The weather forecast has been of particular interest to astronomers in the past few days. Across the globe, people have been eagerly awaiting the rare event of the 'Transit of Venus' - when the planet Venus passes directly between the Earth and the Sun.

Weather-permitting, the whole event has been visible from Europe, Africa and the Middle East, with Australia, Asia and the Americas seeing part of it. Here in the UK, many observatories were giving the public the chance to view this twice-in-a-lifetime event using specialist equipment.

Needless to say, the Greenwich observatory in London was fairly busy, and luckily the southeast of England had some of the best weather conditions for observing the event.

Many parts of Europe are under the influence of high pressure at the moment, which means that many people will have been able to have a good look at the spectacle. There were, as always, a few exceptions.

Astronomers in southern Scandinavia may well have been disappointed. An area of low pressure has been bringing much cloud and some rain to the area. In Oslo, Norway, 27mm of rain fell in the 24 hours up to 0600GMT on Tuesday. This is a fair proportion of their monthly average rainfall of 75mm. There were signs that some breaks in the cloud were beginning to develop during the morning which would hopefully give people a chance to get a glimpse.

It was a similarly drab and wet start to the day in Stockholm, Sweden. Here, 32mm of rain had fallen in 24 hours, which is nearly the whole of the monthly average rainfall of 44mm.

So it was Scandinavia that really drew the short straw on Tuesday morning. For most of the rest of Europe, it was a gloriously sunny start to the day. Like the UK, many parts have been experiencing a heatwave. On Monday, the temperature in Biarritz, France rose to 32C (90F). The June average for Biarritz is just 22C. San Sebastian in Spain experienced some even hotter weather with a temperature of 33C compared to the average of 21C.

When London reached 29C on Monday, it beat many of the Mediterranean islands. Ibiza saw just 24C, and Cyprus 26C. After Tuesday's heat, a cooling trend is predicted for the UK.

Weather News from the last five days:
07/06/2004
06/06/2004
05/06/2004
04/06/2004
03/06/2004

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