above that.”

The average summer temperature for the UK was 14.7C in 2017, and
14.9C in 2016, while the long-term summer average is 14.4C.

Last month was the warmest and sunniest on record in the UK,
with an average daytime maximum temperature of 17C.