A couple of days ago you said the first 10 days of June were excellent for sunshine, now it's 'wrist-slittingly awful'. I don't see how 2 days of cloudy weather can change your perspective on the summer (what little there has been so far) to such a drastic extent.

Scholarly research on SSW events is young,recent. I doubt a wise scientist would put a head over the parapet and claim to know it all. The weather we had in March followed an extreme SSW event. Current juvenile SSW science limits SSW effects in our lat & long time-wise; this would be a good focus for further studies & publication as it's not inconceivable that effects could get 'stuck in a rut' due to poorly-understood +ve feedback mechanisms, and therefore perpetuate , sya, an anomalous easterly influence for longer.

Easterlies, Jiries, that bring stuff up the Thames if the conditions are humid. Our May high beat our April high and I bet there are those in the W,SW and Scotland that could say the same.

So 76 to 85 was better than anything since 50 -54? Good news, then: oscillations, rather than trends.

The great sunny spell of weather here looks like coming to an end in the next day or so.

But does anyone know which location recorded the most hours of sunshine last month (I know May is spring and this is a summer thread).

Did anywhere record the magic 300 hours ?

- I woke up to sunshine this morning for the first time in many days

- There is actual high cloud in the sky

- The warmest place in the U.K. is Cambridge, and the coldest is Stornaway

- Britain is generating more than 5gw of wind power for the first time since mid May

- The GFS ens average goes up and down like a yo-yo rather than flatlining

I wonder if my water butt will actually see some water overnight?

Having the flood alleviation works going on full bore is no fun in the dry that we've had as the dust covering everything will attest to!!!

A full water butt then back to a big ,hot, blocking high for the rest of summer( Thunderstorms as required for Butt filling).

France and the far North can share the summer Monsoon this year!

Midsummer Solstice Next week and my jumper is back on already... And it is raining.... 

It's cos I'm not there.

(In Peterborough for a cheer comp - the daughters competing, not me, before people get excited)

It was a strangely cool and meh day today.

The rest of June is an enigma. After next week’s brief warm spell in the South the models all suggest very dry, anticyclonic but quite cool (well, average or a smidge above). I just don’t quite believe them. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if this turns into either a progressive deterioration into a pants summer, or a proper late June heatwave.

It’s all quite June 1995 looking, which is both encouraging and dangerous because weather never repeats that faithfully.

Given the amount of rain which we've had here in Edinburgh today, it wouldn't surprise me if our so-called "summer" (and today, certainly doesn't feel anything like summer with the cool temperatures which we are experiencing IMBY just now) has already gone down the toilet pan (it certainly has, as far as today is concerned).

Summer has certainly gone down the toilet here. I said an extreme sunshine collapse would happen and yet again I’ve been proved correct in this tedious era in which everything is the same year in year out.

First eight days of the month managed a spectacular 86.4 hours sun then the entirely recent phenomenon of June permacast struck once more to give a dismal total of just 25.1 hours for the past eight days.

Let’s compare that with the results from the three darkest months:
9th-16th November 2017: 37.5hrs
9th-16th December 2017: 26.7hrs
9th-16th January 2018: 13.5hrs

Only January prevented the dark months winning a hat-trick of victories over the vile month of June. However in percentage terms January still put in a more creditable performance than what’s been endured over the past eight days.

That this nonsense is now occurring every pretty much every year, can only be greeted with feelings of revulsion, disbelief and horror. How on earth can the period of the year with the longest daylight constantly record less sunshine than when the days are at their shortest? It is the time of year which should be offering the greatest opportunity for outdoor activities but frequently offers the least.

I’d be surprised now if June can even make average sunshine never mind turn out a long overdue sunny month. I’ve given up even checking model output. What’s the point when it is the same cloud infested horror show regardless

Isn't there a moaning thread for this kind of thing?

Thanks for reminding me about that. I know that it was Bolty's idea to start this thread which I think, is quite a good idea.

However, I feel that as a result of that, a lot of people may well have forgotten that the moaning thread is still available for anyone who wishes to vent their feelings there.

That in turn had lead to it having only two posts so far before this morning (my own opening post plus one reply from Bolty) which in turn, had led to the moaning thread being relegated to page 3 in the default list of threads on this forum.

To me, each season's moaning thread has until now, always played quite a pivotal role on this forum since I first joined and I see no reason why it shouldn't continue to do so.

Looks like the driest first half to June for England and Wales since 2006 and with GFS 0z op run looking very dry and ECM doesn't look too wet,  it could be a dry maybe a very dry June. 

Noticing now how brown the grass is in places 

Yes. The GFS runs I've seen recently have been absolutely dominated by high pressure. This could be turning into an extended dry spell/drought for many.

Ive been following the French weather and as you say, it’s been vile, putrid, Aberdonian in the Southern half of the country for a month at least. May and early June is the wettest time of year on average across much of Central France (though not so much Aquitaine where the Dordogne is) and they have had a flabby shallow low and thunder (and abnormally dull conditions) while the North and West of the U.K. had that flabby high. My place in the Maconnais has been relatively dry - ie about average - as it’s sheltered by the Alps and Jura in Easterlies. It’s not been cold by any means, about 2C warmer than average in the East and closer to average in the West. Dull everywhere.

The soil moisture anomalies tell the story:

http://edo.jrc.ec.europa.eu/edov2/php/index.php?id=1111

Things are looking more seasonal there now but certainly not heatwave levels any time soon. 

If the jet stream are already far north which so far keeping us in good weather why France and Spain had been very poor as it should be very hot and dry on that set-up, and because of there no hot weather there we cannot obtain a 30C day here only local home grown high 20's available for us.  Only in April was hot source from Spain when it was already hot there as it would not reach home grown heat of 29C.

Perhaps, on a broader scale, there isn't quite so much to moan about? Which might, notwithstanding the regional variations which might be expected, represent a good start to summer, on a broadly national basis, but of course with consideration for the deviations from this on a regional and local scale.

But then, we also had quite a good end to the winter with Beast From The East Part One and yet, that didn't prevent the last winter moaning thread from remaining busy well into the start of the meteorological spring.

My gut feel though is that this "good" start to the summer which you mentioned won't last for long and when everything starts to generally go more down the the toilet pan, that is when this year's summer moaning thread will become a lot busier. After all, even Gavin P. in his summer forecast video predicted that this would actually be a front-loaded summer with the best weather occurring during this month before a gradual deterioration in the overall pattern set in after that.

Having said that though, the concept of having this thread to chat more generally about what this summer has been like and then also having the moaning thread for people to have a good moan about whatever they're not happy about is quite a good one. I'm just surprised that Richard from Aberdeen (for example) doesn't make much use of the moaning thread these days since he usually has plenty to moan about.

Blackheath is always the first mover as it’s so exposed and close cropped. It’s got that olive green tint with patches of proper yellow where people have walked.

Just for the record (even if only temporary...) - the grass has been turning notably brown here since the mid-point of the month, and I actually have to look all the way back to spring 2012 to find the last time it was so pronounced as it is now (a few thundery interludes limited the browning last May-June).

With powder-dry soil in abundance, it will be interesting to see how much temperatures still manage to vary between night and day during the polar maritime* incursion of Thu-Sat, despite it being very breezy.

* the airmass, not the TWO member