What’s the weather forecast for Glastonbury 2024?
Predicting the weather at Glastonbury Festival in recent years has been a lot like predicting the headliners. You just don’t know what you’re going to get. Whether you pray for rain or shine, it doesn’t seem to make a difference at southwest England’s largest annual event. The weather gods have their own ideas.
It used to be that you could forecast one thing for certain: mud, mud and more mud. As one punter told a journalist in this ITV retrospective, “It wouldn’t be Glastonbury without the mud really, though, would it?” American post-grunge band Puddle of Mudd have clearly missed an opportunity to play at the festival. They would have done well to cash in on their name’s suitability for its most enduring characteristic.
But the 2005 edition of the festival went far beyond mere muddiness. Two months of rain fell in a few hours, submerging its main campsite in two feet of brown water. Tents designed to keep the water out were now keeping it in, nine people were injured due flooding and hypothermia, and many acts had to cancel their performances.
Last year, the 2023 festival was hit by the exact opposite. A heatwave dried out the festival grounds and left crowds suffering from sun stroke, dehydration and heat exhaustion. Temperatures reached a high of 32 degrees centigrade, water stations were swamped with festival goers, and some bemoaned the lack of electric fans installed around the grounds.
With the science telling us that global warming is now having an undeniable impact on the UK’s climate, perhaps we should get used to more festivals like the last one. Maybe the famous Glastonbury mud will give way to scrublands of yellow grass in the future.
So what about this year?
Sun, sun, sun — here it comes! Well, some of it, at least. Following an unusually cool and particularly cloudy start to the summer, the forecast for June 26th to 30th at Somerset’s most famous farm is looking up. And thankfully it’s also a little less extreme than what we saw at Glasto 2023.
Current predictions suggest that the weather’s going to be consistently balmy but not blazing for the entirety of the 2024 festival. Perfect for an afternoon cider with Shania Twain, or an ice coffee with Annie Mac.
Still, it’s not all sunshine and summertime tipples, as at least some light rain is expected on Thursday, Friday and Saturday. Festival attendees should still pack waterproofs, wellies, and make sure all tents are up to standard for keeping warm and dry throughout the weekend.
If we use a combination of the Met Office’s forecast for next week and the BBC’s 14-day forecast as a guide, the temperature should hover between daily highs of 21 and 25 degrees, with drizzle and perhaps the occasional scattered shower, but a healthy dose of daily sunshine. Stay tuned, though, as any Glastonbury veteran will tell you that this outlook can change suddenly at the shortest of notice.
Be prepared for an unforeseen deluge of rain or the mudslide that might ensue. And scout out the nearest water station in case temperatures really start to rocket. After all, it wouldn’t be Glastonbury without the unpredictability, would it?
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