AderynCoch

Finally some action in 2012! Lots of loud gunshot thunder here.

I'm flabbergasted to see reports on the old thread of decent thundery activity in my area. I saw nothing. You honestly couldn't make this up. Well maybe I heard the odd distant rumble of thunder, but they were so feeble they could just as easily have been planes (in fact one definitely was). It's clear now that it's not a NW England storm shield causing problems nor a Merseyside storm shield but rather a West Derby storm shield.

Either that or there's more to life than being pedantic. We celebrated the millenium in 2000 because it was a nice big round number.

Warmer than normal in winter and cooler than normal in summer = perpetual autumn = tedious In my opinion etc. etc.

15.5C

The sunshine stats will certainly have been skewed by last week's fine weather in the south, but further north there has been little improvement. July 2010 really slipped under the radar in this regard, showing up as rather dry and only somewhat dull for much of the country, but for me it was horrifically wet and dull. So much awful summer weather in recent years, it's beyond ridiculous now.

Edinburgh Gogarbank managed at least a week without sunshine in the first half of the month. I recall the sunshine total for the first two weeks of July was less than three hours. THREE! Things improved after mid-month and it was up to 30 hours by the 22nd, but that's still phenomenally low.

Is it just me or does it always get even hotter to the south as these fronts move down from the north and more and more areas lose the heat? It's almost like Mother Nature is trying her utmost to rub salt in the wounds. Of course a week of heat in the south will surely mean that we have to be "punished" by weeks of the insufferable garbage we've seen so much of this summer. Too far north to get in on the party when there's heat around, but no doubt I won't be far enough north to escape the southerly tracking jet. For the first time ever I'm actually looking forward to autumn this year - I find it the blandest time of year, but at least the lack of expecation means I won't be disappointed.

Warm and humid but with far too much cloud around. Sunshine will be even more at a premium in the coming days as that evil front creeps ever southwards - I feel sorry for those who have been stuck underneath it all this time. So that's the end of that as far as I'm concerned. Nowhere near enough to salvage this July from the "very poor" category. I've almost forgotten what a good July feels like, even though 2006 was fairly recent.

Tenterhooks. I'm crossing every body part I can in the hope this despicable front is shunted even further north (sorry to those currently north of it!). Right now we're looking at a textbook defintion of Sod's Law.

Let's face it, 1912 isn't an ideal year to make comparisons with when heading towards August.

I think the lesson here is as follows: never trust the Azores High. It's the summer equivalent of the Scandinavian High in that it's completely unreliable and yet people spend months waiting for it to appear. Just as the Scandinavian High is prone to sinking and becoming a dreaded Euro High in winter (as happened during the pathetic excuse for a cold spell in February 2012), the Azores High fails to muster enough strength to ridge far enough north to give us widespread warmth. A Euro-Scandi High in summer and Greenland High in winter is the way to go. Of course I'm being IMBY here, but then I can only speak for myself.

April and June were both the wettest on record in England & Wales (since at least 1766), and July is shaping up to be exceptionally wet too. There is such a thing as "too much rain", even in this country...

Me too to be honest. Even if it does push 30C I'm currently doubtful anywhere outside the SE will get anywhere near that. The Azores High isn't all that reliable actually: if it doesn't spread far enough north you end up with cool westerlies on its northern flank. A good solid Euro High is the best bet for widespread warmth, though I don't think we've seen one of them come into play during the summer quarter since July 2006 (when it looked like it would never disappear). Late September/early October last year and the last week of May this year are good examples of when it has happened recently.

I very much doubt it will reach 31-32C if it's cloudy.

No forests? You obviously don't know Minnesota very well. And people manage to live there just fine without succumbing to the frustrations you describe.

Really? I'm close to you and I've had some good spells of sunshine in recent days (not today of course). Not vintage stuff by any means (disappointing temperatures) but it's something at least. Those sunshine levels in eastern Scotland are on another level to anything I've ever seen before: we're nearly halfway through July and Edinburgh, Aberdeen and Eskdalemuir are still stuck in single figures for sunshine hours.

Terrible day, cold with heavy rain all afternoon - and it's still going. Very fitting for Friday the 13th. I had a feeling I was onto a hiding after managing a couple of half-decent days in a row.

So Edinburgh remains stuck on 1.6 hours for the month! It's beyond me to describe just how incredible that is. I wonder how long it will take to reach double figures? One very sunny day will do it, but that doesn't look like occurring any time soon (unless I've missed something in the forecast). Even in deepest, darkest winter there can't have been that many 12-days periods as dull as this..

Many of us got that in 2010. A terrible July in this neck of the woods. Although this summer is definitely worse than the last few (I would even rank it below 2007 so far), taken as a whole it really has been a very poor run of summers here: 2007 needs no introduction 2008 was dull and wet with an exceptionally dull August 2009 wasn't bad to start off with but July was awfully wet again and August was ruined by an annoying and persistent NW-SE split 2010 started off pretty well but deteriorated in late June, and July was horrific - exceptionally wet yet again, and record-breakingly dull with the worst NW-SE split ever. Yet another lacklustre August 2011 was cool in all three months and lacking in warm days. The NW-SE curse also remained, though not on the scale of July 2010. I can accept bad summer months in isolation, but we've had far too many of them in such a relatively small span of years.

I don't know whether or not to be surprised with the atrociously-low sunshine statistics any more. Approaching mid-June, I was utterly flabbergasted at the paucity of sunshine at a wide scattering of stations (Bournemouth Hurn, Brize Norton, Nottingham, Leeming) - all with less than 20 hours, and as low as 12 hours at Bournemouth. I previously thought it was practically impossible to have running totals so low coming up to mid-June. I really had seen everything now. Only I hadn't. A mere month later and Scotland has a number of stations which haven't even reached 10 hours yet never mind 20. Check this lot out: Lerwick - 9.9 Leuchars - 9.3 Aberdeen Dyce - 8.0 Prestwick - 8.0 Eskdalemuir - 4.6 Edinburgh Gogarbank - 1.6 (no, your eyes don't need testing - one point six hours of sunshine a third of the way into July) I should point out that I noticed those running June totals for those English stations around the 12-13th of that month, so the Scottish July figures are a couple of days behind in that respect. Also, the first half of June has slightly longer daylight hours than the first half of July. But both of these factors are negligible really. What next? A completely sunless first half of August?

1996 as a whole was a very dry year here, exacerbating the drought issues which started in 1995 with that long hot summer. The hosepipe ban went on for ages.

One of the wettest months ever recorded in NW England, with rainfall totals above 200mm widely even in the lower, drier parts of the region. 221.2mm at Bidston is a record for any month in a series dating from 1867 to 2002 (September 1976 was the only other month to surpass 200mm, rather ironic considering what the preceding summer was like). Blackpool recorded 239mm according to Trevor Harley.

I can't tell at the minute - the lightning detector's not showing anything from this system, despite forumer confirmation to the contrary.

Southport's about to get a soaking by the looks of things. Good news for Cloudwatcher - the aforementioned Stoke system looks to be making a beeline for Ellesmere Port. I'll be too far north.