I still have no complaints!  This morning’s rain cleared by 8 o’clock and the sun has been out most of the day with mid twenties temps yet again and only a moderate breeze at times. We had a five minute downpour with thunder at 4pm but the sun came out again within minutes and is still out. 

I appreciate the weather has varied depending on your locality, but Summer has been lovely here since the end of June.  All of July was warm and sunny, with one storm in the early hours of 24th and we’ve had only a couple of nights with light showers but no rain during the days, until today.  On several occasions the forecast has been for rain but we’ve missed it completely and we’ve invariably exceeded the forecast temperatures.  

Yes, I’d take this every year! 

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You’re saying that as if it isn’t asking for much. What exactly do you expect in a typical British summer? Have you considered booking a holiday abroad?

Much like Caz, I don’t have ludicrously high expectations and continue to be satisfied with this summer’s weather, and my nice tan is testimony to that. 😎

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No need to get arsey, cocker!

I don't think what I'm asking for is anything exceptional. We've had just that (a great 3-4 week spell of dry & sunny in summer) in 2013, 14 & 18.

Whilst the vast majority of years will have a dry & mostly sunny spell of at least 3-4 weeks at some point in that April to September period. 

But this summer we had a washout June, and July had only brief dry spells before a breakdown came. I hoped August would settle down, but I think it's rained every single day (ie, 24 hour period) apart from 1 or 2 so far. 

 

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July 2013 and June/July 2018 were exceptional - July 2013 was one of the top 10 warmest Julys on record. Summer 2018 was one of the warmest summers full stop. Do you seriously expect that every year? I mean, really.. 

Like it or lump it but this summer is much closer to a normal summer than 2013, 2014 or 2018. 

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One thing I have thought to myself in recent years is that in respect of my own area, the summers of the 1990s were generally better than the majority of summers I have experienced since the turn of the millenium. In the whole 1990s decade, there was only one summer from that time which I would say was really poor overall, and that was 1998. Other summers in the 90s did have unsettled spells as every summer does, but from what I recall there was at least one reasonably long-lasting period of decent weather in them too.

This summer, and it seems to me in quite a lot of 21st century summers so far, there has been a notable absence of any sustained settled spell of the type that Saint spoke about above and I recall experiencing in many 90s summers. As far as my own location is concerned, the only summers this century thus far that I would class as either good, very good or excellent are 2003, 2006, 2013, 2014 and 2018. That's only five years with a summer that was IMO good or even better, and we are now nearly 20 years into the new century.

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About the only thing that irritates and annoys me more than having to endure this unprecedented run of awful summers is abject nonsense that people's expectations are too high  

Of course it's not unreasonable to expect some settled weather at some point during a British Summer. You don't even need to see stats to know just how much of a deterioration in summer there has been since 2007. For goodness sake only two out of 13 have been drier than average. It's a run of wet summers without precedent.

This summer is awful and getting worse by the day. What makes it even more depressing is that May was diabolical too and we haven't had one decent warm, sunny and dry month something even repulsive years like 2011 (April), 2012 (March) and 2014 (July) managed. So far this summer there hasn't been a dry spell of longer than four days duration. Even 2012 had a six day dry spell  Looks like dry periods will be counted in hours not days for the forseeable as well.

Every month since May has had above average rainfall and above average rain days and only June has managed to reach average sunshine. The way August is going it will be the worst of the lot. The last six Augusts have been fairly mediocre. Not bad but not that great either. This one is completely different - on track to record 2008 levels of sunshine with far more rain. It's vile beyond words.

It's the appalling weekends that are the most depressing. As bad as 2007 and 2012 since the beginning of July. Just weekend after weekend of grey rubbish. Today yet another Saturday of soul destroying overcast gunk. This follows on from a completely sunless washout day yesterday and there has been very little sun since Tuesday with copious rainfall. An utterly utterly dire spell of weather that shows no sign of relenting

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Its been a fairly good summer for Scotland, northern England and south. 2019 was never going to match 2018.

Wayyyy too much negativity on this forum these days.

I do wonder what some of our western and northern members expect from a normal summer in a temperate climate facing 2000 miles of ocean ? Or indeed all of our expectations when it comes to winter.

Apart from some slow moving thunderstorms, leading to flooding temperatures have been reasonably good and winds until now have been light. Eastern Scotland has not been plagued with the dreaded SE'ly muck, indeed Aberdeen from where I'm sitting has seen a number of very useable warm and sunny days with temps in the low 20's.

For many parts of England there was a period of 4 weeks without much in the way of rain.

We've all seen a thunderstorm, its never been excessively hot (apart from the 25/7 record smasher of course). 

Admittedly its turned a bit rubbish now but it is August after all and expectations should be adjusted to accept this based on recent Augusts. Any fine weather that occurs should be treated with positivity and gratitude. 

 

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It has not been a bad summer here overall. There haven’t been prolonged settled periods but there has been decent warmth (albeit often humid) and no prolonged unsettled periods. I would put the summer to this point into the “decent” category.

I do fear though that August (here) will be disappointing given the last few days and current outlook. I suspect it will be more “useable” in some parts of the UK.

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Do you mean that it's nonsense that people say others' expectations are too high? I agree. 

If you mean you're annoyed by people's expectations being too high, then don't forget that summer 2019 in S England won't have a similar fingerprint to summer 2019 in NE Scotland. June and July here both turned round disappointing starts and lifted their CETs nicely at the end- unexpectedly as far as the punters went. August still has 21 days to go, at least 2 weeks of which should be considered unaccounted for in the best of the models.

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Today is a pretty horrendous day here. Heavy , at times torrential showers and hardly any sun.

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You're continuing with your aggressive tone. Chill, you muppet. 

I've lived through 47 summers so have a pretty good idea of what makes a good, bad or average summer so less of the patronising.

The summers of 13, 14 & 18 were good (overall, but the Augusts were average/poor). That's 50% of the last 6 summers.

The summers of 2007-2012 were bad. 

Before that, I remember dry & mainly sunny spells of at least 3-4 weeks in a summer being fairly common - perhaps that same 50% of summers. My expectations are not particularly high, believe me.

That sets the context of this summer. June was, for much of it, a washout. July had brief heatwaves (annoyingly falling largely mid-week when we were all at work) but never any prolonged settled spell) yet on the whole a decent month. August has been a washout so far (I calculate we've had rain fall atvsome point on 8 or 9 days out of 10 so far) and the outlook is similarly unsettled. It's been warmer than conditions would suggest, though.

Overall then, a poor-to-average summer in this region - and I suspect in a few others, too. I'd estimate that we've had rain falling at some point in each day (24 hour period) on upwards of 60% of days. If you have had a better summer, then good for you. But please don't you or anyone else try to tell me that here and substantial parts of the country have had a decent or good summer.

 

 

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That's simply not true.

For most of northern England, at least the western half Scotland, most of Wales, the north and perhaps west Midlands, and a lot of the SW, it's been a poor-to-average summer.

A few highlights in July,  but otherwise mostly unsettled.

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Summer 1990, (June to August), IMO, is as overrated as summer 1994 is underrated. The Manchester Summer Index rates 1994 as the better of the two, 240 to 229 for 1990.

 

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Kev's Manchester Summer index was 195 by the end of July Saint.

In comparison to other years it has already exceeded 2007.2008,2009,2010, 2011, 2012, 2015,2016 and 2017.

I don't live where you do but those stats suggest this is not an average to poor summer. 

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Kevin's MSI is generally great - but, as I'm sure Kevin would concede, can be a bit of a blunt instrument. This summer's score will have been boosted for the past few weeks by high temperatures, which have been a bit wasted when most days have seen rain at some point.

And it's the frequency of rain that has been the key to how poor this summer has been overall. We've been trying to plan a party since the end of May, but not once have we had the confidence to go for it a week or two in advance.

A whole slew of events have been cancelled or postponed from June onwards, from my youngest's final sports day at primary school (thankfully rearranged to July) to festivals and outdoor shows.

If Kevin had the stats, I'm sure he'd corroborate just how many days this summer have had rain. 

And I'm equally sure the NW contingent will agree that this summer has been somewhere between distinctly average and poor.

 

Edit - even using the MSI, this summer sits in the bottom half of all summers assessed. And I might have missed it, but I couldn't see 2015 below this year.

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40th day today.

Temperatures haven't been too bad since the solstice, that has actually has helped to keep the index up 

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In some ways the weather recently has reminded me of the mid-late part of the summer of 2004, i.e a fair amount of warmth but a distinct lack of properly settled weather and sunshine.

August 2004, from what I recall of it, was a warm month overall but it ended up being one of the wettest Augusts on record, and IIRC at the time it was the wettest August overall in the UK since the 1950s. It was around the middle of that month that saw the sudden and dramatic floodng in Boscastle in Cornwall when a thunderstorm dumped an enormous amount of rain in the place one afternoon. There were instances of flooding in a numbers of places in Scotland during that month as well. From what I recall, the UK was affected by two or three ex-tropical storms or hurricanes during that month.

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Today hasn’t been as bad here as it could have been!  Quite a few brief showers but also some sunny spells, in which we managed 22c. Windy this afternoon as expected but nothing damaged!  

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We topped out at 17.5c

Frequent showers ranging from drizzle to downpours.

Strong and very gusty wind. I've been concerned about the gazebo over my hot tub.

Feels like October. 

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Thanks, Kevin 

I calculate 57% of days IYBY, close to my estimate of 60%.

 

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That would be my summation of this summer to date, Saint.

For me, warmth on its own does not make a summer a good one. There has to be a decent amount of reasonably long-lasting dry and sunny weather when one can be pretty sure that it will stay dry all day to go with it. Where I live, there have been very few days going all the way back to the start of June when that has been the case. The only time this summer when the weather has come close to the type of set-up that led to the sustained hot and dry spell of last summer was in late June/early July, when for a few days the models were indicating that the Azores High would move in and build quite strongly over the UK in the first week of July. Alas this did not come to pass, as the high did not build over the UK to the extent that the models had originally thought and pressure remained fairly high over the Greenland region.

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Cheers Saint. Thanks for the clarification. I'm building a picture of a summer that has not really disappointed in terms of temperature but convection has played a big part determining local and regional perspective. 

With that amount of rain frequency you are fully justified in calling this poor to average summer, apologies to you and my NW England chums. 

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  Crikey!  No wonder you say summer in your area hasn’t been good!  People do tend to forget the weather in their own back yard isn’t representative of the whole UK though and they can only make judgements from their own experiences.  

I can honestly say that since the end of June, we’ve had very little rain here, lots of sunshine and temps at least in the mid 20’s.  Even yesterday was warm and sunny as the rain cleared before 9am.  Summer has definitely been good here!

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Its a shocker the difference 250 miles makes NW to SE in this country. I admittedly struggle to get my head around it. 

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I think the fact we haven’t had any prolonged settled spells will mean greater variations!  I’m pretty sure our regional rainfall totals will be far more than our local totals.  On several occasions rain has been within five miles yet it’s missed us completely.  Another point that affects perception is when it rains at night and it doesn’t affect your daytime activities and doesn’t reduce sunshine hours. 

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