UK weather: Severe thunderstorms likely amid scorching temperatures

‘Not out of realms of possibility’ a month’s worth of rain could fall in three hours, Met Office says

The UK could be hit by severe thunderstorms this week as a spell of extremely hot weather continues, the Met Office has said.

The national weather service has issued yellow weather warnings for the vast majority of areas in the UK from Monday to Thursday, saying that the potential thunderstorms “could be significant and disruptive”.

The only areas excluded from the warnings are northern Scotland on Monday and Scotland and Northern Ireland on Thursday.

Craig Snell, a meteorologist at the Met Office, said that heavy rain could lead to “some localised flooding” by Monday evening.

It is “not out of the realms of possibility” that more than a month’s rainfall could fall in some isolated areas over the course of just three hours on Monday, Mr Snell added.

There could be up to 90mm of rain in some spots, exceeding the average rainfall for the whole month of August, which stands at around 70-80mm in England.

While thunderstorms are likely to affect the west of the UK in particular on Monday, there is the ”risk of thunderstorms breaking out almost anywhere”, according to Mr Snell.

However, the weather will remain exceptionally hot for many this week.

Temperatures could reach 36C on Monday in the London area and then stay above 35C on Tuesday and Wednesday as well.

If this happens, it will be only the fourth time on record that there have been three consecutive days of temperatures over 35C in the UK.

The last time this occurred was in August 1990, with the two previous occasions both happening in the summer of 1976.

Friday, which was the warmest August day in 17 years, saw temperatures climb to 36.4C at Heathrow.