The Met Office has said Monday (31 August) will see the best weather of the bank holiday weekend, after thunderstorms and heavy rain battered Greater Manchester and surrounding areas over the weekend.
Storms and downpours hit the region
Torrential downpours fell on Sunday afternoon (August 30), with some places also experiencing intense thunder and lightning, including in the city centre. Earlier in the day, the Met Office issued two separate yellow weather warnings for thunderstorms, which together covered almost the whole of the UK.
Those conditions came at around 6pm, as rain water poured down a stairwell at Piccadilly Station, gushing onto the platform below and onto the tracks. The extreme weather also forced a 'temporary show stop' at Manchester Village Pride at Sackville Gardens.
Festivals and sport hit by rain
Festivalgoers at Creamfields in Cheshire and Reading Festival in Berkshire were forced to brave the rain and mud in plastic ponchos all weekend. Elsewhere, the cricket at Lord’s in London was halted by the rain on Saturday.
Referring to the forecast for the days ahead, Met Office senior operational meteorologist Dan Stroud said: "It’s another day of sunny spells and showers, a generally bright but cloudy start with sunny spells in the east, we will have some showers from the get-go in the west and they will become a bit more heavy, the odd rumble of thunder is possible."
"A drier and brighter end to the day," he added. "Monday promises to be the best of the three days, still showers around but a lot less than what we’ve seen."
Outlook for the rest of the week
"Tuesday across England and Wales promises to be reasonably fine with some lengthy sunny spells. It’s a different story across Scotland. We’ve got a band of cloud and rain," Mr Stroud said.
Mr Stroud continued: "Wednesday, it changes, it goes downhill, turning cloudy and wet during the course of Wednesday, particularly across Wales and northern England northwards."
Drought status unchanged
Despite the rainfall over the past week, the Environment Agency (EA) revealed that there have been no changes to the drought status of any areas across England.
Months of uncharacteristically dry and hot weather over the summer months has left all of Wales and large parts of England in drought status, with any remaining areas in the stage before a drought known as prolonged dry weather.
Greater Manchester - along with north east England, Yorkshire, Cumbria and Lancashire, Merseyside and Cheshire - remain in prolonged dry weather.
Water restrictions are still in place across large parts of England, including for customers of Bristol Water which became the latest to impose a hosepipe ban.
