Today marks two weeks of utterly crud weather - daytime maxes of a (rounded) 25 or more, searing sunshine, bugger-all rain (and what we have had just poofs in seconds on the parched ground). Too hot to even do things like mowing the lawn comfortably, and the irritating thing of everyone else enjoying it and making a stink (BBQs), racket (music, kids screaming) and so forth. 

It'd be lovely to have a day where it only gets to 21 or less, i.e. average to cool, or one where it's cloudy for most of the time (to prevent it getting into the 30s indoors).

The long days, high solar gain, heat and humidity have made for a miserable two weeks for me, and there's yet another week of this dross to come, with all signs of cooler conditions in FI never getting any closer.

It's got to break sooner or later, and by gum I'll be happy when it does!

(I swear I have SAD, even the thought of summer gets me down in the dumps.)

Agreed, and the heat causes a lot of bad behaviour as well,   its no coincidence that riots almost always happen in the summer months

I wonder what the odds are on for a record hot summer. I think it's worth a visit to Ladbrokes.  

🙂🙂🙂🙂

I used to like the sun and warmth but  now I am not so keen. You change as you get older- the allotment and garden take over from the beach and the desire for a bronzed body is less appealing with wrinkled old skin! I won't deprive the younger element on here of the joy of this wonderful summer but I remember even as a 26 year old in 1976 I got fed up with it in the end.

So here in the Essex desert it seems like we have had sun and constant warmth since the start of April. In fact the mean maximum since then has been almost 21C. We had three days at the start of June where we didn't reach 21C but since then the mean has been 25.7C with just 2.5mm of rain after the first week and pretty constant sun since then. Rainfall since March 1st is 70mm and it looks like the storms coming up from France tonight will most likely run up the Dover Straits and into the North Sea.

Why did it rain here nearly every Sunday when I was playing cricket 20-50 years ago ! What I would give for just one full day of real rain and 25mm.

I'd never be surprised if this current spell carried on till the 3rd week of September.  🙂🙂

I was just a foetus!   It must have been extraordinary to experience.  Contrast to now when we have got used to the sort of uncomfortable humid nights we have tonight. They used to be unusual.   Though of course, things are very different further north and the contrast in climate between the north and south is now very notable.

Too right Beast. Be careful what you wish for. After our beautiful sunny and dry Spring, Summer, not so good so far

It'll end up being a fairly normal June but compared to what's happening in the South-East it's.........boring!

To make matters worse I'm heading for the Lakes tomorrow for 3 wet, humid days and midges. The weekend will probably be ruined!!

I'm so glad I'm having my usual month in Portugal at the end of August. I'll get to see prolonged blue skies and warmth!

Don't know why I don't holiday in Norfolk or Suffolk? 😁

I was working out the summer term in Manchester in 1976 and weekend commuting to Kent preparatory to changing jobs. The contrast between normal pleasant summer weather in Manchester (still OK with wearing jackets, lawns green etc) and baking heat in mid-Kent was striking (wife and daughter in bathing costumes as standard attire, lawns totally burnt up and brown).

I was in S Cambs painting my wife's 2CV when the thunderbugs came out of the wheat and stuck all over it!  😱  A few months later we went to work in Vanuatu. Not much change there! Some typical weather here: I like "tons of rain" for July 9th! 😁

Luganville 14 Day Extended Forecast

https://www.timeanddate.com/weather/vanuatu/luganville/ext 

"1976" on steroids with a temperature boost!

More likely who wants to riot in the freezing cold wind & rain?

Is there any actual evidence that the north/south climate divide has actually widened? To me, it's always been a different weather world down south.

My local station, Brogdale, has gone from 13.65 to 15.05 from 61-90 to 91-20:

https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/research/climate/maps-and-data/location-specific-long-term-averages/u10eu42f9 

Rochdale has gone from 12.3 to 13.13.

Edinburgh has gone from 12.15 to 12.96.

Only 3 stations, but I bet the SE (or perhaps the wider south) has warmed more than most places further north.

I don't think that the north/south climate divide has actually widened. The highest temperature extremes have probably got greater in the south, but we're seeing high temperature records being broken right throughout the UK on an all too familiar basis and not just in the south of the UK.

The best example of that was in 2022 when a temperature of 35°C was experienced as far north as the Scottish Borders and although that would have been unthinkable beforehand, this is something which we are probably going to be seeing on an increasingly frequent basis going forward as the heat that is largely down south just now, slowly and gradually extends its influence further north over the course of time.

This means that although it might seem like a completely different world up here just now, I don't see that continuing to be the case going forward and I reckon that by the end of this century, or possibly even by the middle part of this century, it might well be a completely different story in that regard which is very scary to say the least, especially with the south also still continuing to get even hotter at the same time.

After a cool start to this month, this is now turning into quite a warm month overall which is not surprising since it also contains our hottest June day on record here in Edinburgh.

One of the key factors in what makes up a decent summer is that it should be warmer than average and that aspect of it all is going quite well.

With just 4 days left of this month, the sunshine total at Edinburgh Gogarbank is running at around 90.6% of the 1991-2020 June average with only at least another 15 hours of sunshine being required in the space of those 4 days in order to give us yet another sunnier than average and another key aspect of a decent summer is that it should be sunnier than average. The forecast for tomorrow doesn't look very sunny but it then gets a bit better after that, so we should be able to get that sunnier than average month in the end.

Regardless of whether that happens or not though, this month hasn't been as sunny as other recent months and there has even been a couple of sunless days within that which we didn't get at all in May. Furthermore, the third and final factor in what makes up a decent summer overall is that it should be drier than average but Edinburgh Gogarbank has actually been wetter than average overall this month in terms of the actual rainfall amounts, although it is still possible that the number of rain days could yet end up being no more than average here.

Overall, this adds up to a rather mixed month overall and rather a mixed summer so far. We've had far worse summers than this one in the past so I wouldn't go as far as saying that this summer has been particularly bad in any way, but it's been nothing like as good overall in terms of our actual weather as what the preceding spring was which is why all of that good weather in the spring actually came a couple of months too early in my books. Because of that, I'm not surprised that this summer hasn't been as good although I am  a bit surprised that this summer hasn't ended up being worse that it actually has been given the exceptionally dry and sunny spring which preceded it this year.

Living close to a night club, I can vouch for that. 🤣

This month's mean max is 23.8 at the moment, compared with 23.9 in 1976. Looking at the archives, June 1976 had several days which by current standards would be downright cold: a max of 14.3 on the 4th, 16.9 on the 20th, and plenty of nights in single figures. 

This time round the lowest max is 17.4, and there's not been a max below 20 since the 8th. 3 days in June 1976 reached 30C, compared with one so far this month, but the absolute max was just 30.8, compared with 32.4 so far this year.

Given the number of temps in the low 20s here, I wonder if summer maxes are approaching what they were in SE England 50 years ago. If only we could have your rainfall amounts as well!

I am certainly not young (though too young to remember 1976) but I don't see why people moan about warm weather.

There is just something so refreshing about being able to go out after work and not feel a chill in the air. To be able to sit in the garden and not be forced back inside by 8pm as the dampness descends. To smell the soft warm scent of summer as dusk falls, and you could almost convince yourself you were in holiday.

It's so vanishingly rare in this country to not feel cold or wet that I will never stop enjoying it.

😊

RichardAberdeen's Alter Ego?

What's happened to him anyway? Not seen him for weeks.

Must be a prolonged spell of good weather up in Aberdeen.

But the problem is its NOT vanishingly rare anymore. It was incredibly hot in 2022, June 2023 likewise. What was indeed once vanishingly rare is rapidly becoming the norm.

But, I do advise you not to read too much about human caused climate change - I wish I were ignorant of it. There is nothing good for the UK about summer where 35C is reached every other year (and every year if GHG emissions aren't stabilised and atmospheric leverls too).

You're the complete opposite of me, then. I go to bed early (8PM), I get up early (half four AM), I can't think of anything worse to do of an evening than sit outside and listen to other people making a racket, smell their stinky BBQs and sweat my balls off, then go to bed and dampen my bed with more sweat through the night. As I've said before, most people would find air-con set to 25 to be too warm...

I genuinely can't remember the last time I felt cold. I only have one jumper and haven't worn it in years!

Yes absolutely, different people have different thermostats. And if you can believe it, my sister always felt the cold more than me and would want the heating turned up!

Having said that I also love properly cold crisp days, the colder the better. It’s just the grey cool damp chilly nothingness that represents 90% of the UK climate that I dislike. I think I’d be happy somewhere in North America with 40C summers and -25C winters.