The last few days have been chilly. Between the showers and cloud, there’s been enough sun to trick you into thinking it’s warm.
But step outside and it feels more Winter than Spring – cold enough to zip up warm and wish you’d brought hat, scarf and gloves.
Even the Cheltenham Festival-goers were issued a warning after snow fell on the race course.
Fear not for your fingertips though. This cold spell won’t last much, with temperatures predicted to reach up to 18°C in some parts of the UK on Wednesday.
That’s due to the high pressure system suppressing the heat moving southeast across Europe in the coming days.
‘Increasingly warm air will move up towards us as we head towards Wednesday and Thursday’, Met Office meteorologist Craig Snell said on Saturday.
‘We’ve still got some colder air over us, so a fairly chilly night to come, especially in the south.’
Down there temperatures could drop as low as -4°C or -5°C in the early hours of Sunday, leaving some frost in its wake. Most of the country will be dry.
Snell said: ‘Temperatures on Sunday on par with what we saw on Saturday, so highs at best reaching around 10°C to 12°C in the brighter moments.
‘Into the evening and nighttime period, a lot of the UK seeing fairly cloudy skies.
‘The clearest of the skies will be down towards the far southwest of England, parts of western Scotland, maybe northwestern England and Northern Ireland too.
‘Where we do see any clearer skies, we will see some touch of frost. But thanks to the cloud cover, a lot of us actually seeing temperatures staying above freezing as we begin Monday morning.
‘But we do start with plenty of cloud, we could just see a few spots of rain developing.
‘But I’m hopeful as the day goes on, we should start to see the cloud break up a little bit, with the best of the sunshine probably across parts of Scotland initially, and then later on across parts of East Anglia.
‘That’s signs of things to come as we go through into Tuesday and Wednesday.’
By midweek, the south of England will be seeing temperatures ‘at least into the mid-teens’.
Around 3pm on Wednesday, the national forecaster predicts 18°C in London, 16°C in Cardiff, and 15°C in Manchester and Plymouth.
In a reversal of recent days, the north will be noticeably colder – around 12°C in Glasgow and Belfast, and 8°C in the far north of Scotland.
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