3 hours ago
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Pack an umbrella, sunglasses and a warm coat is the message from forecasters who have said the weather is expected to be changeable this week with rain continuing across the UK after the previous dry spell.
Much of the country will have alternating sunny spells and showers over the next few days and temperatures will be within the seasonal average of 14C (57F) to 18C (64F).
Met Office meteorologist Dan Stroud said the rain was “welcome news” as rainfall figures for April had so far remained below the amount expected for this time of year.
Stroud added: “Changeable probably sums it [the weather] up nicely.
“The rain is going to be fairly welcome news for the gardeners, because it’s been actually very dry up until now. [For] April to date, rainfall figures are well below where they should be.”
The average rainfall figure for April nationally is 71mm but the UK has only had 27.2mm so far, or 38% of the April average.
Tuesday is expected to get off to a chilly start with a lot of dry and fine weather between a few isolated showers.
Stroud added: “It will cloud over from the west late in the day, with a band of heavy rain and strong and gusty winds arriving across England and Wales, pushing into Northern Ireland, southern Scotland during the overnight period into Wednesday morning.
“That air of rain is not hanging around, it’s actually moving quite quickly south and eastwards across the country.
“So conditions will improve significantly during the course of the afternoon.
“Sunny spells and showers is the name of the game on Wednesday afternoon, and that leads quite nicely into a generally dry and settled spell of weather on Thursday.
“But that too will be very short lived, with another band of cloud and rain slowly edging in from the west towards the end of the week, and more especially next weekend.”
The driest and brightest skies will be in the eastern parts of the country, while it will be wet and cloudy in parts of Wales, central southern England and Northern Ireland.
The UK has had one of the worst wildfire seasons on record following one of the driest Marches in decades combined with warmer than average temperatures in April.
Abergwesyn Common in Powys, Wales was consumed by a 1,600 hectare (3,950 acre) fire, an area roughly 400 times the size of Cardiff’s Principality Stadium.
Last week, Wales’s three fire services said they had responded to more than 1,300 grass fires this year.
On the Mourne Mountains in Northern Ireland, recent fires scorched land used by wildlife including small heath butterflies, rove beetles, skylarks and peregrine falcons.
At Howden Moor in the Peak District, the National Trust said a recent fire that stretched for about three miles had caused £30,000 worth of damage.
