The Met Office has moved to play down reports that Britain is in line for the hottest spring on record.
The Daily Mirror reported this morning, Monday, that the medium-to-long term forecast for April was for scorching weather with temperatures soaring to 26 deg C in many parts of the country.
But a Met Office spokesperson has told Bristol Live that, while the weather looks set to be quite nice for the next week or so, there is no indication that Bristol, or Britain as a whole, is in for a heatwave.
The Met Office told Bristol Live that this week and this coming weekend will see a high pressure system dominate the weather, bringing clear skies, settled conditions and little wind. That will mean we'll have increasingly warmer days, but chilly nights.
By Thursday and Friday, it could reach 17 or 18 degrees C in Bristol - above average and very pleasant, but not a record-breaking heatwave.
"We are not sure where this has come from, but there is nothing to indicate that we will have a heatwave or 26 deg C," she said.
"We do a longer-term forecast from six to 30 days ahead, but that looks at trends, and there is no anyone can say definitively what the weather will be like in mid-April from now," she added.
"It is not impossible that temperatures could climb that high, but there is nothing to indicate that will happen," she said.
Actually, the Met Office is forecasting that the high pressure will remain in place for the rest of March, but as we go into the first couple of weeks of April, that system will move away, and probably will be replaced by a return to the conveyor belt of Atlantic lows, which will bring more normal unsettled weather with April showers and fluctuating conditions.
