Time to dust off the old sunscreen (Pictures: Met Office/PA)

After what has felt like an eternity of rain, Brits will get one last excuse to hit the beach as the highest temperatures of the year could hit this week.

While schoolchildren may be gutted to know this as they head back to classrooms, warm weather is widely anticipated to bake Britain.

Weather can always be tricky to predict, but experts say the mercury could rise to as high as 30°C around the middle of the week.

Joanna Robinson, a weather producer for Sky News, says peak temperatures will come on Wednesday or Thursday.

‘There’ll be some warm nights too, especially on Wednesday, when [the] odd place may experience a tropical night – when temperatures don’t fall below 20°C,’ she said.

This would come close to smashing this year’s top temperature so far of 32.2°C, recorded on both June 10 and 25.

The capital will especially feel the heat this week (Picture: Met Office/Michael Mccarthymet)

For the most part, the mercury hasn’t tipped over the 30s since early July.

Jim Dale, founder of British Weather Services, told the Daily Mirror: ‘Forget the much-touted 28°C, there’s every chance later this week that the UK’s highest 2023 temp so far will be beaten.’

The Met Office said on Friday that a heatwave could be ‘on the horizon’ for the days ahead.

There are a few reasons why, the weather agency says. A stubborn jet stream which has been the cause of the rainy weather is finally drifting north, letting the planet-warming higher pressure actually build up.

The former tropical cyclone Franklin – a once Category 4 storm that has crashed through the Atlantic for two weeks – is ‘amplifying the build-up of high pressure’.

‘As high pressure becomes established from this weekend, fine and settled conditions will develop and along with this we will see a rise in temperature across most parts of the UK next week,’ said the Met Office’s deputy chief meteorologist, Chris Bulmer.

For the most part, the mercury has only reached beyond the 30s a few times this summer (Picture: PA)

‘Many places can expect to see maximum temperatures rise to 25°C or above for several days, which would bring some locations into the realm of heatwave conditions.’

Bulmer said that while the hotter weather will mainly be seen in south and east England, the UK will see temperatures ‘likely to be the highest for many since June or early July’.

The Met Office says in its weekly forecast that tomorrow will be a relatively ‘fine day’ with a layer of cloud and fog ‘clearing to leave plenty of warm or hot sunshine’.

From Tuesday to Thursday, it will be ‘mostly dry with very warm or hot sunshine’.

‘However, patches of low cloud and fog overnight. Some drizzle in the far north,’ the service adds, ‘and showers possible later, mainly in the west.’

On Wednesday and Thursday, the Met Office predicts the heat in London will be cranked up to 29°C by the afternoon, with Glasgow seeing a sweltering 24°C.

This summer has been wetter than normal, according to provisional figures (Picture: PA)

Even Stornoway – a port town near the northern tip of Scotland – will see temperatures in the 20s.

As much as it feels like it has never stopped raining this summer, it’s actually been one of the warmest summers on record, per provisional Met Office figures.

Said records date back to 1884, with the summer being the eighth warmest on record but wetter than average due to the particularly roasting June and a dreary July and August.

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Time to dust off the old sunscreen.