No April showers on horizon as temperatures set to soar in Northern Ireland

It could be seen as a crumb of consolation for the majority of people confined to their homes and gardens, while others may view it as a cruel irony as most of the Province’s scenic locations are out of bounds.

Oli Claydon, a meteorologist with the Met Office, said: “It’s another week of fine settled weather across the UK. For Thursday 17 degrees is forecast in Northern Ireland and on Friday it’s 20 possibly.

“The temperature looks to be fairly generic across the country. There’s not much in the way of wind and the cloud is very thin.”

He said that April temperatures in the Province were well above the norm: “The average temperature in Northern Ireland for the month of April so far has been 8.9 degrees. That’s 1.3 degrees above the average.”

He explained the average was taken over a 30-year rolling period from 1981 to 2010.

Warm as it is, there’s still some way to beat the hottest ever April in the Province, in 2011 when an average temperature of 10.6 degrees was recorded across the month.

Forecasters said the expected heatwave is due to a large area of high pressure stretching from Scandinavia to Ireland.