Wattisham, Suffolk:

1-17 June 2018 - 71.7 hours

1-17 August 2018 - 126.0 hours

Heathrow Airport:

1-17 June: 97 hours

1-17 August: 124 hours

Odiham, Hampshire:

1-17 June: 104 hours

1-17 August: 118 hours

Waddington, Lincolnshire:

1-17 June: 71 hours

1-17 August: 115 hours

The first 20 days of June were not particularly sunny, and in some cases were downright dull, especially for those of us exposed to North Sea murk that dominated in the early part of June.

Looks like today will have been one of the best days of the month which says a lot when the sun didn't even manage to come out once. I'm surprised at how bad this August is and it looks likely to be even worse in the next week

Surprised you didn't see the sun, it did come out in the afternoon.

It is the last week that has been poor, the early part of August was pretty OK. 

Perhaps it was quite localised? It wasn't sunny here yesterday afternoon, merely just bright at times. I saw that the temp reached 24C at Manchester Airport, but only got to 20.6C here.

Not very bright today and losing 4 minutes of light now daily...   

While I am tolerating our longer and drier summers more than I used to, a recent "Facebook Memories" did leave a bitter taste in my mouth.

This was my freshly cut lawn three Summers ago . . .

And this is what it currently looks like today . . .

In my own little world, this is actually quite heartbreaking. Even though we have actually had some decent rainfalls in the past week, it's done very little to revive my beloved lawn. I do think the recent long dry summer had practically killed off my lawn and it looks like frugal rainfall amounts being forecasted for the rest of this month.

Yet another totally rank, foul, depressing write-off Sunday. The third out of four. It's cold, wet and miserable and looks odds on to be a zero sun day 

That means this weekend is looking likely to have a total of less than 2 hours sun making it the dullest since the first weekend of March. At least there was some snow about then. This weekend is just vile, horrific and depressing.

The utterly abysmal run of weekends since I returned from my holiday ranks amongst the most rotten at any time of year. I don't think I can recall a single occasion when the sun has shone from a blue sky on a weekend day this month. What little sun there has been has generally been hazy shining through thin cloud. 

Weekend sunshine now averaging a totally repugnant 2.66 hours and after today will likely drop below January's 2.33 hours to be the worst of any month in 2018. A total and utter disgrace. How can this soul destroying rubbish be classed as summer? Given that the weekdays have averaged 6.73 hours it is sickening and depressing beyond belief

Several hours of light rain and copious drenching drizzle, made even worse by the breeze. This is one of the worsrt aspects of the NW England climate, something I term 'North West hang-back' whereby rain readily clears the rest of northern England but a stubborn patch remains over south Lanchashire, Greater Manchester and the upslopes of the western Pennines, refusing to budge and only slowly dying out in situ, long after the original rain band has cleared.

I haven't had many opportunities this summer to properly use this thread for what it was intended but this is one such occasion!

Ha ha, I knew I could count on you to cheer me up on this wet Sunday morning, only you could write off an entire day at 10.40am! That's the equivalent of writing off summer in the middle of June.

He did that as well. It was apparently a pernacast hell in June when in reality it recorded over 200 hours of sun.

If you read the met office reports on summer 1976 it quickly becomes clear is wasn't the wall to wall endless sunshine of popular myth. Sea fog was frequently an issue on eastern coasts and Scotland actually recorded a duller than average June and fairly average August with near average rainfall in the west. 

However, there is always exceptions to every rule, and there is a reason why I have said "on almost every occasion" here rather than just "on every single occasion". If we go back to last Sunday and Monday for example, those were days which started off a wet and miserable note with the worst of the rain clearing away fairly quickly. On both those occasions though, a finger of light rain and drizzle continued to cling on like a limpet to this part of the world for most of the day even after the worst of the rain had cleared away. That prevented the Sun from being able to get through, and it is those days which have ended up being our completely sunless days.

As far as today is concerned, I am seeing a bit of a deja vu here here that is compared with those other sunless days because this is a day where the main area of rain cleared away. Yet just like last Sunday, there is still a finger of light rain and drizzle which is continuing to hang on here and make things rather miserable in this part of the world. Furthermore, this is also a day where there has been no recorded sunshine so far as I write.

When you add all of that together, it is easy to see that whilst I wouldn't be completely writing off the rest of today just yet, the omens are really not looking good at the moment, as far as the rest of today is concerned.

I think June tends to favour northern and western areas, whilst August tends to favour southern and eastern areas. How many times has August had this ghastly NW-SE split in recent years now? It really is an autumn month up here.

Not so much as a glimmer of sunshine today which firmly places this revolting month into 2nd place on the Hall of Shame behind only June 2007

Average Weekend Daily Sunshine:

June 2007: 1.27 hours

August 2018: 2.22 hours

July 2016: 2.48 hours

August 2007: 2.74 hours

July 2008: 3.00 hours

July 2012: 3.04 hours 

2018 Months Ranked from Best Weekend to Worst Weekend Weather:

1.May: 9.04 hours

2. April: 7.27 hours

3. July: 7.21 hours

4. June: 7.11 hours

5. February: 3.51 hours

6. March: 3.04 hours

7. January: 2.33 hours

8. August: 2.22 hours

This toxic month is bottom of the pile and as usual it's the spring months which lead the way. Back to the bad old days of 2007-12 

Well done, good to see some facts rather than rhetoric.  The first half of August has clearly surpassed the first chunk of June for many parts of the UK in the east.

Fortunately your peripheral location neither reflects the UK as a whole, nor the more long-lived CET, for this fabulous summer. But your comments reinforce my thoughts that the UK average summer temperature is a pointless political, rather than geographical measure to use; a bit like replacing the CET with a 'W Europe temperature'. 

Sorry about your cloud.

The lack of sun this month is such a stark contrast to the previous summer months this year that it makes it feel even harder to take. Temperatures were ok over the weekend but there was always that threat of a shower. There was no sun at all on Saturday in my location and literally 2 or 3 minutes of sun yesterday afternoon when I went for a walk at Lymm Dam (lovely place for any North West people!).

The forecast for the next 7 days is declining even more with more rain and temperatures dipping to a cool 15C/16C on Friday and Saturday. Then it is shown to be settling down on day 8 which has been the case for a couple of weeks now so it won't happen.

I'm now looking to September hoping for better luck.

Kind of reinforced the summer’s over, back to school feeling you always get when returning from holiday.

Need a hot dry September to bring 2018 back on track and go for the title of best May-Sept season.

I wouldn't go so far as calling August an autumn month now, but in recent years (post-2003) it's been by far the worst overall summer month for this region (and I suspect a few more)

What I've noticed is that overall across all months there seems to have been an increase in winds from a direction north of WSW generally - over the northern half/two-thirds of the UK at any rate. And this possibly manifests itself most prevalently in August.

I don't know whether anyone can test this theory (from the, say, 1975 to 2018 era). I guess you'd need to have wind direction data for every day and do some sort of easy-read representation of what that showed for each month. My theory may be utter balls, but I'd be fascinated to see.

The reason this question of prevailing wind direction is so important for NW England (or at least the southern half of NW England) is the differing effects of the Welsh Mountains. A SW'ly to WSW'ly flow off the Atlantic puts the Cheshire/Merseyside/SW Lancs/much of Gtr Manchester area into a rain shadow. But move the direction past around WSW, and the Welsh Mountains act as a funnel to channel the cloud & PPN into this same region (and further north).

2nd-Sunny intervals, part cloudy.  4th-Sunny spells pm.  5th- Sunny intervals.  6th- Sunny intervals pm.  7th- Sunny intervals am.  9th- Sunny at times pm.  10th- Some sunny intervals pm.  11th- Sunny intervals, increasing cloud.  12th- Some sunshine pm.  16th- Sunny intervals.

(I am doing this from my phone so it might not work)

The map below shows the average 500mb heights in Aug over the last 15 years minus the previous 15 (2003-2017 minus 1988-2002).

It does show a more NW component to the flow and the main culprit is higher heights near Greenland. 

Many, many thanks for coming up with that - much appreciated, and I get where you're coming from.

I'm on my 4th day in the Lakes and it's the 4th day of rain and mist and NO SUN. No good for man nor beast 🌧️