Just one week in and this repulsive season has already produced several of the vilest summer days I've experienced and that's despite living through the past 23 years which has produced more horrible June weather than any other equivalent period of recorded history 

Apart from yesterday it's barely scraped double figures since Tuesday. It was above 10C for 42 minutes on Wednesday, 3 hrs 56 on Thursday and not at all on Friday. Currently it's 9.7C with drizzle having briefly reached 10C 

It's not just these horrifying temperatures that are the problem but the wind that is accompanying them. I really can't ever remember anything like it. Even 2012 I don't remember being windy as well as grey and cold. During the worst week of June 2012, I managed to walk into town and back to see the Olympic Torch relay. It was nowhere near as unpleasant as the past few days. Couldn't even leave the house on Wednesday or Friday and only managed a brief unpleasant bike ride after work on Thursday. 

Friday evening was unreal with a driving wind and temperatures down to 6C. Only in bleak isolated lands, where the population are forced to live on a diet of whale blubber, could you reasonably expect to get that in a summer month. I cannot think of anywhere on earth that has such an awful climate that you would get those sort of conditions in summer following a snowless winter but that is what we have had to endure. This truly is the nadir for weather that we are living through.

What's more this disgusting spell isn't even producing much in the way of rain, when we are experiencing the driest ever start to a year, so is completely useless as well as being unpleasant in the extreme.

If there isn't a significant improvement soon then it's clear this will be yet another summer so poor it can be binned off by mid-June. 

Whale blubber, I really did LOL at that!

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I’m a cyclist and have been suffering endless blustery headwinds (even on circular routes!) during the last few weeks. More of the same today in Surrey. My impression is that the last few weeks have been unusually windy. 

Am I right? If so, why has it been so windy?

I can't explain why it has been unusually windy, or even confirm from statistical records that it has been, but I completely agree with your impression that here in this part of the South-east we have had a lot of unpleasant strong and blustery wind this Spring.

My outdoor activity is gardening rather than cycling, but I have really noticed the way that the wind has prevented me from using weedkillers (because of the potential for spray drift) and the damage done to plants (especially gooseberries and blackberries) where this year's new growths have been broken off by the wind.  I don't remember this happening before, or at least not to this extent.

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To have lights on indoors in a mid-afternoon in Summer  . . . blergh.

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I can't explain why it has been unusually windy, or even confirm from statistical records that it has been, but I completely agree with your impression that here in this part of the South-east we have had a lot of unpleasant strong and blustery wind this Spring.

My outdoor activity is gardening rather than cycling, but I have really noticed the way that the wind has prevented me from using weedkillers (because of the potential for spray drift) and the damage done to plants (especially gooseberries and blackberries) where this year's new growths have been broken off by the wind.  I don't remember this happening before, or at least not to this extent.

 

Not being contrary or disputing what you say, but up here apart from a handful of notably stormy incursions, I've found the past couple of months to be predominantly less windy than usual. 

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Just one week in and this repulsive season has already produced several of the vilest summer days I've experienced and that's despite living through the past 23 years which has produced more horrible June weather than any other equivalent period of recorded history 

Apart from yesterday it's barely scraped double figures since Tuesday. It was above 10C for 42 minutes on Wednesday, 3 hrs 56 on Thursday and not at all on Friday. Currently it's 9.7C with drizzle having briefly reached 10C 

It's not just these horrifying temperatures that are the problem but the wind that is accompanying them. I really can't ever remember anything like it. Even 2012 I don't remember being windy as well as grey and cold. During the worst week of June 2012, I managed to walk into town and back to see the Olympic Torch relay. It was nowhere near as unpleasant as the past few days. Couldn't even leave the house on Wednesday or Friday and only managed a brief unpleasant bike ride after work on Thursday. 

Friday evening was unreal with a driving wind and temperatures down to 6C. Only in bleak isolated lands, where the population are forced to live on a diet of whale blubber, could you reasonably expect to get that in a summer month. I cannot think of anywhere on earth that has such an awful climate that you would get those sort of conditions in summer following a snowless winter but that is what we have had to endure. This truly is the nadir for weather that we are living through.

What's more this disgusting spell isn't even producing much in the way of rain, when we are experiencing the driest ever start to a year, so is completely useless as well as being unpleasant in the extreme.

If there isn't a significant improvement soon then it's clear this will be yet another summer so poor it can be binned off by mid-June. 

This is one for the scrap book.  Another LOL from me.  Great work Richard. I too, loved the whale blubber reference. True quality.

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Not being contrary or disputing what you say, but up here apart from a handful of notably stormy incursions, I've found the past couple of months to be predominantly less windy than usual. 

That makes an interesting reversal of what we would each regard as usual - thanks for responding.  I think it is likely to be correlated with the weather pattern of a high pressure area near to the West of the British Isles, which would mean that for your location in the Manchester area there would be little wind, while here in the SE corner we've been on the edge of the HP with NE winds ad nauseam.

My garden is sheltered to the SW (so strong winds from the usual direction in the 'traditional' British climate don't affect it) but exposed to the NE, and all the damage to the plants has been caused by NErly winds.

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Depressing weather continues today, 12c with light rain. Looks poor for the rest of the working week, then we should see 20C + for the foreseeable after that.

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Yet another day of suicide inducing grey damp hell. Useless amounts of drizzly rain that added up to very little, despite the day being a complete write-off, and yet more horrifying single figure temperatures - currently 9.2C and almost dark enough to need the lights on already

15C reached just once in eight days now. Five of those days at least 4C below average when we didn't get a single one during winter, despite that being a season when you would expect to see greater departures from the average. More single figure day temperatures than I've ever experienced before in June by a long way

Absolutely sick to death of this. Just day after day after day of horrific grey skies like nothing we ever got in summer prior to 2007 when even the worst of summers featured an element of changeability

Apart from the 1st (which was also a good day in 2007) the maximum daily sunshine total has been a wrist-slittingly awful 4.8 hours - a total that would be poor for a daily average at this time of year and that is the maximum. Another delightful dose of the June Permacast Hell that has turned this month from this sunniest to the cloudiest month of the year. Californians need to visit here in summer then they'll know what June Gloom really is 

No improvement of any sort on the cards - if anything it looks like it could get worse and that is what is so depressing there never is any light at the end of the tunnel any more. This is not just a poor summer. It is a catastrophically terrible summer on a par with 2007 and 2012.​ This year more than ever it's feeling like being confined to a prison cell serving a life sentence for a crime you didn't commit. Today is the fourth day this month I haven't been out of the house 

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Oh that sounds awful Richard, tragic for you. Please spare a though for us down here as well given that the Monday forecast looks lovely for you, 15c and sunshine, which I would think is positively balmy sunbathing weather whereas us folk in the South have to put up with showers and 21c, which sounds utterly repugnant...

 

Yet another day of suicide inducing grey damp hell. Useless amounts of drizzly rain that added up to very little, despite the day being a complete write-off, and yet more horrifying single figure temperatures - currently 9.2C and almost dark enough to need the lights on already

15C reached just once in eight days now. Five of those days at least 4C below average when we didn't get a single one during winter, despite that being a season when you would expect to see greater departures from the average. More single figure day temperatures than I've ever experienced before in June by a long way

Absolutely sick to death of this. Just day after day after day of horrific grey skies like nothing we ever got in summer prior to 2007 when even the worst of summers featured an element of changeability

Apart from the 1st (which was also a good day in 2007) the maximum daily sunshine total has been a wrist-slittingly awful 4.8 hours - a total that would be poor for a daily average at this time of year and that is the maximum. Another delightful dose of the June Permacast Hell that has turned this month from this sunniest to the cloudiest month of the year. Californians need to visit here in summer then they'll know what June Gloom really is 

No improvement of any sort on the cards - if anything it looks like it could get worse and that is what is so depressing there never is any light at the end of the tunnel any more. This is not just a poor summer. It is a catastrophically terrible summer on a par with 2007 and 2012.​ This year more than ever it's feeling like being confined to a prison cell serving a life sentence for a crime you didn't commit. Today is the fourth day this month I haven't been out of the house 

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Yet another day of suicide inducing grey damp hell. Useless amounts of drizzly rain that added up to very little, despite the day being a complete write-off, and yet more horrifying single figure temperatures - currently 9.2C and almost dark enough to need the lights on already

15C reached just once in eight days now. Five of those days at least 4C below average when we didn't get a single one during winter, despite that being a season when you would expect to see greater departures from the average. More single figure day temperatures than I've ever experienced before in June by a long way

Absolutely sick to death of this. Just day after day after day of horrific grey skies like nothing we ever got in summer prior to 2007 when even the worst of summers featured an element of changeability

Apart from the 1st (which was also a good day in 2007) the maximum daily sunshine total has been a wrist-slittingly awful 4.8 hours - a total that would be poor for a daily average at this time of year and that is the maximum. Another delightful dose of the June Permacast Hell that has turned this month from this sunniest to the cloudiest month of the year. Californians need to visit here in summer then they'll know what June Gloom really is 

No improvement of any sort on the cards - if anything it looks like it could get worse and that is what is so depressing there never is any light at the end of the tunnel any more. This is not just a poor summer. It is a catastrophically terrible summer on a par with 2007 and 2012.​ This year more than ever it's feeling like being confined to a prison cell serving a life sentence for a crime you didn't commit. Today is the fourth day this month I haven't been out of the house 

 

Do you ever reply to people who comment on your hilarious posts? (I love a good rant BTW!!)

I know the weather is becoming very extreme. We live in Central France probably 1000 miles south of you and it is cool, grey and breezy here at only 12 degrees. We have had cool weather since the start of June. Next week we are forecast to have 29 degrees and the next day 70mm of rain. Human activity has screwed up our once reliable climate and it's only going to get much worse.

 

Better to face that reality rather than constantly railing against it eh? Not sure if your posts are some sort of satire but you sound incredibly unhappy?

The climate is screwed. Better to accept and move on.

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.

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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.

To be fair your dire forecasts/pessimism last week have not been far wrong for here, it has been horrendous. If only it was January with this setup we would be knee deep in snow.

Don't share your pessimism for the rest of June/Summer though.  From tomorrow it should be into the 20's rather than 12c, will make a hell of a difference even if it is still unsettled and it is anyones guess what the weather will be like for the rest of June or Sunmer. 

 

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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.

What is this mythical thing called "rain" that you speak of? My end of Kent barely had scant amounts with my lawn still looking brown and topsoil baked dry with cracks.

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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.

And then some what?

Last month's rainfall here was 44.2mm less that the LTA of 53.4mm, so to make that up and receive the LTA for June we would have to record 89.5mm of rain this month. I'm doubtful that this will happen, though with the rainfall being delivered in random heavy thunderstorms as a completely hit-and-miss affair, it's impossible to predict for any one location, so to state categorically that everyone who has been wanting rain will get it, is fatuous in the extreme.

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What is this mythical thing called "rain" that you speak of? My end of Kent barely had scant amounts with my lawn still looking brown and topsoil baked dry with cracks.

I'm watching the rain radar that shows the excruciatingly slow progress of the rain forecast to refresh the garden and fields today. Taking Portland as my reference point (I'm inland about ten miles north) the current progress looks like it's going to slide along the Channel with the bulk and potentially thundery stuff possibly giving Devon and Cornwall another watering. The second 'blob' coming out of Northern France needs to develop a bit otherwise all I can see from this low is a damp squib again. The proper stuff seems to be over the Channel Islands.

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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.

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So a lot of people are now writing off at least 2 months of summer. The BBC longer range has also flipped completely. The signals are clear that this summer will indeed be a complete write off, and I reiterate what I said when everyone was praying for rain. You will get your rain, and will soon have far too much of it. This country's climate always balances out. We've had our summer in April and May. This is not quite a 2012 repeat, but those hoping for a nice summer will be waiting a long time.

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So a lot of people are now writing off at least 2 months of summer.

 

You and John Hammond doesn't constitute 'a lot of people'.

 

Although it will definitely be a miserable summer if you keep on droning on about how wet and cool it will be and barely containing your delight at the prospect whilst shedding dramatic crocodile tears.

 

 

 

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You and John Hammond doesn't constitute 'a lot of people'.

 

Although it will definitely be a miserable summer if you keep on droning on about how wet and cool it will be and barely containing your delight at the prospect whilst shedding dramatic crocodile tears.

 

 

 

John Hammond, the UK Met Office, BBC, Accuweather, Long range models, background signals, other LRFers....I'm happy to come back in September and be completely ridiculed for being totally wrong, but I would venture to suggest I won't be.

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John Hammond, the UK Met Office, BBC, Accuweather, Long range models, background signals, other LRFers....I'm happy to come back in September and be completely ridiculed for being totally wrong, but I would venture to suggest I won't be.

 

My prediction is for the hottest summer spell of all time to start about mid July. And it's about as useful as all the predictions you have mentioned as it's impossible to forecast so far ahead.

Repeat after me Moomin - Any forecast beyond 2 weeks is guess work!

Any forecast beyond 2 weeks is guess work!

Any forecast beyond 2 weeks is guess work!

Any forecast beyond 2 weeks is guess work!

Any forecast beyond 2 weeks is guess work!

Any forecast beyond 2 weeks is guess work!

Any forecast beyond 2 weeks is guess work!

Any forecast beyond 2 weeks is guess work!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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