Spring equinox on Thursday might deliver warmest UK day of 2025 | UK climate

The spring equinox on Thursday could possibly be the warmest day of 2025 and attain “nicely above common” temperatures, the Met Workplace has mentioned.

Wednesday’s highest recorded temperature was 18.7C in Northolt, west London. The Met Workplace meteorologist Simon Partridge mentioned Thursday might be usually dry and high quality with loads of sunny spells, including: “Will probably be a bit of hotter too”.

He mentioned: “The best temperatures are anticipated in an space from London and the house counties to southern Midlands. Right here we’re prone to see 19C or 20C broadly, with one or two spots prone to attain 21C.”

The anticipated rise in temperatures coincides with the spring equinox, which is the primary day of astronomical spring. Components of the UK could also be hotter than Barcelona in Spain and Athens in Greece, the place highs of 15C and 12C are forecast respectively.

The best recorded UK spring equinox temperature was 21.5C in 1972, and the Met Workplace spokesperson, Stephen Dixon, mentioned 2025’s highest temperature is unlikely to high that.

This yr has to this point peaked at 19.7C in Crosby, Merseyside, on 9 March. Wetter climate will transfer in on Friday and the weekend might be extra unsettled.

Greater strain to the east of the UK is at present serving to to attract hotter air north throughout the nation, Dixon mentioned, including that the sunshine on Thursday might be solely damaged by some fair-weather cloud in central components of England.

Friday will stay heat for a lot of however some rain is predicted to maneuver in from the south-west. Showers are forecast to begin in Cornwall and step by step journey north-east throughout that day into components of Wales and central and southern England. Rain is then anticipated for a lot of the nation all through the weekend.

Meteorological spring all the time begins on 1 March whereas astronomical spring, or the equinox, begins round 20 March annually.

The opposite equinox is in September and each mark the solar crossing the equator, fairly than being at an angle. Day and night time are due to this fact about the identical size.