Of course he won't be, there will always be something to complain about but that's just the way he is. However if it's real heat you are after then northern Portugal probably isn't the place to go. Porto has a July max of 25.3C, not that hot really and just 2/3 degrees above London. If he only ever got 24C as a max then that's rather cool but probably not anything out of the ordinary for that location. As for the low cloud well I can only imagine that's down to the Atlantic influence, just like we have in the UK, Portugal is just a lot further south but that effect must still be there. It's most certainly not the Med! I don't know exactly what Richard wants from his holidays but if it's 30C+ heat and pretty much guaranteed sunshine then I suggest doing a littel research first and going to Greece, or better still Egypt.
Of course if he wanted to experience real heat and if he had plenty of money to spare, then he could always head towards Australia at some time of the year like January which is the height of the Southern Hemisphere summer. That way, he would learn a lot about what real heat is, and gain some experience of that as well.
Anyway, after that really hot day in this part of the world which we had yesterday, we could really do with some rain here now. At this time last year, we needed the rain in order to make up the vast rainfall deficit which had been building up then but of course, that never really happened as the following autumn was also drier than average with an exceptionally dry winter after that.
On this occasion though, we had a wet spring in this part of the world and this has actually been quite a wet summer here overall so far despite these really intense burst of heat which we're getting and the fact that there has actually been some decent dry spells during this summer. This means that we don't really need the rain to make up the rainfall deficit this year as we did at this time last year.
What we do need the rain for though, is to get the pollen count down a bit after this latest burst of heat. I have what may well be a few symptoms of hay fever because of this high pollen count and there are plenty of others who will no doubt be experiencing these symptoms with many, experiencing even worse health symptoms in addition to that, possibly because of one of more other conditions which they might have in addition to that.
The fact that last night's forecast thunderstorms failed to materialise here has not helped one single bit with and so, we could really do with some rain now in order to cool things down a bit and clear away a lot of the pollen which is in the air just now. Only then can we then be relieved of these hay fever symptoms altogether or at the very least, get any sort of relief from them.
The north of Edinburgh, usually always missing out on snow events which occur not just within the rest of Scotland or the UK, but also within the rest of Edinburgh.