One man's 'interesting' is another man's 'well that ruins my holiday entirely'

Give me two summer months of 'boring' dry, sunny and warm any day. 'Interesting' (ie, unsettled) weather can happen all it likes in spring and autumn. Of course, 'very interesting' in winter is deep snow and sub-zero for weeks on end.

 

 

That is exactly why "interesting" weather for me is not the same thing as the actual weather which I generally want to be seeing.

By "interesting" weather, I mean the sort of weather which will generate more interest within this forum and also more changeable conditions because of the greater unpredictability about what our weather will be like from one day to the next (even if it was constantly always wet and miserable, that would actually just be as boring and uninteresting in my books for that very reason as weather which is always dry and sunny but then, our weather here in Edinburgh never seems to be like that).

That is completely different from the sort of weather which I actually want to see which at this time of the year, is warm, dry and sunny even though that sort of the weather all the time is also boring and uninteresting in my books.

 

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Manchester summers in order with the best at the top and the worst at the bottom

1976 301

1995 298

1983 278

1955 277

1911 274

2018 272

1984 271

1959 269

1975 268

1949 267

1989 262

1947 255

1933 251

1901 249

1921 249

2003 247

2013 247

1925 246

2006 246

2021 246 (up to 6th Aug)

1996 245

1935 243

1994 240

 

If the rest of the summer had a mean max of 15C, zero sunshine and rain everyday, the index would be 197.

So we are looking at, at least 200 for the index now

Summers in order with the best at the top and the worst at the bottom

1976 301

1995 298

1983 278

1955 277

1911 274

2018 272

1984 271

1959 269

1975 268

1949 267

1989 262

1947 255

1933 251

1901 249

1921 249

2003 247

2013 247

1925 246

2006 246

1996 245

1935 243

1994 240

1934 238

1940 238

1941 236

2014 236

1970 235

1969 234

1973 234

1999 234

1997 232

1990 229

1917 228

1926 227

2005 224

1905 223

1932 223

1945 223

1967 223

1977 223

1914 222

1992 222

1908 220

1960 217

1950 216

1957 216

1968 215

1906 214

1942 214

1937 213

1939 213

1904 212

1929 211

2001 211

1903 209

1943 209

1991 207

1913 205

1971 205

1919 203

1961 203

1982 203

1951 201

1918 200

1944 200

2002 200

 

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Was forecast to be dry with sunny spells this morning and I was highly sceptical because of the truly dire synoptic set-up.

Was right to be, because yet again I have woken up to more grim, grey, rainy overcast ****. As usual it's a competition between the weather forecasts and the actual weather as to which is more of a useless joke 

Looks like the relentless train of overcast is set up for yet another day. If anything this weekend looks even more of a disaster than the write-off stinker of last weekend 

Once again there no words. Hate would be far too mild a descriptor for the feelings I have about this godawful summer and what it's doing to my mental and physical health. Not just this summer taken in isolation but the unprecedented run of abject horror endured since 2007. The fact that May was so dreadful too this year is making it seem even worse.

Stuck indoors staring at a screen all week, like a zombie, only to be slapped in the face with this utter filth weekend after weekend. A pitiful, joyless and worthless existence.

All there is are overcast skies and occasional clear skies. Nothing in between i.e. normal weather. No convection either and the only year in my life I have not heard any thunder.

It's just like Nov/Dec/Jan only at least then the balance is tipped more in favour of the clear skies 20 of the last 35 days have now recorded less than 3 hours sun. It's just surreal. 20 days of featureless winter style overcast at what should be the height of summer 

Can't even get days that start sunny and degenerate into cloudiness by mid-morning. Those days, which there were a lot of last July, are brilliant compared to the utter excrement inflicted on us this year.

The temperatures are nonsense like nothing on earth ever seen before in summer. Average min close to 13C, since early July, with only three nights in single figures. The hottest months wouldn't have had minima that mild in the past yet, apart from the brief heatwave in mid-July, day temperatures have generally been average/below average.

So many days I wake up to find only a degree or so variation in the temperature overnight and it just gets worse and worse. Since 7:15pm on Thursday - some 37.5 hours - the temperature has varied between 13.6C and 15.9C. Incomprehensible lack of temperature variation that in the past would only  be seen in the winter half of the year. 

Truly a living hell with no end in sight to the misery it would seem 

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Was forecast to be dry with sunny spells this morning and I was highly sceptical because of the truly dire synoptic set-up.

Was right to be, because yet again I have woken up to more grim, grey, rainy overcast ****. As usual it's a competition between the weather forecasts and the actual weather as to which is more of a useless joke 

Looks like the relentless train of overcast is set up for yet another day. If anything this weekend looks even more of a disaster than the write-off stinker of last weekend 

Once again there no words. Hate would be far too mild a descriptor for the feelings I have about this godawful summer and what it's doing to my mental and physical health. Not just this summer taken in isolation but the unprecedented run of abject horror endured since 2007. The fact that May was so dreadful too this year is making it seem even worse.

Stuck indoors staring at a screen all week, like a zombie, only to be slapped in the face with this utter filth weekend after weekend. A pitiful, joyless and worthless existence.

All there is are overcast skies and occasional clear skies. Nothing in between i.e. normal weather. No convection either and the only year in my life I have not heard any thunder.

It's just like Nov/Dec/Jan only at least then the balance is tipped more in favour of the clear skies 20 of the last 35 days have now recorded less than 3 hours sun. It's just surreal. 20 days of featureless winter style overcast at what should be the height of summer 

Can't even get days that start sunny and degenerate into cloudiness by mid-morning. Those days, which there were a lot of last July, are brilliant compared to the utter excrement inflicted on us this year.

The temperatures are nonsense like nothing on earth ever seen before in summer. Average min close to 13C, since early July, with only three nights in single figures. The hottest months wouldn't have had minima that mild in the past yet, apart from the brief heatwave in mid-July, day temperatures have generally been average/below average.

So many days I wake up to find only a degree or so variation in the temperature overnight and it just gets worse and worse. Since 7:15pm on Thursday - some 37.5 hours - the temperature has varied between 13.6C and 15.9C. Incomprehensible lack of temperature variation that in the past would only  be seen in the winter half of the year. 

Truly a living hell with no end in sight to the misery it would seem 

Yuk. The Aberdeen climate sounds awful. It certainly sounds like a things are deteriorating on a larger overall scale.

The Kent Summer has been disappointing but its nothing in comparison to what your poor folk up there have to endure and continue to endure. If I were planning a visit to Scotland in the hope of receiving some decent weather I would take my chances on the exposed west coast rather than the permacast dullness of the east coast. 

 

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Was forecast to be dry with sunny spells this morning and I was highly sceptical because of the truly dire synoptic set-up.

Was right to be, because yet again I have woken up to more grim, grey, rainy overcast ****. 

The sky outside is wet and grey....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JmBA7e-G21Q

 

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Thunderstorm warnings yesterday, today and tomorrow for my area. So far, zero thunder, not sure anyone in NW England heard any thunder yesterday nor even today so far. 

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Yuk. The Aberdeen climate sounds awful. It certainly sounds like a things are deteriorating on a larger overall scale.

The Kent Summer has been disappointing but its nothing in comparison to what your poor folk up there have to endure and continue to endure. If I were planning a visit to Scotland in the hope of receiving some decent weather I would take my chances on the exposed west coast rather than the permacast dullness of the east coast. 

 

 

It can’t have been that bad. There was a lot of yellow grass around until the downpours on a couple of days recently. 

Nothing in between i.e. normal weather. No convection either and the only year in my life I have not heard any thunder.

Very poor year for thunder over here too. 

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Very poor year for thunder over here too. 

In a way, I could probably say that it's been the same here in Edinburgh as far since we had that hot weather during July.

Yes, we did get a little bit of lightning during yesterday with some rumbles of thunder.

Given just how hot it got for a while during July though, I would have been expecting a lot more in the way of thundery activity as a result than what we have ended up getting and of course, the biggest disappointment of all was getting nothing at all in the way of thundery activity right at the end of that July heatwave, despite the official Met Office yellow warning which we were under for that at the time.

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https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/pub/data/weather/uk/climate/anomacts/2021/7/2021_7_LightningStrikes_Actual.gif 

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It can’t have been that bad. There was a lot of yellow grass around until the downpours on a couple of days recently. 

Indeed, almost unheard of parched grazing in southern Scotland even in the SW it looked more like Kansas. For about a week. 

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Indeed, almost unheard of parched grazing in southern Scotland even in the SW it looked more like Kansas. For about a week. 

We had a lot of yellow/brown grass here in Edinburgh back in the summer of 2018 and had it not been for the massive downpours which we had at the beginning of July, I feel pretty certain that the same thing would probably have happened here again during this summer as well.

 

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In a way, I could probably say that it's been the same here in Edinburgh as far since we had that hot weather during July.

Yes, we did get a little bit of lightning during yesterday with some rumbles of thunder.

Given just how hot it got for a while during July though, I would have been expecting a lot more in the way of thundery activity as a result than what we have ended up getting and of course, the biggest disappointment of all was getting nothing at all in the way of thundery activity right at the end of that July heatwave, despite the official Met Office yellow warning which we were under for that at the time.

Yes, exact same thoughts here. One of the longest running heatwaves in living memory ended with one of the lamest breakdowns in living memory.  But not just this summer that is seeing a remarkable lack of thunder, but pretty much this whole year so far with last winter seeing very little also, certainly less that I would normally expect at that time of year at least, which isn't that much to begin with. Still, nature usually finds a way to balance out any anomalies with time, so hopefully this winter coming will be meteorological blitz!  

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Yes, exact same thoughts here. One of the longest running heatwaves in living memory ended with one of the lamest breakdowns in living memory.  But not just this summer that is seeing a remarkable lack of thunder, but pretty much this whole year so far with last winter seeing very little also, certainly less that I would normally expect at that time of year at least, which isn't that much to begin with. Still, nature usually finds a way to balance out any anomalies with time, so hopefully this winter coming will be meteorological blitz!  

Another point to be borne in mind is that although most people out there tend to believe that we are most likely to get thunderstorms at the end of a summer heatwave, that's not actually always how it is necessarily going to work out in the end.

I have quite often found that our hottest summers have not actually delivered as many thunderstorms as what I would have expected and I suppose that this is probably down to there being a lot of high pressure around during those summers which means that there just isn't enough instability being created during those summers to actually produce those storms.

In the other hand, I have seen some very poor, wet and miserable summers deliver quite a lot of thunderstorms to these parts (although that doesn't always end up happening). That is probably because those summers are usually much more low pressure dominated which means that the air is generally a lot more unstable on average with those storms tending to occur when the low pressure is centred slap bang on top of us.

That is despite the fact that we get relatively little in the way of heat during those poorer summers and the fact that we have even been been getting thunderstorms here during a few of our most recent winters (such as in February 2018 and during last winter) shows that you don't always even need a preceding build-up of heat to produce these storms.

 

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Was forecast to be dry with sunny spells this morning and I was highly sceptical because of the truly dire synoptic set-up.

Was right to be, because yet again I have woken up to more grim, grey, rainy overcast ****. As usual it's a competition between the weather forecasts and the actual weather as to which is more of a useless joke 

Looks like the relentless train of overcast is set up for yet another day. If anything this weekend looks even more of a disaster than the write-off stinker of last weekend 

Once again there no words. Hate would be far too mild a descriptor for the feelings I have about this godawful summer and what it's doing to my mental and physical health. Not just this summer taken in isolation but the unprecedented run of abject horror endured since 2007. The fact that May was so dreadful too this year is making it seem even worse.

Stuck indoors staring at a screen all week, like a zombie, only to be slapped in the face with this utter filth weekend after weekend. A pitiful, joyless and worthless existence.

All there is are overcast skies and occasional clear skies. Nothing in between i.e. normal weather. No convection either and the only year in my life I have not heard any thunder.

It's just like Nov/Dec/Jan only at least then the balance is tipped more in favour of the clear skies 20 of the last 35 days have now recorded less than 3 hours sun. It's just surreal. 20 days of featureless winter style overcast at what should be the height of summer 

Can't even get days that start sunny and degenerate into cloudiness by mid-morning. Those days, which there were a lot of last July, are brilliant compared to the utter excrement inflicted on us this year.

The temperatures are nonsense like nothing on earth ever seen before in summer. Average min close to 13C, since early July, with only three nights in single figures. The hottest months wouldn't have had minima that mild in the past yet, apart from the brief heatwave in mid-July, day temperatures have generally been average/below average.

So many days I wake up to find only a degree or so variation in the temperature overnight and it just gets worse and worse. Since 7:15pm on Thursday - some 37.5 hours - the temperature has varied between 13.6C and 15.9C. Incomprehensible lack of temperature variation that in the past would only  be seen in the winter half of the year. 

Truly a living hell with no end in sight to the misery it would seem 

 

I don't know what you're expecting out of your climate Richard. June and July were 1.3C warmer than usual for you, 20% drier than normal and with 10% more sunshine than normal.

 

 

I don't know what you're expecting out of your climate Richard. June and July were 1.3C warmer than usual for you, 20% drier than normal and with 10% more sunshine than normal.

Richard never lets the facts get in the way of a good moan!

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Summer has definitely slipped around here in the last 10 days or so. Lots of rain and little in the way of sunshine or dry weather.

I really hope this isn't going to be another year where August ruins the work of a decent June and July but it's looking like it on the models. August ruining the summer really is becoming the most predictable annual weather event in this country.

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Summer has definitely slipped around here in the last 10 days or so. Lots of rain and little in the way of sunshine or dry weather.

I really hope this isn't going to be another year where August ruins the work of a decent June and July but it's looking like it on the models. August ruining the summer really is becoming the most predictable annual weather event in this country.

There was some very pleasant conditions earlier last week, I reached the low 20s on a couple of occasions. However I fear we may be getting into a pattern whereby we have some decent weather mid-week but the weekends are a washout. And yes, I am 'writing off' this weekend as such even though we are only 7 hours into Sunday. There have been worse weekends of course but it's pretty appalling out there.

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I don't know what you're expecting out of your climate Richard. June and July were 1.3C warmer than usual for you, 20% drier than normal and with 10% more sunshine than normal.

As Col had said not all that long ago, you've just got to take Richard's posts as a laugh and a joke, rather than actually taking them seriously.

 

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you've just got to take Richard's posts as a laugh and a joke, rather than actually taking them seriously.

 

The joke ran out, years ago.........

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