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Please wake me up when low pressure returns...

Ian Fergusson | 13:30 UK time, Friday, 25 September 2009

You might well be wondering when this prolonged spell of essentially dry and settled weather will come to an end.

Certainly not in the immediate future, but there's growing signs of a change to something more unsettled through next weekend and into the following week.

For the time being however, we've got a sizeable area of high pressure

glued above the West Country, promising more dry and often fine conditions through the weekend and indeed possibly all the way through to next Friday.

Cloud cover vanishes at the edge of this anticyclone, or area of high pressure - but that's not always the case (Photo: Ian Fergusson)The trouble with these weather set-up's is forecasting the cloud cover throughout each day. On paper, a bloated area of high pressure smack above us might offerÌýa geography textbook promise of cloudless blue skies, but in reality, this particular one (like many other

, depending on where exactly they position themselves) is likely toÌýyield a fair amount of cloud day-to-day, especially through the afternoons.

And indeed after a fine start this morning, that's exactly the situation I'm seeing outside the window here inÌýSouth GloucestershireÌý- but as we lose the daytime heating after sunset, much of the cloud will vanish again overnight.

If this set-up had greeted us through the often inclement weather we faced during July, we'd have been sweltering; the lawns and parklands left gasping for rain; and the Met Office lauded for it's 'Barbeque Summer' prediction.

A potential bore: An anticyclone above Bristol, Autumn 2008, bringing endless grey skies of Altostratus (Photo: Ian Fergusson)Ok, so these benign high pressure situations are just dandy if you like your weather served-up quietly, but -Ìýlike a movie without any action scenes -Ìýfor me they risk becoming a real bore.

In my mind, there's something quite special about those dramatic dark, windy and soaking Autumnal nights, as the vast Atlantic Ocean reminds our little nation of it's overwhelming power to dictate our weather.

Bring it on, I say.

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