Glastonbury revellers have been warned the festival looks as though it will begin with a soggy start when the first acts appear on stage.
The popular event starts on Wednesday, June 26 and runs to the following Sunday. With just one week to go, long-range forecasts show the period will have “a mixture of weather ” - including showers.
As a result, by the time the first acts appear on stage at noon on Friday much of the farm could turn to mud. The forecasts show that Thursday is a 60 per cent chance of rain between 7pm and 1am the following day.
Maps from WX Charts also show a period of rain falling over Glastonbury on Friday, when the likes of PJ Harvey and Dua Lipa are due to perform to huge crowds.
The Met Office’s long-range forecast said of the week of the festival: “There is little sign for any one type of weather pattern to dominate during this period.
“As such, typical conditions for the UK are most probable with a mixture of weather types. All areas can expect to see some spells of drier, sunnier weather, but there will also be showers or longer spells of rain at times.
“Currently the only signals, weak as they are, hint that rain and showers will tend to be more biased towards the north and west, with any more prolonged drier interludes favouring the south. Temperatures are most likely to be close to or slightly above climatological average.”
Forecasters with Metdesk have issued further weather maps through until Saturday, June 22, four days before the start of Glastonbury. It shows heavy rain is expected across the Home Counties and parts of the Southwest of England, including Somerset, on Saturday, June 22. The heaviest of this rain is believed to fall across Buckinghamshire and Bedfordshire.
In the meantime, some sunshine is expected across many regions of the UK - and temperatures will feel as hot as 30C across Greater London and Surrey on Saturday, June 15. It'll appear like 27C elsewhere across the capital, 27C in Norfolk and Cambridgeshire and 25C as north as Humberside. Even in the west, forecasters said it would feel as warm as 25C in Herefordshire and Gloucestershire. Last month, temperatures exceeded 24C in the UK for at least four consecutive days.
More than 200,000 people attend Glastonbury every year. This time, Dua Lipa, SZA and Coldplay are among the headline acts at the huge event. Shania Twain has been booked for the Sunday teatime "legend" slot.