MONDAY will become partly cloudy in most regions, with some scattered showers developing mainly around the northern coasts and hills, but at times more widespread too, highs near 14 C.
TUESDAY will be sunny with cloudy intervals and isolated showers, lows near 4 C and highs near 14 C.
WEDNESDAY will be sunny, hazy and mild in most areas, but cooling sea breezes might set in due to the slack wind gradients inland. Morning lows could be a touch frosty in some inland areas, lows -1 to +4 C, then highs will be generally in the range of 13 to 16 C, possibly held down to near 10 C near some coasts.
THURSDAY will also be partly cloudy, hazy and still rather mild in the west and some parts of the inland south, but cooler sea breezes will make more substantial progress inland, so with a similar temperature regime but the cooler coastal air more widespread, highs will continue around 12 to 15 C in some areas, 8 to 11 C where sea breezes dominate.
FRIDAY and SATURDAY will see this regime continuing, perhaps with slight variations in temperature but while it turns substantially colder in some parts of Britain, it looks like Ireland might hold on to more moderate temperatures as the track of this colder air seems to be directed more towards France in northeast breezes. So would expect it to stay partly cloudy, possibly more overcast due to more dominant sea breeze influences, and with temperatures still largely above 10 C in many areas, to around 7-9 C in stronger sea breezes.
The longer term outlook is not very "high confidence" with this stagnant high appearing destined to drift around in the general vicinity for perhaps another week or so. It could at some point drift far enough west to let in some colder air, but then it could drift far enough south to let in milder flows from the south. The main aspect of the forecast that we can perhaps underline as most likely is dry weather, and rather chilly nights in general, so that spring blooming is likely to be rather slow to develop even if some of the days are reasonably mild. This pattern could begin to break down to a more active Atlantic regime at some point near the end of the following week. Highs in the week of the 21st to 27th most likely to remain in the 10-13 C range but with some chance of drifting a bit higher at times.
Peter for IWO