Brits will bask in temperatures hotter than Greece or the south of France in the coming days.
The sudden spike will see the mercury shoot up to the mid-teens with forecasters predicting sunshine and “very mild” temperatures.
It comes as welcome relief after a bitterly cold start to March.
Temperatures are set to peak at 17C, making the UK warmer than Athens which is predicted to be 7C today (Friday 11) or Monaco where it will be 13C.
The balmy weather will continue next week, when highs of 18C are being predicted by the Met Office on the south coast.
But there will be a north-south divide, with southern areas benefiting most from the spring turn.
A Met Office forecaster said: “The south will see the best of any settled conditions and the best of the sunshine. The strongest winds and heaviest rain will most likely be in the northwest. Temperatures are expected to be mild or locally very mild.”
And there will also be an east-west split.
Met Office spokesman Richard Miles added: “The west will be wet and windy which will gradually spread across the country overnight, and then it will be cooler in the west and wetter in the east.
“That’s the picture for the next few days. It will be wet and windy over the weekend too but when the sun comes out in central and eastern areas, we will see temperatures creeping up to quite pleasant numbers.”
The uplift in weather fortunes marks a drastic change from last month when a triple whammy of storms battered the UK.
Dudley, Eunice, and Franklin all left councils and homeowners with eye-watering bills after causing widespread damage and power outages.
The warmest temperature ever recorded in March in the UK was a sweltering 25.6C, which was measured at Mepal in Cambridgeshire on March 29, 1968.
It comes after new weather charts predict a band of snow heading towards Britain.
A spiral formation of persistent heavy snow will gradually move northwards after appearing around the Balkans next week, with its unusual route to the British Isles also seeing it move through the Alps, according to WXCharts.
The flakes will eventually make landfall in the north east on Tuesday 22 March, before a larger front hits the south coast of England in the early hours of Wednesday 23 March.
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