Indian summer hits Suffolk this weekend, with Bury St Edmunds and Ipswich seeing unseasonal highs of 24C

An ‘unusual’ blast of warm October weather is set to hit parts of the UK over the weekend, with parts of our county to reach 24C.

Bury St. Edmunds, Ipswich, Sudbury, Haverhill, Newmarket and Mildenhall are all set to see the top 24C on Saturday (October 7), whilst several other areas will flirt around the 22C to 23C mark.

Sunday will see a high of 22C in the county, and the sunshine will continue into next week with Bury and Ipswich again reaching 24C on Tuesday.

Temperatures will remain in the mid-to-high double figures towards the end of next week, although rain will take the place of the sunshine.

Areas in England and Wales will bask in sunshine and warm temperatures far higher than the country’s usual average of 13C for the month.

Expected highs of around 26C on Sunday, according to forecasters, mean the country will be warmer than Los Angeles in California and European beach destinations such as Mykonos in Greece.

Forecaster Greg Dewhurst, of the Met Office, said: “It’s been very hot in Europe over recent days and that warm air is going to drift in across quite a bit of the country on Friday and the weekend.

“Temperatures on Friday should reach highs of around 22C, Saturday around about 25C and then Sunday around 26C, which we last saw in October in 2018.”

He added: “It’s not unheard of, but it’s on the unusual side.”

The hottest temperature recorded in the UK in October was in 2011 in Gravesend, Kent, where temperatures reached 29.9C.

It comes after the UK’s joint warmest September on record last month, which saw a 15.2C average mean temperature, equalling the previous record set in 2006.

A heatwave affected much of the country early in the month, with temperatures peaking at 33.2C at Kew Gardens in London on September 9 – the hottest day of the year.