How long will the mild weather last?

From Country Living

In late February 2018, we were bracing ourselves for the Beast from the East, which brought heavy snow and sub-zero temperatures to the UK. One year on and the weather couldn't be more different.

Many regions have been enjoying the first signs of spring a little earlier than expected this week, with record-breaking temperatures hitting Scotland. On Thursday afternoon, a high of 18.3C was recorded in Aboyne, a village in Aberdeenshire. That's the highest maximum temperature for February in Scotland since 1897 and a dramatic temperature increase from this time last year, when there was around 15cm of snow on the ground and temperatures struggled to get above freezing.

The Royal Horticultural Society has even declared it the most fragrant February in living memory, with winter flowers thriving in parks and gardens thanks to the warm air and lack of hard frosts.

With mild weather and plenty of sunshine forecast for the weekend (22 - 24 February), it certainly feels like spring is in the air. But how long will the unseasonable warm spell last?

"The pattern we're seeing at the moment is from high pressure which is sat over UK and continental Europe," Grahame Madge, a spokesperson for the Met Office, told Country Living. "We expect that to remain until at least the end of next week, when there are signs that it might break down."

This high pressure system is said to be having "a double impact" on the UK. "First, it’s allowing daytime temperatures to come up because the weather is largely settled. As soon as fog clears we’ve got warmth coming down from the sun," Madge explained. "It's also preventing the passage of low pressure systems to our shores. Those storms that are well out in the Atlantic are dragging up warm air as they spin up from further south and we’re getting the warm weather from this, not the associated strong winds and heavy rain."

With the current spring-like weather set to last until the end of the month, Madge said February 2019 will "easily" be in the top 10 warmest, going back to 1910. The current record maximum temperature for February is 19.7 °C, set in London on 13 February 1998.

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