The past few days have offered a couple of perfect examples of how wind direction can have a massive effect on the resulting maximum temperature at this time of year.

Friday, August 12th and Monday, August 15th, were both very similar in that any morning cloud completely cleared by 11am. But while the wind blew from a SW’ly direction on Friday, nudging Wanstead up to a very warm 28.1C, by Monday the high pressure had drifted north, drawing in a cool NE’ly flow off the North Sea. The high temperature in Wanstead on Monday was nearly four degrees cooler at 24.4C.

Under these conditions temperatures will be warmer the further west you go, as the graphs below show.