I would probably put summer 2004 on level-pegging with this summer when it comes to how good, bad or indifferent the weather was over the three months. What I do recall from 2004, just like this year and a good deal of other recent summers, was a distinct lack of any sustained settled spells until the very end of August. In fact the second week of August 2004 was atrocious here with four wet days in a rowAs it happens, I recall a glorious few days in my neck of the woods during the first 10 days of September 2004 which we struggled to get at any time during June, July and August that year.

The one thing that I have noticed in quite a few occasions over the past 20 or so years is the number of times when a mediocre summer have been preceded and followed by much better weather in the spring & autumn. We don't yet know what this coming autumn will be like, but just like May this year, I recall an abundance of glorious weather here in May 2004 which unfortunately didn't set the tone for that summer any more than the great weather of April and May this year set the tone for this summer.

It's been a pretty good summer here, little rain and lots of useable days. My personal index is the time I spend in the garden and it's been very high this year.

7/10 for the summer, but 9/10 for the extended summer of March-August.

Started okay, turned to crap earlier in August and is now finally bearable again.

You know it's crap when it's too hot to work outside in the garden and that's happened a lot this August.

We obviously have different thresholds/standards, I loved sitting outside (in the shade) during the recent heatwave and the warm evenings were just perfect. I am not even a fan of heatwaves, perfect weather for me is ~25C with low humidity and plenty of sunshine (almost what our average summer is becoming really!).

You don't have to go North for a bad summer, to the West in Gloucestershire its been a poor summer.

June 116.0mm rain 145 hrs sunshine , July 67mm rain 130 hrs sunshine, August currently 87mm rain 93 hrs sunshine.

since the warm weather departed 12th August its been unsettled, only 1 day was decent the 20th.

Just had a another shower pass through now, cool westerly winds and little sunshine.

I agree that rainfall totals have been high here, and have gone more into that in this month's PW thread. However, all of that applies only to August and over the course of this summer as a whole, there has been no such problems with getting an above average number of official rain days or an above average actual total at either Edinburgh Gogarbank or the botanic gardens in Edinburgh.

It has also been a very dull summer and even with a just over a week to go, it is already mathematically impossible for this summer to be sunnier than average here as there isn't enough available daylight which can get us even close to the 1981-2010 summer average at Edinburgh Gogarbank.

Even for this month to be sunnier than average, we would need to be averaging almost 10 hours of sunshine per day during the last 8 days of this month after that, and we are unlikely to get even close to that, going by the latest model output.

The result of this is that this summer is now about to end with all three of its months being both wetter than average and duller than average.

As far as the temperatures are concerned, both this month and the month of June have been warmer than average overall, and this has resulted in this summer being slightly warmer than average overall.

However, July was a cooler than average month here and it has only  really been the overnight minimum temperatures which have kept this month warmer than average. Our daytime maximum temperatures during this month haven't actually been any better than average and over the course of this summer as whole, the daytime maximum temperatures actually come out very slightly cooler than average here overall.

It is on this basis that I can't really describe this as being much of a summer here, especially since the remaining eight days of this summer after today are forecast to be quite cool overall. Furthermore, the fact that it has been wet and dull overall means that it has been really dismal overall and if I were to rate this summer just now, I couldn't give it any more than 2 out of 10 (the only reasons why I have given it anything at all is due to that odd day where it was sunny with a temperature of around 28°C, and because of those recent thunderstorms).

Weather which would be bad on the 25th October let alone August ! This August is turning into a very bad one, way worse than 2007 !

102.0mm rainfall and rising , 96.5 hrs sunshine, pathetic , horrendous spell of weather

And then no doubt, it will warm up once we get to the winter as it tends to always do these days.

Is it too soon saying I'm already bored of this Autumn and am looking forward to Spring?  

This is what gets me with people moaning about hot/sunny weather in summer, for more than half of the year our weather is often like a long Autumn and sometimes that lasts all year round.  

Horrendous - sweetcorn blown flat, flower borders flattened, branches broken, bean wigwams battered.

Appalling weather for August. But not as bad as the heatwave!

You are hereby sentenced to 3 summers in France, Spain, Italy or Greece.

Not sure you get it. Am quite happy with 35C+ in any of the above as I would be on my 'olidays. Just hate those temperatures at home. 

This is true, when you have a pool to jump in to cool off every hour or so it makes all the difference.

On another note, the weather here really is blowing a Gale

Agreed actually, that's why I love the summers of SE England. 

'Red Sky in the Morning Shepherds Warning' proven correct once again

Lovely sunrise at 6am:

Followed by the most putrid day of horrific deeply unpleasant filth imaginable. 13C, raining all day and windy in the afternoon from the east yet again, as if that needed saying given the conditions. Pretty much dark already with lights needed inside 

It would be wrong to describe these conditions as Autumnal because very few days in that season are so unspeakably vile. Post-2006 it's summer that sees the greatest concentration of these disgusting write-off days. Even by these rock bottom standards today was woeful in the extreme

The week of 6th-12th has saved this month from being the worst ever August as far as I'm concerned. A description of the rest of the month would require censoring. Even with that reasonable week it would still rank amongst the top 5 worst Augusts of my lifetime, all of which have occurred since 2006 (2006, 2008, 2011, 2012).

The end of this ridiculously awful season can't come soon enough 

At the moment, the centre of Storm Francis has just passed to our south with the wind slowly backing from the east, more towards the north.

That then got me thinking that it is just a shame that this wasn't the middle of winter just now because if that was the case, this is the very type of synoptic setup which would probably have resulted in large parts of Scotland getting a lot of snow from that associated weather front as it ground more or less to a halt right over the top of us and just to our north before returning southwards as the centre of low pressure then makes its way out into the North Sea and starts to pull in cold air from the north, right across the UK.

Yet all too often, these centres of low pressure end up being further to our north at that time of the year, which then results in us getting just a load of mild crap.