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August 2013 wasn't sunny enough imo. It was warm and had some good thunderstorms here though so I wouldn't say no.

Deep cold > rain. All day every day. I can guarantee you people in Sweden and Finland spend more time outdoors in winter than we do. I’d take mild & dry too but that’s very uncommon in January. Once we get to February it’s more likely.

That probably means more rain which is the last thing anyone wants after the deluges of October, November and December. Don't care if it's cold or not, just keep the rain away.

Temperatures in parts of northern Sweden have gone from -44C a few days ago to +8C today

Here we had a low of 21C on the morning of the 19th, and a low of 21C on the morning of the 20th as well. Two consecutive tropical nights. Bearing in mind that tropical nights are truly, truly rare here.

Our previous record was from July 2019. That heatwave broke records from 1990 up here. Since 2019, we have exceeded 34C on four occasions here. Mid 30s temperatures are slowly becoming more common, and exceeding 30C is now expected every year (2014 is the last year not to exceed 30C here).

Yes the hottest part of the day usually has the lowest humidity levels.

Heatwaves in the UK are usually on the dry side so they’re not as bad as they could be. 19 July 2022 was very dry - humidity levels were around 20% that day for most of the country. I still occasionally look at the weather data for that day just to marvel at how utterly bonkers it was. Over 25C by 8am, 32C by 10am, 34C by 11am… just nuts. Seeing most of England with 37C-40C temperatures from London to Newcastle and everything in between will probably never be surpassed in terms of craziness for a very long time (if ever). Saying that, nobody expected 40C to be reached in the UK so soon, so who knows.

Hoping for a June like 1976, a July like 2018 and an August like 2022. Is that too much to ask for?

Looks like another winter of chasing cold spells that never materialise. We all know the script. At least the rain has finally buggered off though.

The average July high at my closest station is 21.4C for the 1991-2020 period. I think that’s an okay temperature, especially with sunshine. A partly cloudy, 21/22C day is fine by me. My ideal summer temperature is more like 27C though.

It's a bit dark but you can see the Baltic Sea in Stockholm frozen over here (specifically the bay called Saltsjön).

Sweden saw temperatures below -40C in 2010 and 2011 as well. -42.1C was recorded at Nikkaluokta in northern Sweden on 10 December 2010, and -42.6C on 24 February 2011.

I don't know about that - the winter of 2009/10 was very cold in Scandinavia just like the UK, same with 2010/11. They also had very cold weather in March 2018 at the same time as us. Likewise some of their very mild winters (like 2007/08 and 2019/20) were also very mild in the UK.

Besides ice, there's been a pretty good example of sea effect snow affecting eastern Sweden over the past few days.

Summer 2021 was decent enough here. June had average sunshine, above average temperatures and below average rainfall. July had above average rainfall but also above average sunshine and temperatures. August was a bit poor with below average temperatures and sunshine, but rainfall was also below average. I definitely enjoyed that summer more than 2023.

The UK does have very impressive record high temperatures in summer relative to the average. The record high of 39.8C at Bramham (Leeds) is about 18 degrees higher than the average July maximum. The only other places with such a big difference between the average high and record high are other maritime climates - like Melbourne, San Francisco, Seattle etc.

I'm sure we will see a pretty big increase in Baltic Sea ice over the coming week with the very cold temperatures. The Swedish Meteorological institute has released multiple warnings for severe ice accretion in the Baltic. January is still pretty early in the season so it will be interesting to see how much ice actually forms.

Only 8mm here, looks like we missed the heaviest of the rain today.

I've mentioned this before but my nearest weather station (Church Fenton) gets more sunshine than Cambridge. It also gets less rainfall than Heathrow. Stockton-on-Tees (near Middlesbrough) gets 596mm of rain a year on average, similar to Cambridge (568mm). There is no SE microclimate. Obviously it is a bit warmer in the summer due to proximity to the continent but that's really about it. You could argue there is a South Coast microclimate though, with the immediate coastal strip being significantly sunnier than areas inland. Plymouth getting about 100 hours more sunshine than London is probably surprising to most people, since Plymouth is the wettest big city in England.

The Met forecast for here doesn’t show any rain after today thankfully.

I imagine most of Western Europe, the West Coast of North America, southern Australia and New Zealand experience the same thing occasionally (alongside tropical regions). I mentioned a couple of weeks ago that Melbourne had warmer days in winter than their coolest day in summer last year. Even Sydney saw warmer days in August (their February) than February (their August). It’s a pretty typical feature of oceanic, subtropical and tropical climates. If anything I’d argue that continental climates are the exception in this regard.

I thought it was a dull month here, didn’t realise just how much worse it was elsewhere. 10 hours of sun over 31 days… good grief.

Agreed. I am absolutely sick of all this rain. Give me dry & cloudy any day over wet & windy.

3 months above 100mm this year here, when we normally don't get any. The past few months is what living in Cumbria must feel li,e.