Britons are bringing out the barbecues as the nation gears up for a three-month heatwave.

The UK “could enjoy the hottest summer in 12 years, with the sun expected to last until August”, says HuffPost.

With the country “still basking in the glow of the warmest and sunniest May on record”, the Met Office is now predicting that the good weather will last throughout most of June, July and August, says The Guardian.

There will be a slight “blip” over the next ten days, when conditions are likely to be changeable, but according to the Met Office, “more settled and drier weather” and above-average temperatures should follow.

“The probability that the UK-average temperature for the summer months will fall into the warmest of the Met Office’s five temperature categories is 40%, while the chance it will fall into the coldest category is just 5%,” The Guardian adds.

Met Office press officer Charles Powell told the newspaper that the forecaster’s three-month outlook was based on a range of information, including sea surface temperatures, and stressed that it should be treated with caution.

Nevertheless, TheWeatherOutlook forecaster Brian Gaze told the Daily Mirror: “The warmest summer since 2006 is a possibility, after recent years saw a series of disappointing summers.

“June to August only needs to be 1C above average for it to happen.”

Leon Brown, head of meteorological operations at The Weather Channel, was even more optimistic, saying that “33C is expected by early July”.

Asked about predictions that this could be the hottest summer in more than a decade, a Met Office spokesperson told The Independent: “I don’t want to say that it is unrealistic but what we know is that the average temperature in June is 13 degrees Celsius and the greater likelihood is that it will be above that.”

The average summer temperature for the UK was 14.7C in 2017, and 14.9C in 2016, while the long-term summer average is 14.4C.

Last month was the warmest and sunniest on record in the UK, with an average daytime maximum temperature of 17C.