August in general has been a big let-down here compared to what the rest of this summer has been like. However, one common theme about this summer is the fact that I have lost count of the number of days where the actual weather on that particular day, has ended up being not as bad as what it had been forecast to to be.
That theme has even carried on into this month as well, and has actually been particularly true this month with today being a casing point yet again. If you went by the official forecasts for this weekend, you would have expected this weekend to have been a virtual complete washout with both days being completely sunless days at Edinburgh Gogarbank, and you would probably come to the same conclusion if you went by Richard's grim outlook above when he talked about the UK being a cloud magnet.
Yet rather unexpectedly, we actually saw a little bit of sunshine just after lunchtime which has now resulted in a total of 12 minutes of sunshine being recorded for today at Edinburgh Gogarbank as at 3pm this afternoon.
Don't get me wrong on this. This has still been a poor August day overall, and that bit of sunshine which we did get was only very brief before we went back to constant grey skies once again. However, that is a bit of sunshine which we shouldn't even have been getting according to the forecasts, and that recorded sunshine is also 12 minutes more than what we should have been getting today according to those same forecasts.
This means that whilst today has still been poor overall, it has turned out to yet another better day than expected and so, this constant theme of days being better than expected during this summer, goes on for yet another day.
Meanwhile, the temperatures are still not that great, but they have recovered a bit with that brighter weather and once again, are not as bad as what was being forecast. Consequently, the temperature at 3pm this afternoon was 16.8°C at Edinburgh Gogarbank, 16°C at Edinburgh Airport and 18.0°C at the botanic gardens in Edinburgh.
Originally Posted by: johncs2016