I am having my garden a complete make over with new patio on 16th Sept as the men are available to work so should be good timing as September is reliable month for settled and then some rain to help to water the new turf so i don;'t need to water at all as I am on water meter so rain will do the job and ground won't be so dry at that time of the year.

And rain in Manc by the end of the working day.

Today is cloudy once again.

Both ECM and GEM have a low ruining the first weekend (the end of their runs). GFS has it drier, but the AH only properly ridging well over the UK later in the week, and before we're on the fringe of it.

The general forecast in my mind is:

Friday 2nd (travelling down) - dry, 21-22c

Sat & Sun - mostly cloudy, chance of ppn. cooler. 19-20c

Mon-Wed - dry, sunny spells 21-22c

Thur - fine & sunny, warmer. 23-24c

Fri (travelling back home) - warm & sunny - 25c

And I reckon that weekend and the following week will be the best spell of the summer 

But today although cloudy has been bright at times and much better than the constant rain that was forecast just a few days ago. That said yesterday was worse than originally expected with quite a bit of rain at times. Swings & roundabouts as they say.

Been cloudy due to the pest south rain sliding and I notice how many times it rain slide to the south this summer more than the Midlands.  Just imagine how much snow they get in the south in winter with those frequent sliders and snow on the ground for many weeks.

If you want warm and sunny weather, skip the Westcountry and just come to Kent... we're usually warmer in the summer and this year is no exception. Forecast for Leysdown for the next week, as an example, from the MetO:

https://ukwct.org.uk/weather/leys6.jpg 

It will end up warmer than that, too. As an example, Saturday has gone from 21C two days ago to 24C today, and even today - we've had 21.6 rather than the 20 that was modelled.

LOL, just wait 'til you get on the Tube. 😂

Hot weather, especially with added humidity, in London sucks, as you'll soon find out!

(The best weather for sightseeing in London is something like tomorrow will be - a bit of a breeze, scattered clouds, highs in the low 20s).

So about average for London then. I've always thought that London as a world tourist destination has just about the perfect summer climate for visiting. Not too hot but warm enough to be pleasant almost all the time. A reasonable amount of sun and not that much rain.

Tomorrow will be average, yes. The 29 that Tim is enthusing about isn't average, far from it, and will be especially unpleasant to be out and about in. (And yes, I speak from experience - it was 25 when I went four weeks ago and that was enough for the Jubilee line carriage I was on to stink of BO, and the bus back from Kew was especially putrid inside - steamy, and it stank of BO and stale piss. 29 would be even worse.)

London's transport isn't designed for hot weather, other countries where it's hotter (like Japan, or the south/SW in the States) cope much better with it all!

It won't be as bad as last summer, 12 days in Florence/Tuscany with temps over 40c on half the days (and just under on the others) and no air con for most of the trip. 

Until now they refused to put ac in buses even with cooler climate now we having it still hot inside any vehicle like all cars have ac is a must.

Disappointing but not surprising 

Reality sunny to sunny spells at some point daily, no rain or snow, temps resulted higher by 2 to 3C and frosty nights well below -4 or more as proof of deep frosts on surfaces as -1 is slight frost patches.   I know very well on frostiness thickness from temps I used to record it.

Same applied to Nicosia and Furnace creek also well under cook both day and night temps.  

I suspect we might be less lucky in Cornwall from the 17th though.

Very consistently I find this tends to happen around the midway point of August, regardless of the weather, and this year is no different.

It's funny how one's subconscious mindset drifts over time.

Back in school, this week would have been one of the two middle-weeks of the school summer holidays, and I remember always thinking of summer as a July-August event. When I started working, I sort of gradually drifted away from that. When our kids were younger, you drift back.

It's later down here - around the 20th, or a couple of days later, but I know exactly what you mean. The sun loses its "kick" and from then on the changes happen much more quickly. It's now pretty dark in the morning when I get up too (I've noticed in the last few days that we've gone from a couple of just the brightest stars to lots more).

It still feels like high summer here but even then it looks a little autumnal due to the lack of rain: more trees are shedding leaves and the grass is increasingly turning to straw, leaving just the clover and dandelions etc behind!

Conversely the opposite happens in the middle of February down here - that's when the sun starts to get a kick to it, even if it's mild compared to the searing heat of midsummer.

Yes, I was thinking exactly the same thing today. The June/July intensity of the sun has gone. The exact converse of what happens in mid Feb when the sun is noticeably higher in the sky and begins to feel warm on your face. As someone who leaves for work at 4.45am every day it's the mornings getting darker that I notice. Around the solstice I leave in broad daylight but now there's just a glimmer of light in the east and soon that will be gone too.

You're an early bird like me, then - the thing that always catches me out is how rapid that early morning change is this time of year!

The mid Feb/mid-late Aug switch is interesting too, as it doesn't really make sense, even though you've also noticed it.

Here, for example, around the 20th August the sun is still 51 degrees high in the sky, 11 degrees below the June maximum. Two weeks after that, early September, it'll only be 46 degrees high... but that's still way more than in late February, when it's only 26 degrees high!

I guess it's the rate of change we're picking up on in both cases. Following a long period where the sun's intensity has been much the same, be it winter or summer, we notice it more...