al78

I could do with some frost for the Brussel sprouts on my allotment.

Knowing this country, next summer.

Nobody knows what the weather is going to do up too and beyond Christmas beyond guesswork.

I have had the heating on for a couple of hours last week, not for comfort but to dry laundry, which would otherwise take at least a week in this constant near 100% humidity rainy crap otherwise known as autumn. The house hasn't dropped below 15C thanks largely to mild nights.

Tell me about it. Yes it was February where the named storms coincided with weekends, and when I was trying to erect a greenhouse on my allotment. Twice I had roof panels displaced or ripped off (thankfully polycarbonate, not glass), and I had to bodge an engineering solution consisting of L shaped brackets and drilling holes into the frame to bolt the panels down, then use a very strong adhesive around every roof and side pane to seal them all in. My greenhouse might withstand the equivalent of an October 1987 storm now. The weather now seems to be trolling me with the forecast of sunny days next week when I am working at home after what looks to be a very wet and sunless weekend.

Well October was a pile of crap in my part of Sussex. Rain rain rain rain rain dull dull dull dull dull. Another month with several 12-24 hour rainfests and lights-on-all-day days. To make it even more crap, the weekend wet weather bias seems to be kicking in, this is going to be the third consecutive weekend being mostly wet or at least very unsettled, with Sunday looking to be another full day of rain. It has gone like last year, roaring zonality with almost no high pressure. Sadly November looks to be starting in a similar manner, having the sunny days in the week when I am working . The final clearing up on the allotment will have to wait a bit longer. What makes it worse it wee might have another four months of this if we have another +ve AO/NAO dominated winter, just what I need to look forward too when faced with the prospect of not being able to visit my family over Christmas.

I'd tend to agree. It feels like summer until the sun goes down at half past six. The 30C at the end of September was spectacular, I don't recall it ever feeling so warm outside so late in the year before or since.

14 days of rain in the highlands is unlucky based on my experience of many summer holidays up there. Even last June when I was there for a fortnight and had to endure the summer killer known as the stagnated low pressure over the UK, I didn't get rained on much, the main features of the weather were the cool temperatures and near constant clag, and being on the Ullapool-Stornoway ferry in a NEly gale, perfect for sending a sizeable swell between the islands and mainland (one way to mitigate seasickness is to look outside to the horizon).

I'll take the same attitude when you spend the autumn, winter and spring moaning about cloud and rain - get over it, it's the UK, what do you expect? People are going to complain about conditions that are uncomfortable or destructive, regardless of whether you personally enjoy such conditions, deal with it.

29C today. Whilst we are having tropical nights it doesn't cool below 26C, even with windows and interior doors open in the evening and blinds down during the day.

When it gets stupidly hot like the last week, I appreciate the crappy cloudy weather more. I can garden in comfort, cycle in comfort, and sleep in comfort in crappy cloudy weather.

I'm not wishing for autumn weather, but I am wishing for a cooldown. This weather is useless, too hot to do anything useful outside. It can be decent without being extreme, there is such a thing as a happy medium.

It makes me laugh how some people in July were writing off August, just because x number of recent years have had mediocre to poor Augusts. Now we've swung the pendulum the other way and I have to sweat profusely for a week and a half because there is no escape from these sub-tropical conditions.

You work in fog, or at the least have condensation running down the walls and dripping from the ceiling? The heat index from well over 30C and 100% humidity would be unlivable for humans if it were part of the climate. I can't help thinking you are sligfhtly exaggerating.

It is deviation from average that matters, combined with the fact that at this time of year we have reached the climatological peak in temperrature, so on average the weather is only going to go downhill. At least if Winter and Spring is poor, you can hope for nice weather in summer. Wouldn't you say those who were flooded out in the relentless February rains are justified in complaining about it?

That's fine, but I don't understand why people want the othe extreme, 25+C for weeks on end with zero rain unless it's a thunderstorm. It is as if they have no idea how crops are grown.

Needs?? Why does it need to be a decent month? What are the consequences if it isn't? I'd be grateful for a decent weekend. Last week, Sunday was poor, this weekend Saturday is a washout. Another poke in the eye for people with weekday jobs.

Since last weekend the weather has improved significantly here in Horsham (except Sunday which was a miserable drizzlefest). I've just looked at the data from my logger in my greenhouse on the allotment, and it gives clues as to why my dwarf beans are looking sickly. I have the door and a roof vent open to minimise daytime overheating but the overnight temperature has been dropping below 6C on a few nights. This is very poor for mid July in SE England away from any frost pockets.

Nostalgia bias may be creeping in there. You are far more likely to remember the good summer periods from your childhood because you will likely have more memorable days. Sitting indoors reading a book with the rain lashing down outside is not going to stick in the mind decades later. This is why some older people claim their summers were always hot and sunny, and the winters were always cold and snowy. Nonsense, every winter in the past was not 1962/3 or 1947, and every summer was not 1976, the UK never had a continental climate 50 years ago, they are remembering the memorable periods and have filtered out the dross.

You are in the wrong country. A continental Koppen D climate is what you want.

I would agree it hasn't been cold. 18-20C is not cold. Below average, yes, but not cold. Anyone who thinks that is cold must suffer 8-9 months of torture in our climate. The opinions of how good/bad the summer has been from someone who doesn't live here is meaningless, how could they possibly know unless they are making an effort to log daily observations from the area?

You mean anyone with clear eyesight who lives down here. Someone living 300 miles away trying to tell me what the weather has been like down here can safely be ignored, unless it matches with real data.

So what. A couple of years in your memory does not dictate a trend (that is why we look at all the data). There have been years where is hasn't happened as well. 2012 had a very wet April and the summer was dreadful.

July has been a poor month in the SE full stop. I used to live in Salford so I am well accustomed to the clag-fests that plague that part of the country. Temperatures have been below average, sunshine has been below average. That is what makes it a poor summer month. Just because it has not been as bad as the NW does not stop it being a poor summer month. There always seems to be someone trying to apply the fallacy of relative privation, as though being better than the worst is good enough

Thereis no correlation between April/May and the following summer weather.