Cumbria will not be excluded from the warm weather heading for the UK this week.

The county is set to experience highs of up to 25 degrees over the next three days, as a short-lived heatwave covers the country.

However a spokesman for the Met Office said that Cumbria will not quite have conditions hot enough to officially qualify as having had the heatwave experience.

"We are expecting temperatures in parts of the north west to reach the low 20s," the spokesman said.

24 degrees is possible for Carlisle, and 25 is possible for Keswick.

"As we go through into Friday, it's possible we'll see temperatures around those sorts of values for the next few days."

The spokesman said that there will be little chance of rain over the next couple of days.

"It will feel very warm and pleasant," he said.

"We are expecting clear conditions across tomorrow - the skies will look very clear.

"The earliest indications we've got of showers potentially building up are on Saturday - and that will be ahead of a change of weather type, which is building from the west.

"After the weekend we've got much fresher conditions coming in from the west.

"That will return us to conditions we had before this relatively hot spell."

The spokesman explained that the brief period of hot, dry weather - which may bring temperatures of up to 33 degrees in the south east, is the result of a low pressure weather system travelling across Europe from north Africa.

"A low pressure system out in the Atlantic has been creating a draught, drawing this warm air up from continental Europe.

"With the change of weather type over the weekend that will be cut, and that will return our weather to be influenced mostly by the Atlantic rather than continental Europe.

"This will be quite abrupt on Sunday. The temperature will drop by a few degrees.

"Conditions will be a little bit more breezy early next week."