Weather Forecast For Reading & Berkshire

• 

  Thursday 11th June 2026

  Summer comes back for the weekend – but more cloud and rain first.

  Thanks to Fiona for the photograph.

  So we start the forecast period with high pressure trying to nudge in from the south-west, and low pressure close by to the north-west which will bring today’s rain – and stop weekend temperatures getting quite as high as I previously expected.

  

  Today starts bright but it will cloud over fairly quickly from the west, with rain arriving around 8am and continuing until early/mid-afternoon. And after it remains mostly cloud, with occasional bits of light rain. Temperatures pretty depressing for the time of year, around 15’C and breezy. Remaining cloudy overnight, the odd spot of rain possible – still around 15’C as we’ll be dragging warmer upper air across.

  Friday morning will be cloudy with occasional spots of rain/drizzle. During the afternoon, the cloud should start to break up – and probably by late afternoon or early evening it is fairly sunny. Feeling notably warmer, around 22’C – quite windy though. Reasonably clear skies overnight, down to around 12’C.

  Saturday will see good spells of warm sunshine. Some cloud likely floating around at times but overall more sunshine than cloud. Temperatures reaching around 23’C – a bit lower than previously forecasted as Thursday’s low pressure will be to our east and dragging some cooler air down from the north-west, which will temper things a tad. Reasonably clear skies overnight, down to around 11’C.

  By Sunday we are squeezed between two low pressure systems – our old one to the east, also giving us a slightly northerly flow, and one to the west which will bring complications for Tuesday onwards.

  

  Sunday then should see good spells of sunshine once more, some high cloud making it hazy and perhaps some general areas of cloud at times – though the latter less likely. Warm but nowhere near as much as previously expected, around 22’C with the northerly breeze taking the edge off. Mostly clear skies overnight, down to around 10’C.

  Monday again should be reasonably sunny, some high cloud likely to make it hazy, perhaps some more fair-weather cloud later in the day with a chance of a late afternoon/evening shower. Around 22’C – though give and take. A weak weather front probably crosses overnight, bringing more cloud and perhaps a bit of rain.

  That’s about as far as I can go with decent levels of confidence.

  Two forces on our weather will be that low pressure from the west trying to push across – it will be forced to the north of the UK rather than cross, but some of it’s weather fronts will cross at some points. The other force is hotter air trying to spread up from the south.

  So I think broadly for Tuesday to Thursday, it will be warm or very warm – sometimes sunny, sometimes (perhaps more often) cloudy with some showery rain (probably nothing too much) at some points.

  That said, I wouldn’t rule out it being broadly hotter and sunnier than that instead. A notably lower chance, but a chance.

  Quite a lot of complexity going on at the moment so not sure where we go from there – more likely I’d say it will settle down for a bit with some hot/sunny days. But I was expecting that to have happened by now…and it hasn’t.

  I still think July starts on the unsettled side.

  Have a pleasant end of week/weekend – at least we have two well-timed (for more people than not) warm and sunny days – and next week should be better than this week, even if that is damning with faint praise.

  Next forecast should be on Sunday.

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• 

  Monday 8th June 2026

  Four more unsettled days but summer is on the way back for the weekend. Woohoo!

  Thanks to those who read the summer forecast yesterday, I even had a couple of donations for which I am grateful – all goes towards the cost of running the website. That and the generous $6.19 a month (ish) Meta pay me for having a site with over 10,000 followers.

  And thanks to Andy for the photograph…will be back to sunny ones the next time I write.

  We start with low pressure in charge to our north-west, though the Azores high to the south-west is starting to bulge north.

  

  Monday starts cloudy with bits and pieces of light rain – gradually it will become more persistent and heavier in the latter part of the morning. The main rain clears around lunchtime, though there may still be some heavy showers in the 2-3 hours afterwards, with some sunshine – the afternoon/evening will end increasingly sunny. Breezy at times, reaching around 18’C. Reasonably clear skies overnight, perhaps a passing shower, down to around 10’C.

  Tuesday will be a day of sunshine and showers, some of them heavy, perhaps hail/thunder mixed in. You may miss them all, around an 80% chance of catching at least a couple of showers but some places may stay dry. Quite windy and around 18’C. Reasonably clear skies overnight, down to around 18’C.

  Wednesday will be another day of sunshine and showers, plenty of showers around and unlikely to miss them all – but possible. More likely catching at least a few showers, likely heavy, perhaps with hail/thunder. Around 17’C and breezy at times. Come back, summer. Clear skies for a time overnight but cloud thickening later – down to around 9’C.

  Thursday may start bright but rain will be pushing in from the west – timing uncertain but arriving at some point in the morning and lasting a good chunk of the day. Around 15’C and quite windy. Yuck. Some clear spells overnight, milder at around 13’C.

  By Friday we start to see the Azores high push up towards us.

  

  Probably there’s still lots of cloud around, and even some patchy rain – so don’t get too excited, but perhaps there will be some hazy sunshine at times. Warmer, around 21’C – higher if we do get a bit of hazy sunshine. Also still quite windy. Some cloud, some clear spells overnight – down to around 13’C.

  And then summer is back for Saturday. Nice timing.

  The more likely outcome is for sunshine for much of the day, though perhaps there is still some residual cloud to shift at times, more likely in the morning. Becoming quite hot, around 26’C or so. Clear skies likely overnight, down to around 14’C.

  Sunday should be hot and sunny – around 28’C.

  Next week likely starts hot and sunny, with temperatures roughly around 28’C to 30’C more likely.

  Perhaps an increased chance of showers but broadly very warm/quite hot later in the week, though fairly tentative right now.

  Have a pleasant week, I should be back on Thursday morning.

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• 

  Summer Weather Forecast 2026

  Hello and welcome to my Summer Weather Forecast 2026, aimed at Reading & Berkshire, though realistic could apply to much of southern/central England, as it will be fairly broad-brush.

  Usual caveats, seasonal forecasting is experimental – my hope is always to get more right than wrong, but even that is not always the case.

  Whilst you can (and I do) make an argument for the most likely weather patterns, events will at times skew this – all it needs is a hurricane in the Atlantic, or typhoon in the Pacific, to change the track of the jetstream and the forecast can go to pot, at least temporarily. Amongst other possible events.

  I don’t think my spring forecast was too bad, for example May I said would see wetter conditions earlier and drier, sunnier conditions later – whilst I didn’t see record-breaking temperatures 3 months in advance (which is impossible), I was very confident on warmer than normal temperatures. My April record was not so great, March reasonable.

  Thanks to Andy for the photograph, and all those that sent them in for this forecast, and the others. My forecasts would be far more boring without them.

  Background Signals

  Background signals tend to have less impact in summer, but the one that people will be talking about over the coming year is El Niño and the potential for a “Super Niño”.

  El Niño’s influence on weather patterns around the Pacific countries is definite and somewhat predictable – on our weather is more limited and also less predictable. It’s sometimes easy to say “x happened because of El Niño” in the UK, not so easy to say something will happen in the UK because of El Niño, as the other usual background signals are in play also.

  Anyway, it is just developing, so any impact would have a lag and there isn’t likely to be a case of saying “summer was x because of El Niño” in a few months time, although I’m sure the usual suspects in the media will attempt to.

  What impact it will have for the globe, is an increase in global temperatures – so we’ll probably see 2027 as the hottest year on record, and statistically that means our little corner of the globe may well follow.

  I’m sympathetic to the argument that the chance of unsettled weather in autumn, and a warmer more westerly-driven winter (not necessarily unsettled, could well be cloudy and dry) are slightly more likely under El Niño.

  And despite the above, there are also analogues (previous years with El Niño developing at this time of year) that suggests more westerly flows, especially in June – ie greater chances of showers/rain. I remain on the fence about those.

  June

  So we are a week into June when writing this, alas, due to my holiday and needing to catch up with life last weekend.

  Anyway, I’d long signalled an unsettled start to June, and though I thought it would be starting to settle down by now, the cool and showery conditions will last at least a few more days.

  By around the second Friday/Saturday of June, we should see high pressure build from the south-west – and generally dry, sunny and very warm weather dominates, though maybe not perfectly every day.

  Shortly after there is a good chance of further hot/very hot weather – if this happens, I wouldn’t be surprised if the June record of 35.6’C was broken somewhere in the UK.

  Towards the end of the month, we may see less hot conditions, either from weather fronts trying to nudge in from the west bringing cloud and a little rain – or more likely thundery lows developing to the south and spreading north, with high humidity if so.

  Overall, despite the cool start to the month, I expect above-average temperatures, around average sunshine amounts and slightly above-average rainfall.

  Confidence level around 70%.

  July

  July looks pretty mixed, though that likely includes some heatwaves and downpours. My guess is that it starts very warm but without any excessive heat.

  There is a signal for lower pressure to be to our south west, which will drive hot weather for much of continental Europe and at times the UK, so we’ll sometimes (maybe often) see hot/very hot weather, but also at times see thundery lows spreading up from the south-west to break down heatwaves, and they’d then cool things down for a few days, with initial downpours turning into a few cloudier/showery days.

  Before the heat returns.

  There isn’t particularly a signal for any part of the month to be hotter/wetter, etc, more a repeated pattern of hot weather, followed by downpours, followed by cooler, cloudier showery weather – and repeat the pattern.

  Overall I expect above-average temperatures, around or slightly-above average sunshine amounts, and at least slightly-above average rainfall (depending on whether you catch some notable downpours).

  Confidence level around 50% – I do think there is a plausible chance that high pressure is centred further west and we have fewer breakdowns and less tendency for very hot conditions instead (still very warm/hot), but I’ve given my view on the more likely outcome above.

  August

  For August, I expect a bit more influence from high pressure to our east, so tending to be longer dry/sunny spells – especially earlier in the month, and again later in the month.

  Definitely the chance of some unsettled weather at times – generally from breakdowns of hot weather in a similar fashion to August, and some occasional heavy showers on hot days.

  Probably it is often very warm/hot.

  Overall I expect above-average temperatures, at least slightly above-average sunshine amounts, and around average rainfall.

  Confidence level around 50% – hurricane season can have some impact on the jetstream by this point so my confidence level is never that high for August.

  Summary & Autumn Thoughts

  So, potentially scorchio quite often but not a dry summer either.

  Remember this is my reading from long-range models and extrapolating from recent conditions/years and general patterns – so it may or may not work out like this. But it would be a surprise if it was not a hotter summer than normal, and there were no further significant heatwaves. A real surprise.

  Early thoughts on autumn are for an often pleasant September and an unsettled October/November, being the currently more likely outcomes.

  Wishing you all a super summer…and hope you can cope with the almost-inevitable heatwaves. Do feel free to share.

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• Summer Forecast Photograph Request

  You might not believe it if looking out of the window today, but it’s time to do my summer forecast – and I need a photograph.

  Please.

  Usual rules:

  1. Must feature summer weather of some description – there is more than one type of summer weather, I try to use what matches the forecast.
  2. Must be the local area.
  3. Can be from any year…as long as it is summer and has weather.
  4. Must be landscape-orientated, ie the width longer than the height. I know plenty of people ignore this when posting on Facebook, which is totally fine, crack on. But I’m not going to use it unless it is landscape-orientated.

  Whoever’s photograph I choose will adorn the forecast and also be the cover photograph on Facebook for the next 3 months.

  My life is easier if you add them to the Facebook post but you can also e-mail them.

  I hope to write it tomorrow morning.

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