The traditional autumns which I remember are ones where we would be seeing our first widespread frost at some time during October with daytime highs of around 5C or 6C already being recorded by the time that we get to the beginning of November. We haven't had an autumn like that for a long time though, although I do remember one not all that long ago (that might have been around 2008, although I'm not exactly sure of that) when cold northerly winds from the Arctic brought some very early snowfalls during October to high ground in Scotland.
The way things are looking just now, I don't think that we will be seeing anything like that this year either. Furthermore, the autumn along with the spring, has tended to be one of the driest periods and I can remember us having our driest September on record here in Edinburgh, just a few years ago. That drier than average pattern of weather has been around during recent springs and autumns even on occasions, where the models have indicated that something different might happen on this occasion, even when the confidence in that has been relatively high.
Although we had such a wet June here in Edinburgh, the rest of the summer hasn't really followed suit (although we did have that very wet start to this month just yesterday). That in combination with the fact that it was so dry for so long before the start of this summer, shows that there is probably still quite a big rainfall deficit to be made up, even after that really wet June. However, I don't see that happening this autumn to begin with at least. The Azores High has been a real pest in recent years, and has failed to build right across the whole country for any length of time during this summer, at the very time when we always want it to, more than at any other time of the year.
However, it wouldn't surprise me if the Azores High then finally decided to build across the country and deliver some decent weather once summer is over (not that we've actually had much of a summer just recently, anyway), and we have gone into the meteorological autumn. For those reasons, I see September as being a nice month with a lot of warm and sunny weather, making that an extension to our summer, which is far more like summer than what we have just had. I can then see this pattern going into October as well, although it might get a bit wetter towards the end of the month as the Atlantic starts to prepare itself for its almost annual winter onslaught.
That then takes us into a mild, wet and often stormy November which will then take us into that traditionally wet and stormy start to the winter. This means that it will be warmer than average and probably sunnier than average overall. I also think that it will be drier than average overall, even with that wetter end to the autumn, but I have a feeling that we might have to wait well into November, or possibly even into the winter itself (if we actually get any sort of winter, that is) for the first real frost of the season.
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.