Ice creams at the ready
Dust off the deck chair and grab your shades because if reports are to be believed, we're in for a scorcher of a summer over the coming weeks.
Hot off the heels of late April's mini heatwave which saw temperatures hit 23 degrees in parts of the South East, a
new Met Office report has painted an equally sunny picture for the summer months ahead - with their findings suggesting that we could actually be in for a decent summer.
Imagine that... with ice creams and sun tan lotion and everything - in the UK, too.
In fact, just this weekend we reported that we could all be sunbathing as early as May 5, with a nine-day mini heatwave set to
send temperatures skyrocketing to 20 degrees.
Additional reports suggest that temperatures could rise to the point where the UK becomes hotter than Ibiza and Crete later this week, with mercury topping 20 degrees and peaking on Thursday - according to
Sky News.
We better get use to it, as Met Office officials are saying that the "chances of heatwaves are higher than normal" across the next three month period, with the weather generally being "warmer than average".
The same report suggests that there's a 40 per cent chance that the next few months could be hotter than usual - which is two times normal odds for this period of the year.
Meanwhile, Met Office experts also revealed that there is a "slight reduction" in the chance that we'll encounter a "wet period" over the next three months - something that'll undoubtedly be welcome news to any readers with tickets to a 2022 festival.
Still, as with all weather predictions it's important that we take this sunny outlook with a pinch of salt. In the same report, the Met Office continued to explain that "whilst this doesn't necessarily mean heatwaves will occur, it does increase the likelihood of heatwaves compared to normal, particularly in June and July."
These reports have since been echoed by other weather boffins, with Exacta Weather's James Fadden telling
The Daily Star that: “There is now the potential for a major spell of warm weather to develop during the latter part of May or early June.”
The Met Office's new reports also states that their findings are an "average of conditions over the UK as a whole" and "could just as easily reflect a mix of hot and cool days, warm nights, or less extreme levels of warmth rather than heatwave conditions specifically."
However despite all this bet-hedging, with any luck it's becoming more and more hopeful that after a couple of rubbish summers spent in lockdown with nothing but telly and banana bread for company, we could all soon be in for a toasty few months spent in various sun-trap beer gardens.
We'll drink to that.
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