Good quality but lower yields. Good for still wines but not fur sparkling, which suffers from over-ripe jammy grapes - loses its zing.

Too much heat and drought though, and even still wines suffer and become jammy. Eg Bordeaux and Burgundy in 2003. The best years for those two in recent times were 2005 and 2009 respectively.

Again, nothing. My mum sent me a video of torrential rain at hers and she's only about 10 miles north of me. We have been just too far south of the heaviest stuff yesterday and Monday

I have a white and a black grape vine and both are laden with plump fruit this year. I don’t know what variety they are as I inherited them but they’re sweet so are probably dessert grapes rather than wine varieties.  We usually leave them for the birds but I have thought about using them to make wine. Maybe a 2018 vintage!   

No rain at all here yesterday and none since 29 May.

If we avoid any showers/storms at the end of next week, then we could have all 3 summer months with no rain!

0.3 mm of rain here between yesterday evening and 4 am.

The amounts are split evenly across the two days so if absolute drought is defined as days with less than 0.2 mm it's still ongoing... but if you go by any rain at all then it's not.

I imagine it still qualifies as a severe level of agricultural drought either way. A few dirty splodges on the car first thing and a 2 cm pool of water on one of the garden chairs (or at least I hope it was water), with no other visible evidence, highlights just how little impact 0.3 mm of rain has.

Looks quite likely that the next rain chance here will be sometime between Friday and next Sunday, unless the Atlantic trough trends further northwest and the 'heat low' over Europe is kept at bay by renewed ridging from a little SW of the UK across to Scandinavia.

Same here. But TBH, I was surprised the amount was that much after our rain last night.

Drought well and truly broken here. In fact, much if the past week has been pretty awful in NW England with cloud, spells of rain, and temps struggling into the low 70s.

The same in here regarding on clouds amount and the behavior how it acted, it started around 10am after a nice start then in a panic building up for no reason and left a lot of mess and dull day ahead and by evening either cleared off or very dirty looking skies like tonight.  Those behavior normally during the 18-22C unsettled spells and not at the 28-30C levels as it come with wall to wall sunshine or near sunny days.  Temperatures had been capped every day due to clouds and with the output showing very hot next week I still cannot get excited due to nagging feeling the clouds will carry on being a twat this coming week.   I am sure Norway that seeing 33-34C temps was reached under clear skies and being further north than us here so that tell us the clouds need to sod off to allow our temps to go higher like 35-36C this Friday.

Couldn’t have put it better myself, and a useful test of the helpful loopholes Brian’s obscenity screening algorithms.

Those clouds do indeed need to sod off.

Like yesterday when the sun came out mid morning for few minutes and temps had shot to 28.3C and I notice the temps seem keen to rise further and other days but clouds refused to allow it.   I am sure if was sunny yesterday it would had been 30-31C and today 32C.  In other countries when it get humid the sun stay shining all the way to the late afternoon after the temps peaked and give thunderstorms but not at 10am every morning as most of my maxes recording was done before lunch time instead of normal 3-5pm time.

Broom’s Barn in Suffolk has the longest spell so far with no rain (based on official stations). Total days with no rain is 45 up to Friday. Last rain was on 5 June.

Of course the rain we had a day or so ago is now a memory and nothing to show for it.

Yesterday I was in north Dorset and heard some accounts of the recent huge fires on Salisbury Plain. Live ammo training is to blame for this but the media have almost played down the situation. The smoke got into peoples houses in the region and is difficult to remove apparently. Will normal household insurance cover the clean up or is it an Act of God or war situation?

The Army is almost blasé about what they did according to some reports.

A 25-day spell without any rain here from 21st June to 15th July following on from a 28-day drought from 14th May to 10th June. There have been very few droughts as long as either of these so to get two in one year is incredible. Both fall some way short of the record 35 days in 1953, though.

A small amount of rain has fallen over the past week (6.2mm) which you wouldn't expect to do much to alleviate the drought yet strangely grass does seem a lot greener than before I left on 7th July.

There have only been 11 days with any measurable rain since 14th May, seven above the 1mm threshold and only one with as much as 5mm:

11th June: 0.2mm

13th June: 4.2mm

16th June: 2.6mm

17th June: 0.2mm

19th June: 1.6mm

20th June: 9.4mm

16th July: 1.6mm

17th July: 1.2mm

20th July: 3.0mm

21st July: 0.4mm

Total: 25.0mm

Rain for the year just 235.2mm which is 65% of average. Running 12 month total is 577.0mm (79%). The last time it fell this low was in December 2013 and March 2012. When considering what immediately followed on both occasions, I say the longer this drought continues the better!

I travel regularly through Suffolk and the countryside scene tells the story. The landscape is tinder dry. Not seen anything like it before, not even 1976.

Total rainfall for the SE England region in June was 2.1mm. Second driest on record beaten only by 1925 with 1.3mm.

For July the total is at 4mm. There may be little or no further rain this month in which case July would be the driest on record. Current driest year is 1931 with 7.3mm.

Total June / July rainfall to date is therefore just 6mm on average across SE England. The driest year in the series since 1873 is 1921 with 13mm. So could be the driest first two months of summer on record for the south.

Similar picture for the central England region. Just 2mm of rain so far in July and 14mm in June so 16mm for the two months combined. Driest June / July is 1921 with 27.2mm.

In a summer like this it’s easy to see how Mediterranean vegetation takes over temperate species in human-affected land during dry periods, but not mature woodland.

All saplings and small trees around here are showing signs of stress. They could never compete against holm oak, olive, juniper etc if we had several summers in a row of this weather. But in the woods there’s limited evidence of drought stress and the trees remain green, including saplings.

That’s how the Mediterranean biome took hold under intensive land use practices of the Phoenicians, Romans, Greeks, Iberians, Carthaginians etc.

I think it might be safe now to drop the word "Potential" from "Summer 2018 Potential Drought Thread"!

My lawns have greened-up again, and could have done with a cut yesterday but I couldn't be bothered.

I only cut twice this year and the mower had been put to the rubbish dump as it was already knackered as we moving out.  Reason that bad cold spring delayed the growth until late April then again in late May and that it!  So that record lowest grass cutting days.  

Exactly the same with me. There are some yellow patches but lots of green. The weeds in between flags and block paving have come out of nowhere too. The last couple of months have made me lazy though and I really can't be bothered gardening.

Good point! Probably my 'year with fewest lawn mows' record, too (so far.... but if autumn's warm & damp, it could spoil it; I remember one year having to do a final cut in mid-December)

Was that December 2015 by any chance? I remember seeing bees pollinating roses the day after Boxing Day that year.