What precise area does the South East England regional total cover? It does look as though there have been some considerable variations in rainfall across it, as we only had 59% of the local LTA in August, and I think that 'fairweather' posting from Essex has also seen a dry month.  I think it comes down to the rain having come in storms of torrential rainfall which dumped large amounts in some places and nothing at all in others.  If the official recording stations have been in places that got hit by the heavy rainfall, this would give an imprecise view of the overall picture.

It is also worth noting that here the year total to end August is exactly 100% of the LTA total for that period, which would give the impression that rainfall had been normal in this part of the country.  But that would be entirely misleading because the figure was substantially affected by the very wet February (275% of monthly LTA) which was followed by weeks of desiccating NE winds which turned the ground from a quagmire to bone dry, combined with 5 months of below average rainfall (Apr-Aug here has given 59% of LTA for those months), resulting in an agricultural drought.

This all just goes to show that averaged statistics (whether averaged over space or time - or both) can give a misleading impression if local and temporal variations from the average are not taken into account.  It all reminds me of the joke that someone with his head in an oven and his feet in a freezer is, on average, perfectly comfortable.

Originally Posted by: AJ* 

Before this thread dies off, next years summer will be in the new decade. I would like to see others opinions on this. If we take 50's ,60's , 70's etc , all have had differing summers in each decade, the sixties were cooler, seventies some hot some cool. In my judgement the nineties had the best of the summers with the noughties more of a mix, and since 2011 maybe a bit worse than the previous decade ?

So what will this new decade bring? cooler more unsettled summers ? Hotter and drier ? With the sun going to sleep , will we start seeing changes?

Originally Posted by: severnside 

What I might end up doing when those 1991-2020 averages are eventually released is to report an unofficial comparison with those 1991-2020 averages when I'm reporting the various statistics on this forum for this part of world, just to see how that compares with those anomalies as compared with the older 1981-2010 averages as I am reporting them just now.

That should at least help to build up a food indication over time, of how our temperatures, etc. have actually changed in more recent years.

Originally Posted by: johncs2016 

I agree with the other posts from the SE. We could see storms over the Downs inland, my sister in the New Forest reported flash floods on a couple of occasions in August but it stayed bone dry here along the coastal strip. The lawn is still showing bare patches but I think it will come round. 

Brian in Hign Wycombe posted a rather complacent post in mid-August about having no more need to water the garden when I was still pouring large quantities onto ours, and continued to do so until just over a week ago.

Originally Posted by: DEW