UK weather: Heavy showers and brighter spells forecast as conditions remain 'highly mixed'

More rain to follow on Friday

The UK will experience a spell of varied weather over the coming days with a mixture of sunny spells and scattered showers, the Met Office has said.

This comes the week after Britain recorded the hottest day of the year so far, with thousands of sunseekers flocking to the country's beaches during the heatwave.

Aidan McGivern, a meteorologist at the Met Office, said: "The weather remains highly mixed across the country during the next few days. Thursday is looking largely cloudy. There will be some heavy showers around, but also some brighter and drier spells."

Apart from small patches of sunshine in the south, the start of Thursday will be predominantly overcast, with low cloud hanging over northern and eastern England.

Some sharp showers will develop by the afternoon, after moving eastwards from Wales across into south-east England.

However, conditions will be brighter elsewhere, especially in south-west England, western Scotland and Northern Ireland, and temperatures will reach highs of 23C in the London area.

The showers will mostly dry up on Thursday evening, before another wet weather system arrives to bring more rain late at night.

Mr McGivern said: "It does tend to dry up widely on Thursday evening – albeit briefly because the next weather system is knocking on the door to bring some persistent wet weather into western and southern Scotland, north-west England Wales and Northern Ireland by the end of the night."

An area of low pressure will mean that many will experience unsettled weather on Friday, with gale force winds predicted to hit sections of the Irish Sea coast and some significant amounts of rain likely to fall in the west of the UK later in the day.