Double the chance of a scorching summer after record weather in spring, Met Office says
The Met Office has said it is twice as likely that the UK will experience a hot summer this year.
It is also warning of a heightened risk of heatwaves.
The predictions follow the UK's sunniest spring on record, with 630 hours of sunshine between 1 March and 27 May, and the driest spring in over a century.
On Saturday, the last day of the meteorological spring, temperatures soared to 8C above the seasonal average.
The Met Office 's three-month outlook predicts that the chance of a hot summer is higher than normal, bringing an increased risk of heatwaves and heat-related impacts.
The outlook shows it is 2.3 times more likely than normal that the UK will be hot over meteorological summer, which begins on 1 June and ends on 31 August.
The average temperatures across the UK over those months range from 10-17C, with the south east of England experiencing the higher averages of 16-17C.
The Met Office said: 'While the current three-month outlook shows an increased chance of a hot summer, the temperature signals for this summer are similar to those for recent years and consistent with our warming climate.
'The increased chance of hotter than average temperatures is not a guarantee of prolonged hot weather or heatwaves, but it does mean that heatwave conditions could be reached at times.
'However, it's important to bear in mind that an increased chance of hot conditions could also reflect a mix of hot and cool days, warm nights, or less extreme levels of warmth rather than continual heatwave conditions specifically.'
The summers of 2018 and 2021-2023 were also predicted to be hot.
Data shows it has been a decade since the last time a summer was predicted to be cool, in 2015.
The latest outlook also shows the levels of rainfall and wind speed for the next three months will likely be near average.
The three-month long-range forecast does not identify weather for a specific day or week but gives an indication of possible temperature, rainfall and wind speed over the period as a whole.
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