In the unsettled spell that follows an extended drought, like now, the first few falls of rain even if quite heavy don't really change much. They soak into the ground, green up the grass a little but the earth remains dry underfoot and things are poised to dry up quickly again.

Then usually there is a big fall of rain or series of falls that finally puts an end to this. Yesterday and last night have done that here. We won't need to water the garden for some time. And there is more to come.

I love yellow grass and dusty earth in summer. Not a fan of damp, humid vegetation with puddles and rampant weeds. But that seems to be on the cards now for at least a week or two even if we get no more rain.

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In the unsettled spell that follows an extended drought, like now, the first few falls of rain even if quite heavy don't really change much. They soak into the ground, green up the grass a little but the earth remains dry underfoot and things are poised to dry up quickly again.

Then usually there is a big fall of rain or series of falls that finally puts an end to this. Yesterday and last night have done that here. We won't need to water the garden for some time. And there is more to come.

I love yellow grass and dusty earth in summer. Not a fan of damp, humid vegetation with puddles and rampant weeds. But that seems to be on the cards now for at least a week or two even if we get no more rain.

Agreed. I also love seeing brown landscapes in the summer. A dry landscape is so much more convenient for walks or cycle rides too. We have all of autumn, winter and spring for green grass and mud! I'm hoping the gardeners are happy now and we can return to dry, sunny weather at least until the classic end of school term break down .....

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Yet another revolting day. Started with North Sea cloud cloaking the coastal areas and sun a few miles further inland. Rather than burning off during the day, as would have happened in the past, it ended up spreading further inland. No sun at all for the ridiculous fifth day this month and the fourth inside a week

A hellish nightmare of a summer yet again. A complete disaster.  Day after day after day of soul destroying, grey, depressing garbage like nothing on earth we ever used to get when we had a changeable and varied climate. An abhorrent sunshine total of 61.7 hours so far - less than 60% of average and, worse still, only two thirds of what has been achieved at Lerwick

The sunshine levels are even more dismal than at first sight given that over 16 hours were recorded on the 1st. That means that over the past 17 days sunshine has been averaging at November levels but with daylight twice as long. Only one day since then has managed 6 hours, none as much as 9 hours, and I can't recall a single day I have woken up to sunshine. 

Yet another ridiculous summer month of endless permacast hell that makes you ask just what the hell is happening to our weather. Seems odds on that we end up with a fourth top 10 dull June in 14 years and that's with records going back to 1880. Would need above average levels for the rest of the month to stop that happening and that seems hard to imagine when only one day in over a fortnight has managed to record the average daily duration. Continuation at current levels would see it finish between 2007 and 2012 and end up the second dullest month of the year only just ahead of January​.

The way things are going by the end of the decade more than half of the dullest Junes in 150 years will have occurred since 2007. No other month of the year has changed so much

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I cant beat that Richard, but today is cool and vile raining all day ,at 30mm currently and still raining steady. Certainly June here has seen a big drop in sunshine hours. June has the zenith of the sun.Yet it is a month that has been cooling very slowly for the past 100 or so years.going by CET. I think your appraisals of Junes has good validation.

This weather is just too flippin' hot for me.

Any rain that we had has been taken up by the plants or been baked off the surface by the sun.  I'm having to hose water onto the garden like there's no tomorrow.  Bah humbug!

 

 

Where's this rain up to what we were all yearning for and then some that Moomin confidently predicted? (See page 3 of this thread )

 

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This June is going down the pan big time now, as I feared it would. Nature will always balance things out, and for all those pleading for rain last month, well, as I said, you will get what you yearned for and then some.

By the end of this month the wet weather will be newsworthy in my opinion. I also fear that the summer pattern has now set in, and you can wave goodbye to anything decent this year, bar the odd day here and there.

John Hammond has as good as written off the hope of a good summer in his latest look ahead. I am so glad I went with my gut feeling and backed an unsettled, below average summer, because I am as certain as I can be that we have had our summer now, and the rest of the "calendar summer" will be very changeable and largely cool.

Same again for July and August please  

(ps, I know June has of course been more unsettled than the months preceding, though that hasn't been too difficult given how stonking our spring was. Moderation is the key rather than all that hyperbole!)

 

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Still pretty convinced we've had the best of summer. Ok so we have a brief blink and you miss it hot spell today and tomorrow, but thereafter, its looking pretty poor.
I have happily accepted I was wrong on temperatures, but for a number of places this has been a wet June and with what's to come on Friday into Saturday, I think many areas will be deluged.

Then we look into the models and they are all pretty unsettled and don't resemble good high summer patterns.

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Still pretty convinced we've had the best of summer. Ok so we have a brief blink and you miss it hot spell today and tomorrow, but thereafter, its looking pretty poor.
I have happily accepted I was wrong on temperatures, but for a number of places this has been a wet June and with what's to come on Friday into Saturday, I think many areas will be deluged.

Then we look into the models and they are all pretty unsettled and don't resemble good high summer patterns.

Only 53% of average rainfall for the month so far at Odiham (Farnborough data doesn't seem to be there) and everything is still pretty arid and dusty in these parts. Some places not far away have had considerably more than that, but that just shows that the "wet month" has been down to localised storms rather than persistent frontal rain which to my mind ruins a summer far more than convective showers do. At least with a summer thunderstorm you can usually retreat for half an hour and then it's over.

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Nothing beats a good summer spell like this for me. A roasting hot day with near unbroken sunshine, followed by a nice balmy evening sat outside in shorts and a t-shirt. There's a positively European feel about this, rather than the usual breezy, thick, rain-laden, grey, subarctic rubbish we're used to.

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Still pretty convinced we've had the best of summer. Ok so we have a brief blink and you miss it hot spell today and tomorrow, but thereafter, its looking pretty poor.
I have happily accepted I was wrong on temperatures, but for a number of places this has been a wet June and with what's to come on Friday into Saturday, I think many areas will be deluged.

Then we look into the models and they are all pretty unsettled and don't resemble good high summer patterns.

 

It's traditional for the last few day's of June and opening 10 days or so of July to be unsettled. So predictable that they even installed a roof at Wimbledon to protect from the typical annual occurrence of rain. Even some of the hotter summers this period of 'return of the westerlies' will happen.

It's too hot! 

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The worst thing about Edinburgh is the haar! It's a pain, it's not atmospheric, it's not beautiful as it swirls round the old town. It's a pain and it usually means that the rest of the UK is having breakfast in the garden.

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Nothing beats a good summer spell like this for me. A roasting hot day with near unbroken sunshine, followed by a nice balmy evening sat outside in shorts and a t-shirt. There's a positively European feel about this, rather than the usual breezy, thick, rain-laden, grey, subarctic rubbish we're used to.

Absolutely spot on !

Say what you like about the mixed weather so far this summer, the warm spells have been very sunny. Few of the usual unforecasted overcast mornings or convective infill.

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The worst thing about Edinburgh is the haar! It's a pain, it's not atmospheric, it's not beautiful as it swirls round the old town. It's a pain and it usually means that the rest of the UK is having breakfast in the garden.

True, and the fact that this year's Festival has already been cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic isn't exactly going to help matters in that regard, as far as this summer is concerned.

With the lockdown now being gradually lifted (though not as quickly here in Scotland as it is in England), it is going to feel strange when that time comes up, only to find that there isn't anywhere near as many people around as normal due to there being no Festival this year.

If we still have a lot of that east coast haar around then (or if the weather is generally rather poor then), that is going to result in rather an usually eery atmosphere in this city.

 

 

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From MO thread, showing that summers since the millennium are lagging the overall annual climate change pattern and we are overdue something better in the next decade:

Here are some stats as promised. What they show is that June has done fairly well (though less than most other months of the year except December and the other summer months), whilst July and August have generally been poor. The annual mean has warmed by much more than the summer months, and while the rest of the year has become much sunnier, July and August have actually got duller.

Junes since 2000: warmer, drier and sunnier than long term mean but by less than annual trends

• 18 out of 20 warmer than average. Mean of all years 14.5C, which is 1.0C above 1971-00 mean


• 13 out of 20 drier than average. Across all years, mean rainfall 67mm, which is a little wetter than the 1971-00 mean


• 14 out of 20 sunnier than average. mean of 194hrs vs 178 1971-00 mean

Julys since 2000: marginally warmer, but much wetter than long term mean, average sunshine

• 13 out of 20 warmer than average. Across all years 16.4C which is 0.55C above 1971-00


• 16 out of 20 were WETTER than average. Across all years 78mm vs 55mm mean


• 15 out of 20 DULLER than average, although across all years 195 hrs vs 192 hrs LTA. Big divergence between exceptionally sunny Julys in 06, 13, 14, 18 and other years, nothing much in between. 2003 was duller than average

Augusts since 2000: marginally warmer, but wetter and duller than mean

• 14 out of 20 warmer than average. Across all years 16.1 vs 15.71, 0.4C above 1971-00


• 12 out of 20 wetter than average. Across all years 81.5 vs 69.85 LTA


• 12 out of 20 duller than average. Across all years 172hrs vs 182hrs LTA

What we haven't had, 2005 (and perhaps 2019 aside) is many reasonably good but not exceptional summers. Lots of dross, and a few exceptionally hot and sunny ones.

Drill further in the data as I do in my summer index calcs, and a NW-SE split is apparent too. It's been relatively much worse compared to normal in the North and West (particularly the West) than in the S and E (particularly the far SE - Kent and E Anglia).

Th NW/SE split in rates of change is consistent with climate projections but the rest isn't. The projections all show increasing sunshine hours, rainfall staying roughly similar but becoming drier in the far South, and temperatures warming at a similar pace to other seasons. In France, Germany etc summers have warmed more rapidly than projections or indeed than other seasons.

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It's becoming more common for April, May, September and October to be the best months for weather in the Lakes and Western Scotland. It was probably always thus to some extent.

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It's too hot! 

Ella Fitzgerald says it for me:

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Worst. Weather. Ever

Anyone who likes this is an alien lizard. Fact. And I hate you all.

Bring back the ice age .....

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I see the NW England Rain Magnet continues to be fully operational.

Even when the band runs S-N it homes in on this wretched region. 

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