Harve

July 2010 in the North and West Midlands. Hot, and yet not-so-vigorous convection causing midday after midday to be slate gray skies rather than the heavy showers that were hoped for, urgh.

It's not been too bad in the daytime, just about bareable. But I've came on here to whine about the nighttime temperates, which are refusing to drop much below 18C. If it doesn't drop much further then surely this is one of the hottest nights ever? Absolutely vile.

Not northern England, but I think someone on a different weather site reported snow down to 400m in the Brecon Beacons earlier this month!

I don't think it got to 25C at all last June and July? At least not above ~300m. It reached 25C in May though.

I'm guessing by your username that you're in the same county as 'norfolk n chance', I can assure you that Stafford is definitely NW of London!

Your spring totals are incredible. At this rate, you'd record less than 250mm this year, which is enough to qualify Peterborough as a desert. Buxton, around 15 miles to the north of me: Jan - 92mm Feb - 166mm Mar - 13mm Apr - 13mm May - 58mm 342mm. If every month had equal average rainfall, then we should be up to about 500mm already.

I skimmed through your post and only read 'Edinburgh'. Now that temperature really would've been incredible.

There was a wildfire on Sunday on Stanton Moor in the eastern Peak District, but I think it was rather minor compared to the Lancashire and Ireland.

Aaaand I'm just the SE (more SSE) of it! Despite it looking rather white and innocent, the sheer height and size of it makes up for that - it's rather imposing. I've got very little knowledge on convection, so apologies for the lack of technical terms.

I think it came close, but didn't quite reach 30C. I've never taken official recordings though, maybe Terminal Moraine can help as I reckon he lives close to me, and at a similar altitude (I got the 'no 30C since 1990' statistic from one of his posts).

I'm pretty sure it hasn't hit 30C here, about 70 miles north of Coventry, since 1990 . June snow, July maxes as low as 9C, 5am scrapings of ice off cars in the valleys in August and 8 days of persistent fog / low cloud is a british summer at it's ugliest. However, I think the altitude could be to blame here, which Coventry simply doesn't have.

The thing that makes Shropshire, The Wirral and nearby areas seem so banal when it comes to precipitation is that hefty downpours are far less common there than in drier places such as East Anglia and the South East. I'm sure what little rain it receives, it mostly arrives in drizzle, far less heavy than west of the Welsh mountains. And yes, keeping the cloud.

Here, snow lay down to 250m on two seperate occassions in late February, and there was some sleet around two weeks ago, though I'm not sure of the exact date. I'm sure it would've been snow down to around 450m. But yes, very exceptional for low ground. Considering there was sleety snow in mid-May last year, there is definitely still time.

This isn't using statistics as such, and I'm giving score bias to the earlier months as it is normally expected that they're warmer. December: Snow - 10/10 - 60cm of level snow going into the start of the month? 24 days of lying snow? Yes please! Maximum Temperatures - 10/10 - A -6.6C max in Buxton. While it was -7C in the early afternoon there, it was -11C in a nearby valley, according to the same car thermometer, so I'm assuming an inversion lasted all day, meaning that astonishingly low maxes were possibly recorded. There really needs to be a Met Office station in a Pennine or Peak District valley. Minimum Temperatures - 10/10 - Not too impressive on the hills, but a roadside thermometer in a frost hollow near Alfreton, between Derby and Chesterfield, recorded -20.5C, which warrants a 10/10 for the entire month on it's own. Truly nostril-hair freezing stuff. Sunshine - 7/10 - Cloudy after Christmas but some wonderfully clear days with little wind. January: Snow - 3/10 - Snow fell on around 2/3 days, but it was merely frontal snow, so was followed by mild air and never lasted the entire day. Temperatures - 6/10 - There was a distinctly dry cold in the anticyclonic spell at the end of the month, bringing an ice day or two. Sunshine - 3/10 - A very cloudy first half. 38 hours of sunshine. February: Snow - 1/10 - No settling snow at all below 200m, and only temporary coverings above that. Truly dire. Temperatures - 2/10 - Unlike the rest of the country, 10C was only reached in Buxton in the last week of February, although many 9C maxes were recorded. However, temperatures failed to get below -1C at all. Sunshine - 2/10 An average of one hour per day, most of which was recorded on just a few days, with a week of no sun whatsoever and omnipresent fog.

Below average rainfall?! There's been 166mm so far this month just 50 or so miles to your North East!

Not at all, he means that despite cloud, which would be expected to suppress temperatures in the summer, the month was very warm. But having said that, global dimming, the increase in global cloudiness, is a negative albedo that helps to offset higher global temperatures by responding with a cooling mechanism, increasing stability.

Aside from these few flakes of snow - has anywhere else been experiencing this perpetual thick fog? This has been here for at least a week, i'm sure, and rarely clearing in the afternoons.

Just 0.8C here... significantly colder than forecast?

Pretty certain that there''re no snowdirfts in the Peak District below 500m, above that, especially on Kinder Scout and Bleaklow, which reaches 650m, there could be a fair amount. Though i haven't been there for a while.

The wind blows the snow into the gullies, but since they are sheltered away from the wind, the snow stays there and just builds and builds.

A high of 0.5C so far...judging by how much warmer it is just 100 miles to the south that will change soon.

"At Katoomba (1,010 m) summer daytime temperatures are usually in the 20s with a few days extending into the 30s (Celsius). Night-time temperatures are usually in the teens. During the winter the temperature is typically around 12 to 13°C in the daytime with −3°C or so on clear nights and 2 to 3°C on cloudy nights. There are two to three snowfalls per year. In the lower mountains, however, the climate is significantly warmer." So that's very exceptional. An equivalent would be the far south of England, which has a similar summer climate going by that description, having snow on 20th June. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katoomba,_New_South_Wales#Climate

I'm sure most will be tired of the "this spell has been exceptional!" talk, but we can clearly see that from this, the November/December cold spell has been colder than the January cold spell of this year. After that who would've thought that in terms of severity of cold, it would've been beaten in less than 12 months time?

Unrelated, i know Weymouth is right on the south coast, but seriously?!

Ah yes, that would be West Derbyshire rather than the West Midlands, which are quite a distance away. It got far, far worse after christmas too! Drifts of up to 10 feet at 500m on the Cat & Fiddle road was perhaps the most impressive feature. I couldn't believe those heights/depths myself till i actually saw them. The actual depths weren't really measurable because they were so inconsistent but i'd be surprised if they were less than a foot at any point between new year's eve and mid January.