UK weather: Sunshine and warmth to return to country as temperatures to rival Greece

Temperatures in Britain will rival parts of the Mediterranean this week as Britain enjoys an extra burst of warmth and sunshine, despite the official arrival of autumn.

Forecasters said the south and east of the UK could enjoy highs of 23C on Thursday beating Athens and the Greek islands and matching Barcelona. The mercury could even rise by a degree or two more.

However, for northern regions of England and in Scotland, autumnal wet and windy weather is predicted to persist from Wednesday until the weekend.

A cold start on Tuesday will give way to sunshine and highs of 18C. However, skies will cloud over in Scotland and Northern Ireland, with rain and gales expected, the Met Office said. It will also turn windier in northern England.

By Wednesday it will turn increasingly warm in southeast England, although there will be persistent rain in the west and cloud and wind across the northern half of the UK.

Thursday will be warmer still with real-feel temperatures of around 23C in London and the mercury topping 20C as far north as far north as Grimsby.

Met Office spokesman Grahame Madge said a plume of warmer air blowing in from the Atlantic would see the south on Thursday potentially looking at 23C or higher.

“Friday values continue but there is less certainty about what is going to happen; there is a cold front that may push further south,” he told The Independent.

But the warmth will dissipate across much of the UK by the weekend with highs of around 15C by Saturday.

However, high pressure in the south will bring “good temperatures by day, clear skies and nothing much in the way of rain” over the next week.

“It will be a completely different picture for the northwest and Scotland, where there is heavy rain forecast," Mr Madge said. “In the West Highlands there will be a lot of rain. Over a 30 hour period we could see as much as 80mm.”

Across the whole of the UK over the period, cold nights, frost, mistiness and fog are a possibility.

The latest forecast for warmer weather in the south does not qualify as an Indian summer, which is defined as “a warm, calm spell of weather occurring in autumn, especially in October and November”.

The Met Office said an Indian summer falls later in the year and follows immediately after a period of very cold weather, including sub-zero temperatures.

The split fortunes for the north and south of the UK over the next seven days follows stormy weather that buffeted much of the country last week. Storms Ali and Bronagh brought heavy rains and wind gusts up to 80mph.