Thunderstorms could put a dampener on performances by the likes of Queen, Alicia Keys and Diana Ross at this weekend's Jubilee concert at Buckingham Palace.
People celebrating in central London have so far enjoyed warm and dry weather, but the Met Office is considering putting out a weather warning for Saturday.
Heavy and possibly thundery showers are likely in southern England in the evening and could stretch into Sunday.
"Southern areas are likely to see a spell of showers on Saturday and Sunday, which could turn heavy and thundery at times," said Met Office deputy chief meteorologist Rebekah Sherwin.
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"However, there will also be some breaks in the cloud even here, and northern areas are most likely to stay fine and dry."
Simon Partridge, also from the Met Office, said there wasn't yet enough confidence to issue a warning but it would be reviewed on Friday "simply because of the number of people we're expecting in the capital on Saturday night".
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Ten thousand free tickets have been issued for the Platinum Party At The Palace on Saturday, which will be broadcast on the BBC from 7.30pm.
Sir David Attenborough, Emma Raducanu, David Beckham and Stephen Fry will also make appearances, and there will be a recorded performance from Sir Elton John.
Friday is forecast to be the warmest day of the four-day Jubilee, with temperatures of 25C (77F) in the south on Friday.
Later in the weekend the highest temperatures are expected to be in the North West.
One man was holding a placard as he marched in front of the soldiers, while the guardsmen continued to march around the protesters on the ground.
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Police officers quickly grabbed the men and dragged them to the side of the road.
The protest came moments before members of the Royal Family were driven down the Mall. The Queen was in Buckingham Palace at the time.
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Protest group Animal Rebellion claimed they were responsible and said they were "demanding that Royal Land is Reclaimed".
The Met Police tweeted shortly after the incident: "A number of arrests have been made of people who attempted to enter the ceremonial route in The Mall at approximately 10.10hrs today."
The Queen, who is 96 years old, is staying in Buckingham Palace for this year's Trooping the Colour, which celebrates her birthday, but in past years she has taken part.
Image:Police ran to apprehend the protesters
Image:A protester wearing a plastic crown was arrested by the police
In 1981 she was riding her horse down the Mall during the procession when 17-year-old Marcus Sarjeant fired six blank shots at the Queen.
She remained suitably calm as police wrestled him to the ground. He was jailed for five years under the 1842 Treason Act, which had not been used since 1966.
Image:Invaders on the Mall during Jubilee celebrations
Image:Police officers detain a protester
Four months later on 14 October 1981 another 17-year-old, John Lewis, fired a rifle from an empty building at the Queen and Prince Philip in Dunedin, New Zealand, as they got out of a Rolls-Royce.
Lewis missed the Queen and was placed in a psychiatric hospital, from where he tried unsuccessfully to escape two years later to assassinate Prince Charles, who was visiting the country.
Famous figures from showbiz, sport and politics - as well as some of the nation's COVID heroes - have been honoured in the Queen's Birthday Honours list to mark her Platinum Jubilee.
This year's recipients are said to reflect the monarch's "invaluable" qualities as she celebrates 70 years on the throne, with organisers giving more consideration to certain themes including sustained public service, the environment and youth engagement.
Among those awarded are actor Damian Lewis - who raised £1.5m to provide meals for NHS workers during the pandemic with his late wife Helen McCrory - fashion designer Stella McCartney and broadcaster Clare Balding, who all earn CBEs.
Former England footballer Rio Ferdinand receives an OBE, while Wales star Gareth Bale and Liverpool midfielder James Milner get MBEs.
Image:Wales football captain Gareth Bale receives an MBE
From the world of politics, former Northern Ireland first minister Arlene Foster receives a damehood, and ex-cabinet minister Jeremy Wright - who called for Boris Johnson to resign over partygate this week - is given a knighthood.
There are top honours for author Sir Salman Rushdie and illustrator Sir Quentin Blake who are made Companions of Honour.
The Order of the Companions of Honour is limited to just 65 members at any one time and recognises those who have made a long-standing contribution to arts, science, medicine or government.
Sir Quentin hailed his award as "an enormous privilege", while Sir Salman said: "It was with great surprise and delight that I learned of this extraordinary honour. It's a privilege to be included in such illustrious company, both past and present."
Image:Sir Salman Rushdie is made a Companion of Honour
COVID workers honoured
This year's Birthday Honours list once again features those involved in the fight against the coronavirus outbreak.
There are knighthoods for AstraZeneca's chief executive Pascal Soriot - after the company developed a successful vaccine with Oxford University - and Stephen Powis, national medical director for NHS England.
England's chief nursing officer Ruth May receives a damehood, while Andrew Goddard, president of the Royal College of Physicians, is knighted.
Image:England's chief nursing officer Ruth May is made a dame
Dr Raghib Ali, a consultant in acute medicine, is made an OBE after he took leave from his university work to volunteer unpaid in hospitals on the COVID frontline.
And 22-year-old carer Alex Griffiths, from Dudley in the West Midlands, who provided end-of-life care for patients unable to see their loved ones due to COVID restrictions, receives a British Empire Medal.
Sport
Britain's women curlers are recognised for their gold-medal winning performance at the Winter Olympics in Japan.
Skip Eve Muirhead, who finally won gold at her fourth Games, is made an OBE, while MBEs go to her teammates Jennifer Dodds, Hailey Duff, Mili Smith and Victoria Wright, along with coach David Murdoch.
Image:Britain's curling team Eve Muirhead, Vicky Wright, Jennifer Dodds, Hailey Duff and Mili Smith have been recognised
England cricketer Moeen Ali is made an OBE, saying of his award: "It's an honour to be recognised... more than anything, I know it makes my parents happy."
Former England and Watford striker Luther Blissett and Manchester City legend Mike Summerbee receive OBEs.
Snooker players Judd Trump and Mark Selby have been recognised with MBEs, while Sean O'Loughlin, the former Wigan and England rugby league player, gets an OBE.
Image:England cricketeer Moeen Ali receives an OBE
Husband and wife Neil and Lora Fachie, who each won para-cycling gold at the Tokyo Olympics last summer, receive OBEs.
Visually impaired para-skier Neil Simpson gets an MBE after winning gold at the Winter Games, with his brother Andrew, who acts as his guide, receiving the same recognition.
Arts and entertainment
MBEs are served up to Masterchef presenters John Torode and Gregg Wallace for services to food and charity.
Wallace said: "From a council estate in Peckham to being recognised by the Queen is for me something akin to a fairytale story. I am incredibly, incredibly proud."
Image:Masterchef presenters John Torode (L) and Gregg Wallace (R) have received MBEs
Ian Rankin, author of the Inspector Rebus novels, is knighted for services to literature and charity.
Call The Midwife creator Heidi Thomas receives an OBE and said her honour will be going "straight on the mantelpiece" in Nonnatus House, the fictional convent in the hit TV show.
Coronation Street stars Helen Worth, who plays Gail Platt, and Antony Cotton, known for his role as Sean Tully, receive MBEs.
Image:The Queen visited the Coronation Street set last year where she met Helen Worth (far right) who receives an MBE
Singer Bonnie Tyler receives an MBE and said the honour shows that "anyone from any background can become a success".
Former TV reporter Alexis Bowater receives an OBE for spending the past decade working to combat violence against women after she was terrorised by a cyber stalker who was jailed in 2009.
Politics
Commenting on her damehood, former DUP leader Ms Foster told Sky News it was a "huge thrill" because she is a "big royalist".
She added: "I follow the Royal Family closely, particularly Her Majesty the Queen, so to receive the letter on Her Majesty's Service, as I did to inform me, it was really lovely."
Image:Arlene Foster has received a damehood
Former culture secretary Maria Miller receives a damehood, while fellow Tory MP Tracey Crouch gets a CBE for her work on the fan-led review of football governance in the wake of the European Super League fiasco.
Nia Griffith, Labour MP for Llanelli, is also made a dame.
And there is a second successive honour for the Blair family following former prime minister Sir Tony's knighthood at New Year. His son Euan is named an MBE for services to education in his role as founder of Multiverse, which provides apprenticeship programmes.
Youngest and oldest honourees
The oldest recipient in this year's list is 104-year-old Angela Redgrave who - like the Queen - is celebrating 70 years of public service as the founder and principal of Bristol School of Dancing.
The youngest honourees are 11-year-old twins Elena and Ruben Evans-Guillen who have raised more than £46,000 for the NHS over the past three years.
All three have received British Empire Medals.
Image:The Queen is celebrating 70 years on the throne
A total of 1,134 people received an award in the Queen's Birthday Honours list, with a record proportion going to women.
The percentage of women this year - 51.5% - is slightly higher than the previous record of 51.2% set in 2015.
The proportion going to people from ethnic minority backgrounds, 13.3%, is down from a record 15% last year.
The percentage of LGBT recipients is down slightly from last year, from 5% to 4.6%.
PM: Honour recipients are 'inspiration to us all'
Prime Minister Mr Johnson said: "This historic Platinum Jubilee is not only a celebration of the monarch but of the qualities she possesses.
"The honours she confers this week reflect many of those qualities that have been invaluable from all different walks of life and to communities across the UK.
"I pay tribute to all of this year's winners. Their stories of courage and compassion are an inspiration to us all."
The Queen has said she is "inspired by the goodwill shown to me" and thanked the nation as a new portrait of her was unveiled for the Platinum Jubilee.
In a special message to the country, Her Majesty said "many happy memories will be created" over the next four days.
The 96-year-old monarch is celebrating 70 years as the Queen and said she hopes the festivities will provide people with an opportunity to reflect on the country's achievements since 1952, adding that she is looking to the future with "confidence and enthusiasm".
"Thank you to everyone who has been involved in convening communities, families, neighbours and friends to mark my Platinum Jubilee, in the United Kingdom and across the Commonwealth," she said.
"I know that many happy memories will be created at these festive occasions.
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"I continue to be inspired by the goodwill shown to me, and hope that the coming days will provide an opportunity to reflect on all that has been achieved during the last seventy years, as we look to the future with confidence and enthusiasm."
Along with her remarks, a Platinum Jubilee portrait was unveiled, showing the Queen in Windsor Castle wearing a dusk dove blue Angela Kelly coat.
The image was taken by photographer Ranald Mackechnie in the Victoria Vestibule in the Queen's private apartments at Windsor.
The Queen, who at the age of 96 has mobility problems, has been pacing herself ahead of the commemorations.
The extended weekend begins with the traditional Trooping the Colour military spectacle on Thursday, involving more than 1,500 officers and soldiers and 350 horses from the Household Division.
In the evening, more than 3,000 beacons will be set ablaze across the UK and the Commonwealth.
Holidaymakers are continuing to face disruption at airports, with more than 150 flights cancelled on Wednesday.
Airlines including EasyJet and Tui were among those to make cancellations, although most customers will have been given advance notice.
There have also been long queues at terminals ahead of the Jubilee weekend.
The transport secretary said airlines and operators, which are struggling with staff shortages, had "seriously oversold flights and holidays".
EasyJet has cancelled at least 31 flights at Gatwick, to destinations including Bologna, Barcelona, Prague, Krakow and Edinburgh.
Last week the airline said around 24 flights a day would be cancelled from the airport between 28 May and 6 June.
Tui Airways is also continuing to cancel six daily flights at Manchester Airport, representing a quarter of its schedule and affecting around 34,000 travellers.
The company said all customers affected had been contacted, but some people told the BBC their flight had vanished from schedules and they had not heard from Tui.
British Airways has cancelled 124 short-haul flights at Heathrow, although the airline said these were pre-planned and passengers were told in advance.
Airlines UK, which represents the major British airlines, said the "vast majority" of flights would be operating as scheduled.
Up to two million people are preparing to fly over the next few days, with the Jubilee bank holiday coinciding with half-term.
Mr Shapps said the government had been clear that it was up to industry leaders to tackle travel disruption, which was also seen at Easter.
'Absolute chaos'
Michael Turner
Michael Turner, a nurse from Shoreham, is currently on his third attempt to go on holiday with his family to Tenerife.
Due to fly from Gatwick last Thursday, Mr Turner was told his EasyJet flight had been cancelled 20 minutes before departure.
He rebooked a Tui flight which was all that was available and said he experienced "absolute chaos" in the departure lounge at Manchester Airport.
After boarding the plane, Mr Turner said they spent three hours waiting only to be then escorted off to collect their baggage.
They were put on a coach without being told where they were going and then waited to be taken back to the airport for a flight on Tuesday evening.
The transport secretary said he would meet with airports, airlines and ground handlers to "find out what's gone wrong and how they are planning to end the current run of cancellations and delays".
"Despite government warnings, operators seriously oversold flights and holidays relative to their capacity to deliver. This must not happen again and all efforts should be directed at there being no repeat of this over the summer - the first post-Covid summer season," he added.
'Missing in action'
But Labour accused the government of being "missing in action".
Shadow transport secretary Louise Haigh called on ministers to "take responsibility" for tackling the disruption by addressing the backlog in security checks for new staff and working with industry to address "chronic low-pay".
The aviation industry is suffering from staff shortages as it struggles to recruit replacements for the thousands of workers it laid off during the pandemic when international travel was halted.
Before Covid, airports and airlines across Britain employed around 140,000 people, but since then thousands of jobs have been cut, including around 30,000 for UK airlines alone.
Paul Charles, chief executive of travel consultancy The PC Agency and a former Virgin Atlantic director, said the industry had been "overwhelmed" since demand for flights returned after the pandemic but argued the government itself was "responsible for this chaos".
"[The transport secretary] has got a bit of a nerve I'm afraid," he told the BBC. "It's because of government restrictions that changed so much during the pandemic, and then the shutdown of the industry with the Omicron variant last December, that has created this problem."
He added that without certainty over when travel restrictions would be eased, the industry was not able to recruit more staff.
Kelly Sandhu, from the Aviation Recruitment Network, said the process of hiring new workers took a long time so there was "not a quick fix" .
Airlines UK said the sector had "only a matter of weeks to recover and prepare for one of the busiest summers we've seen in many years" but, despite this, "the vast majority" of flights this week would be operating as scheduled.
The final Covid restrictions for people travelling to the UK were lifted on 18 March.
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Boris Johnson’s ethics adviser has threatened to quit over the Downing Street parties scandal after concluding that there were “legitimate” questions about whether the prime minister breached the ministerial code.
Lord Geidt, the independent adviser on ministers’ interests, said Johnson’s breach of the law threatened to undermine the role and risked leaving the system open to ridicule.
The Times has been told that Geidt threatened to quit during a discussion with the prime minister on Tuesday morning unless he issued a public explanation about his conduct.
Johnson responded with a public letter to Geidt explaining his actions and claiming that his breach of the rules was “unwitting”. He said his claim in parliament that there had been no parties was “conveyed in good faith” and
The deputy prime minister has insisted there will not be a Boris Johnson leadership vote next week, saying the "Westminster bubble whips this stuff up".
Dominic Raab downplayed any threat to Mr Johnson's premiership as the number of Conservative MPs publicly calling for him to go reached 41 in the wake of the Sue Gray report on lockdown-breaking parties in Number 10 and Whitehall.
Asked by Sky News' Kay Burley if there will be a leadership vote next week - as predicted by former leader William Hague - he said: "No. I think the Westminster bubble, village, whips this stuff up and I'm not saying it's not serious and significant but we dealt with all those issues, the prime minister has dealt with all those issues.
"It does feel like a lot of commentary building up this issue when actually, when I talk to MPs and across the House of Commons on the issues I'm taking forward... they want to see us driving forward that agenda.
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"To be honest, votes of no confidence, leadership contests, all of that is yet more of Westminster talking to itself, not talking to the public, our constituents and the vast majority of MPs respect, recognise and agree with that."
John Stevenson became the 28th MP to call for Mr Johnson to go and revealed on Tuesday he had submitted a letter of no confidence in the PM to Sir Graham Brady, chair of the 1922 Committee of Conservative backbenchers.
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A total of 54 letters - 15% of Tory MPs - need to be handed over to trigger a leadership vote, with only Sir Graham knowing how many letters have been submitted.
Currently, the number of MPs who have publicly revealed they have handed in a letter has not reached that threshold but more may have done privately.
In 2018, only 24 MPs publicly said they had handed in a letter of no confidence in Theresa May, but a leadership vote was triggered as more than the 48 needed at the time had actually been submitted.
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1:19
Tory MP explains no confidence in PM
Mr Raab also defended the PM after his ethics adviser, Lord Geidt, asked the PM to explain why he believes he has not broken the ministerial code after being fined by the Metropolitan Police for a lockdown breach.
Lord Geidt reportedly tried to resign as he feared if he asked Mr Johnson for permission to investigate the matter, the proposal would be rejected.
A Downing Street source told Sky News: "It was a misunderstanding, we don't expect a resignation."
Mr Johnson wrote to Lord Geidt to tell him: "Taking account of all the circumstances, I did not breach the code."
The PM said he had apologised for attending the birthday party he was fined for and insisted "at the time I did not consider that the circumstances in which I received a fixed penalty notice were contrary to the regulations".
Mr Raab said: "Lord Geidt raised that issue, the PM responded to it and he has been clear in relation to the single fixed penalty notice he hadn't intentionally broken the law and his attendance at that gathering has been well-rehearsed, was inadvertent.
"I think these answers have been answered both in general, but also now specifically in the letter the PM has sent."
