Sunday 8th March
The misty and dull conditions persisted all day on Saturday as a blanket of cloud was trapped under the high pressure system to the east with little breeze to break up the cloud. As a result the temperature so very, very slowly eased upwards over twelve hours to reach a maximum of just 7.9C at 20.10 in the evening, a rise of only 2C. There was very little change over night with a minimum of 7.1C at 01.44 early Sunday.
The low cloud was so thick that the peak UV level of 0.7 was the lowest since 19th February whilst the peak solar radiation of 151W/m2 was also the lowest since that date.
Sunday began where Saturday left off, with fog at dawn limiting visibility to 200m. The day ahead is likely to be a repeat of Saturday with the low, thick cloud still trapped under the area of high pressure with little breeze to break up the cloud cover. However, there are signs that the situation is slowly changing as the air stream has backed from north on Friday to east on Saturday and now southeast today.
Monday will initially see the continuation of the southeasterly light breeze but there is optimism that as the morning progresses the breeze will back into the south, a warmer direction, that might allow the cloud to break up and some brightness to arrive. By Tuesday we will be under an Atlantic pattern of weather from the southwest with higher temperatures by day and night. However, there are signs that weather fronts will arrive as depressions edge closer from the Atlantic. The forecast surface pressure charts show a very complicated set of low pressure systems next week, just to the west of the UK, slowly edging our way over the next few days. At least it won’t be so gloomy as recent days.