First week of August was the warmest week in Aberdeen since July 2006, and warmest of 2018. I was up there for the duration of it so I know, whatever other posters might say. 

So a core four weeks or so of unusually good summer weather.

Comparing this year with 1976 is rather absurd, even further south there were higher maximums for longer surely.

1976 was much hotter here and drier for longer.

Interesting - but your part of the world never seems to see decent warm weather!

In 1976 it was just a dust bowl here until it rained (from late August onwards). This time we've had, a little, rain and the countryside now looks green again but it's every bit as dry as '76 going by springs and streams - with little prospect of meaningful rain in sight the dry spell is dragging on and the grass suffering again. We've been forecast meaningful rain several times recently and barely seen more than some drizzle. In old money many inches of rain are needed to bring soils back to normal values - in other words we need a wet winter.

As to temperature, we've not matched the spell of intense heat that late June/July '76 saw but overall I think its been as good a summer as then with many intensely warm days in July, and just a few cool days in August.

If you look at 1976 and 2018 on the basis of the Summer Index formula that Kevin B uses

10*(Mean Max JJA + Sun Hours JJA/67 - Rain Days JJA/8)

Then 1976 beats 2018 by a country mile

The Met Office Regional Data for Summer 2018 is now out and when using this to compare the two dates then 1976 comes out on top in every region

June 1976 had a CET of 17.0C - June this year had a CET of 16.1C Also this year August was much cooler than 1976.

Considering that there seems to have been less extreme heat in Summer 2018 compared to 1976, would I be correct in thinking that it's been the minimum temps that have been particularly high this Summer?, as of course we haven't seen anything like the extreme heat that Summer 76 had from June 23rd-Jul 7th.  Somewhere reached at least 32C on every day during that spell.

Thanks, can you do the same for May-Aug for these 2 years?

That's exactly it

The Mean temperature was the highest recorded for England because although the Max's were lower than in 1976, the Min's were sufficiently elevated to bring the overall mean higher than 1976

Details are in

https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/climate/uk/summaries/datasets

IMBY 1976 is still the warmest (records back to 1970) both on max or average temp. 

1975,1983,1995 and 2006 were up there with 2018 for warmth.

2018 got going earlier than 1976 and there were a lot of warm days early June until early August but 30c was only surpassed once, in late June. It is now 12 years since 90f (32c) has been recorded here. 

What I will most remember about 2018 is the spell of almost continuous sunshine for over 2 weeks late June and early July. It seemed like the only time the sun wasn't shining was when it was obscured by the Winter Hill fire. This also follows a warm and sunny May.

August disappointed for sunshine which now seems to be the norm .

One thing I hadn't realised until I saw the BBC News story on Monday is that the summers of 2003 and 2006, along with 2018, also hold the title of joint-hottest UK summers with 1976. Oddly enough, I don't recall the media saying at the end of the summers of '03 and '06 that they had been the joint-hottest with '76, but maybe my memory isn't quite what it was!

I blame the Internet. We are all so obsessed with chasing records and comparing these days, probably even more than in 2003 and 2006. We spend so much time obsessing over the stats and if it will equal other years than actually just enjoying the weather! There's been talk of this summer competing with 1976 since early June.

(well that's how it feels for me anyway)

I haven't bothered with the coloured maps again but if you alter the calculation from JJA to MJJA and amend Kev's formula so that the influence of Mean Max T, Rain Days and Sun Hours stays the same as before then instead of every region showing 1976 way ahead of 2018 you get 2018 being ahead of 1976 in all the Northern Regions but still behind 1976 in 3 of the Southern ones (East Anglia, S&SE England, SW England & S Wales)

the May of 1976 was more typical of a spring month whereas 2018 was definitely early summer. The UK average maxima were 14.6 in 1976 and 17.3 in 2018 so no surprise to see such a major turnaround.

In the Northern regions especially, the sunshine hours in May 1976 were only around half those in May 2018 and the rain days were around double

The Met Office Regional Stats page has all the exact data

https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/climate/uk/summaries/datasets

Driest summers on record for England and Wales (mm)
 66.9 1995     
 74.0 1976  
 91.5 1800  
 98.9 1869 
 102.6 1818  
 110.8 1983  
 112.3 1887 
 114.4 1913  
 118.1 1864
 121.8 1826  
 121.9 1949  
 124.0 1780  
 128.0 1984  
 131.1 1870  
 132.3 2018

They need to do a similar graphic for winters, it would resolve a lot of squabbles on here.

Interesting how the records are quite stable and broad lasting over the eastern side of the UK, but fragmented and locally significant on the western side.

I think you'd find that a similar graphic for the coldest winters would show 1962-3 winning by a country mile over pretty much all of England and Wales (assuming the data doesn't go back far enough for 1739-40 or 1683-4 to be considered), but with different winters perhaps ahead for Scotland and NI.

May 1975 and 1983 didn't have early May hot spells. Neither did May 1984.

1947 must be in with a shout

Across Northern Scotland I'd wager 54/55 would come out top. About as severe as it gets with a state of emergency being declared leading to Operation Snowdrop. 

Regional Data from the Met Office :-

https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/climate/uk/summaries/datasets#rankOrdered

Use Region Selection +Rank Ordered + Mean Temp + Winter column to get all winters from 1910 to 2018 ranked by average mean temperature for the selected region

I think N Scotland is the only region NOT to have 1963 (1962/3) as the coldest but it is 2010 that beat it not 1955

That's ture Kevin, although I do recall the first week of May 1995 being gloriously warm and sunny in my neck of the woods before it have way to a cold northerly spell the following week which included the latest ever snowfall I can remember in this part of the world. May 1989 was also a good month from what I recall, rather like this May. Don't seem to remember the Mays of 2003 and 2006 being particularly good though.

But that only turned severely cold around 20th January, with the traditional winter season more than half over. And of course the cold first half of March wouldn't count towards the coldness of the winter.  Whereas 1962-3 turned severely cold around 23rd December, and even before that December temperatures had been below average.

Somebody once came up with a rule of thumb that if there was a warm spell of three or more consecutive days in May with maximum of 25C or more (or it might have been 24), then it was a sign of a warm summer. That was for where they lived, which IIRC was SE England. That seems to work pretty well. They had a similar rule for cold winters being indicated by a cold spell of three or more consecutive days earlier than Christmas with a maximum of 3C (was it?) or below.

No but 1976, 1990, 1995 and 2006 did. 1976 and 1995 were particularly notable summers for dryness, sunshine, and warmth!