Richard2901

65.6mm for July - 121% of average and the 5th successive wetter than average July. The were only 10 rain days and 7 wet days though. The true total will have been higher as the tipping bucket rain gauge underestimates in periods of intense rainfall. I have a manual gauge and normally the results are similar but last Sunday and Tuesday gave about 35mm in the gauge compared to 29.4mm recorded by the Vantage Pro. I would therefore estimate true total to be 70-75mm.

A four season climate with lots of sunshine- about 150 hrs in winter months to 350 hrs in summer months. Not too cold in winter and not too hot in summer. No more than 100 days with rain during the year. Maritime junk like low cloud, featureless overcast skies, fog, light rain and drizzle should be practically unheard of. Not found anywhere that looks perfect but Sandpoint, Idaho looks a good match. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandpoint,_Idaho#Climate July and August mean maxima a little hot but the nights look nice and cool. Good amounts of snow likely in winter but months on end of continuous cover unlikely.

My preference: warm, sunny westerly type weather with scattered cumulus cloud; cool at night with occasional heavy convective downpours Worst possible weather: Fog, drizzle, low cloud, murk, SE wind, low temperature range i.e. this week Lerwick would be one of the closest matches to my idea of climatic hell, possible only the Faeroes would be worse.

Utterly disgusting output. Don't know when I'll next see the sun. The whole of this week looks a complete disaster zone with SE winds bringing the usual depressing concoction of cloud, below average maxima, rain and fog. A week of hell that could be taken straight from last summer God I am sick of the relentless North Sea influence on our weather in summer nowadays. The last normal westerly summer month was August 2005 and since then any unsettled weather always results in us getting vile SE winds and stuck under cloud for days on end with no respite. Rain no longer clears to sunshine like it does the other 9 months of the year. As soon as it stops, in summer, fog and murk sets in

Warm spell well and truly over here. It ended on Friday morning. Hasn't reached 20C since then with the wind constantly coming from the worst possible direction (SE). Today has been awful - murky, wet and 16C - and the rest of the week promises more of the same. Every bit as bad as this time last year

Yesterday was utter rubbish here. Typical easterly dross. Cloudy pretty much all day with a max of 17.0C in a brief sunny spell. Now 5 of the 6 days with less than 1 hour sun this summer have been at the weekend. It's sickening Fortunately I was able to take a trip up to Findhorn on the Moray Firth and while there was some horrible cloud scudding in off the sea there as well it soon cleared up in to a glorious blue sky day. When I came back on the train it was clear and sunny as far as Dyce it was just in the city centre that the gloom stuck all day. Thankfully today is a lot better back in Aberdeen. The murk has cleared - lots of blue sky showing and up to 17.3C so while it will not be as warm as during the week it will at least be a huge improvement on yesterday and the best that can be hoped for with a ghastly SE'ly wind.

All through the week I suffocated in a stuffy office as it was hot and sunny outside then by 5pm it would turn cloudy. Now it gets to the weekend and I have to endure rotten, cold, cloudy, featureless grey dross all day long 13C all afternoon with a dismal easterly wind. I had on a fleece and jumper and still felt cold. What a detestable spell of weather. Just hateful. 5 days this summer have had less than 1 hour of sun and 4 of them have been weekends (9th, 10th & 23rd June plus today) All of these synoptic set-ups delivered better weather here than what this rubbish cloudy high has brought. http://www.wetterzentrale.de/pics/archive/ra/2007/Rrea00120070709.gif http://www.wetterzentrale.de/pics/archive/ra/2008/Rrea00120080605.gif http://www.wetterzentrale.de/pics/archive/ra/2009/Rrea00120090702.gif http://www.wetterzentrale.de/pics/archive/ra/2010/Rrea00120100708.gif http://www.wetterzentrale.de/pics/archive/ra/2011/Rrea00120110602.gif http://www.wetterzentrale.de/pics/archive/ra/2012/Rrea00120120630.gif More sun and blue sky on each of those days than any in the past week despite the synoptics looking nowhere near as good as the current set-up.

Not true we've been plagued with cloud all week up here. Last Saturday was the last day to manage as much as 11 hours of sun and it's not pleasant fluffy cumulus cloud that's blotting out the sun. Horrible overcast stratus most of the time - Wednesday was worst but every day has seen extended overcast periods especially in the evening. Even when the sun is out there is a lot of cloud, skies are not very blue and the sun is hazy. A very forgettable spell so far. No better than 22nd June to 13th July 2010 despite the synoptics looking much better. I would never have thought we would not manage one day with 12 hours of sun this week. The lack of clear blue skies has been very disappointing.

Not impressed by this spell of weather at all. Nothing like the best for 7 years. I've not had one day of wall to wall sunshine and 2 days have seen below average temperatures with today utterly disgusting - slate grey skies and only 13C at noon, 15C later. Friday and Saturday were actually the sunniest days when the synoptics did not look so good with the high not yet completely over us. Since it did move over us on Sunday there's been much more cloud. Yesterday was infuriating with 26C and sunshine during the working day then 16C and overcast by late afternoon so unable to sit outside when I got home from work for 2 days in a row now. March 2012 was much better than this - more sunshine and more consistent warmth. That is the only time in recent years I can remember it being good enough to sit out in the garden every evening for a whole week which is just ridiculous at a time of year when the average max is still in single figures and 10C lower than in summer.

June here was the first month with above average mean temperature since March 2012, albeit by the narrowest of margins, bringing to an end 14 consecutive cooler than average months. The first summer month with above average sunshine since July 2009 and the first since July 2006 to be both drier and sunnier than average, Mean Max: 16.3C (+0.2) Mean Min: 8.8C (+0.1) Mean Temp: 12.5C (+0.1) Highest Max: 21.1C (30th) Lowest Max: 10.8C (9th) Highest Min: 11.4C (21st) Lowest Min: 4.4C (3rd) Rainfall: 21.2mm (39%) Rain Days: 8 Wet Days: 6 Wettest Day: 7.0mm (23rd) Sunshine: 186.9 hours (110%) Sunniest day: 14.1 hours (3rd) Sunless days: 1

The best summer month since July 2006 which doesn't say much as it's the only one to have been sunnier and drier than average since then. There was only a very small surplus of sunshine - less than 10% above average - so will still be shaded as an average month on the Met Office maps. The sunshine excess was largely down to the first 4 days when I was away getting rained on in Slovakia. From the 5th onwards it became increasingly cloudy with a lot of cool cloudy weather in the 2nd half. Cloud cover was more like a winter pattern i.e. either mostly overcast or mostly clear rather than more variable cover, you used to get in summer, due to a lack of W/SW winds and the familiar, for recent years, domination of N and E winds. Given that temperatures were only average and it never reached 20C until the final day, with the wettest weather occurring at weekends I can only give 5/10. It's just not good enough and pathetic that this has been the sunniest June for 10 years yet the sunshine total was still below the 1921-50 average

Every month below average so far except for January. Jan: 69.2mm (113%) Feb: 42.4mm (82%) Mar: 53.6mm (99%) April: 22.6mm (41%) May: 38.4mm (79%) June: 21.2mm (39%) Total:247.4mm (72%) Haven't had a single daily total of 10mm yet, the wettest day being 18th May with 9.8mm.

Whilst an improvement on recent summer fayre it compares poorly with recent fine spells that were earlier in the year: March 2012: 3 consecutive days over 20C and 6 days of wall to wall sun. May 2012: 6 consecutive days over 20C and 6 days of wall to wall sun. June 2013: 0 days over 20C and 0 days of wall to wall sun. That puts this lame spell into perspective. Just far too much cloud which has been the curse of summer for well over a decade now. Today is just a perfect illustration of why it is pretty much impossible to get good summer months any more. With a high directly over us there should be plenty of sun but we have stubborn grey cloud that is taking forever to clear and is not even coming off the North Sea. I would expect cloud off the North Sea if the high was further north, though even then it would have burned off much more readily in the past whereas now it never seems to budge and extends much further inland. It looks like the cloud could finally clear soon but will not happen before my lunch break is over. Temperature will probably climb to an average 16C but it will have dropped back to a chilly 13C or 14C by the time I get home. Weekend forecast far from inspiring. The sooner the breakdown happens the better. Would far rather have westerlies than this. Might be a chance of seeing 20C which has not happened so far this year, the warmest being 19.5C way back on 5th May.

A sunny day with a max of 17.4C. Forecast on BBC Breakfast was for it to stay cloudy all day with a max of 12C despite it already being sunny and 13C at the time of the forecast.

Sunniest Junes on record here were 1936 with 284 hours and 1940 with 279 hours. 1930 and 1933 also managed 250 hours and 1970 247 hours. Those were the days when June was the sunniest month of the year and totals over 200 hours were recorded regularly. Since 1971 June has become markedly cooler, cloudier and wetter, particularly so from 1997 onwards. Since 2007 it has been the cloudiest month of the year with 2007 being the dullest on record and 2012 little better. Sunniest since 1971 was June 1986 with 226 hours and in the truly abysmal run since 1997, only 2003 has managed 200 hours - and only just - and this was the last time June was sunnier than average.

I really enjoyed the first half of last August - well the first 12 days at least - because I spent it in Spain. Here it was just another diabolical spell of unseasonably poor weather. Only the 18th - 24th brought any semblence of normal summer temperatures and sunshine levels, and that was rapidly followed by a dose of torrential rain and flooding on Saturday 25th August. A fantastic way to end the worst summer on record. That deluge turned August 2012 into the wettest summer month I've recorded and like the Augusts of 2006, 2008 and 2011 it was duller than any August between 1980 and 2005. Here's the proof that for much of the country August 2012 was yet another rotten summer month: http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/climate/uk/anomacts/2012/8/2012_8_Rainfall_Anomaly_1981-2010.gif http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/climate/uk/anomacts/2012/8/2012_8_Sunshine_Anomaly_1981-2010.gif

Even worse up here with only one summer having above average sunshine since 1999 which was 2003. 1999, 2004, 2005, 2006 and 2009 had average sunshine while the rest were dull with 2007 and 2012 being the dullest post-war summers by some way.Last summers sunshine total came in below the 1st percentile and it was the worst summer ever recorded so summer 2013 couldn't possibly be any worse.Furthermore the combined sunshine deficit for the past 6 summers has been 560 hours which is ridiculous. Never has a decent summer been so long overdue. Even the 1960s summers were nowhere near as bad.

It rained on Saturday and it's snowed the past two days. A better question would be can you remember the last time there was a nice day? The execrable easterlies have been here so long that the answer would be not really

2011. Absolutely dire with April being the only stand out month. - Pretty much no wintry weather - just 4 days of lying snow which were actually two 36 hour falls not exceeding 3cm. February only recorded 17 hours below freezing. - An outstanding lack of temperature variation in May with the lowest monthly max since 1983 despite mean max being 1C above average - Pretty much the whole of May and June we were tortured with glorious sunny Fridays followed by washout Saturdays. There were in fact a ridiculous number of wet washout Saturdays throughout the year - A rotten summer that resulted in the fewest number of days over 18C in any year since 1974. The 22nd June was the coldest day between 31st March and 7th October, inclusive - indicitive of how unvaried the temperatures were for a large part of the year. Dyce recorded no 70F temperatures after 3rd June (until late Sept)- an unprecedented run for summer. - A disgusting autumn with ridiculously mild nights and low diurnal ranges. 23 days of rain in October despite the monthly total being well below normal and a completely frost free November. There was a complete lack of colour in the trees. - Mildest Christmas on record with no frost during the last third of December. - There was no thunder heard at all during the year. 1932, 1944 and 1968 stand out in the 20th century. Looking at the data they seemed very dull and boring years with poor summers and lots of anticyclonic gloom. 1968 did better for wintry weather than the other two years but September to December 1968, in my part of the country, was pretty much 4 months of solid anticyclonic gloom and a definite candidate for the most boring period of weather in recorded history.

Incredibly rubbish, boring and unpleasant. A reminder of how vile and hateful easterly winds are. 1947 and 1958 were cold, snowy classics. This was a dull grey horror show to forget. Only useful snow came from a brief northerly on the 13th/14th. Not one day in the second half had snow lying beyond noon. It was just grey and depressing weather day in day out that has meant we have reached April with no visible signs of spring. Crocuses haven't even fully opened yet. It didn't even make the top 10 coldest Marches here due to the pathetic lack of cold minima. I recorded lower temperatures in the Marches of 2006, 2008, 2009 and 2010. However maxima were lower than in most of the top 10 coldest Marches. Even with a day max of only 0.5C on the 23rd we never went below freezing the following night. That just sums up what a pathetic month it was. The only positive was that it was nowhere near as bad as March 1996 when we racked up a record breaking 15 sunless days in a row, again courtesy of easterly winds which I would ban at all times of the year if I could.

Nothing to enjoy about this month at all. Thoroughly unpleasant and uninteresting. All there's been here for the past 11 days is grey skies, bone-chilling raw winds and the odd flurry of dandruff type snow. No more than slight frosts with the temperature stuck between 0 and 2C for almost 40 hours up to this morning. There's been 6 hours of sunshine since the 15th. Truly hateful conditions that I would despise in mid-winter never mind late March. I've given up even bothering to check the models for signs of improvement as there just seems to be no end in sight to this easterly nightmare. There are two types of cold Marches. Cold, snowy classics like 1947, 1958, 1979, 2001 & 2006 and cold, dull depressing abominations like 1964, 1969, 1980, 1984 & 1996. This detestable month belongs firmly in the latter category. Most definitely a month to forget to round off what has been 12 months of complete and utter hell

The way things are going it wouldn't surprise me in the slightest if 20C is not reached at all here this year. Aberdeen has never failed to hit 20C before but Arbroath only recorded a max of 19.4C for 1963 so it's definitely possible

The only Top 5 that March 2013 would be likely to enter is my top 5 worst months alongside other ghastly easterly dominated horrors like March 1996, December 2002, June 2007 and July 2012. As for favourite months most of the best months, particularly summer, occurred before I was born but of those I have experienced: August 1995 May 2001 April 2007 July 1994 December 2010

Last Wednesday under a nice sunny high I managed a range of 13.7C (-3.0C to 10.7C) Today under dire easterlies an extremely low range of 1.3C (3.8C to 5.1C)

Awful here due to the lack of a decent northerly spell and an anomalous E/SE flow - the two wind directions I despise the most. Temperatures finished below average but this was largely due to the cold first half of December. The second half of December was mild and January and February finished not far from average (respectively 0.3C and 0.5C below 81-10 average). December was once again the coldest both in absolute terms (mean 2.9C) and difference from average (-0.7C). 3C with gloomy grey skies, min above freezing, light drizzly rain and an easterly wind is my idea of hell. The worst weather by a long chalk and this winter produced such conditions in abundance. Plenty of mild winters have delivered as much, if not more, snow and frost. There were numerous days of snow falling but accumulations were poor, apart from mid-January when 15cm lay. However that was an underwhelming experience due to the vile grey skies on most days and also the lack of snow away from the western outskirts. This winter saw the biggest contrast between the outskirts and city centre that I can recall with central areas having well below average days of lying snow and probably only half the total here. So for Aberdeen as a whole this winter will have been less snowy than average. After 13th Dec the lack of frost was abysmal with mid-Dec to mid-Feb recording the fewest number of air frosts in my 8 years of records. 8 air frosts up to 13th Dec then only 21 in the remaining 77 days. Laughably many of those frosts came during the periods with mildest maxima. The last few days of February produced minima of -3C under 0C uppers, a light SW flow and maxima of over 10C, while under the detestable easterlies in Jan, with -10C uppers and 2-3C maxes, it failed to go below freezing. February produced only 50 hours of air frost despite the mean min turning out below average. This was even less than February 2012 managed (62hrs) despite that month being the mildest Feb since 1998 and the mean min being nearly 2C warmer. It was also the third successive February that was dreadful for both snow and frost - the first time this has happened since 1988-90. Another big black mark against this winter was the most revoltingly wet and depressingly un-festive weather in the run up to Christmas since 1929 with severe flooding in the region. So overall plenty of negatives and not much positives at all. Nowhere near as bad as the likes of 1971/72 and 1979/80, which would both score 0/10, but I'd struggle to give much more than 3/10. I much preferred the winters from 1999 to 2006 to the dross that has dominated since 2007. Nearly all of those winters managed at least one decent northerly, something not seen at all in 2007, 2008, 2011, 2012 and 2013 to date. Better still easterlies were almost entirely absent during that era.