al78

The winter of 2010-11 was below average in terms of temperature, despite a mild February. If you define a UK winter as having all three months having significant snow, then yes, the UK doesn't have winter very often, but I think that is a ridiculous benchmark. The UK is not Scandinavia and doesn't receive widespread lasting snow very frequently as a rule. Temperate and oceanic defines the climate, in winter snow that falls mostly thaws in a couple of days except at altitude.

You have forgotten about 2010, the coldest December for 100 years. March 2013, the coldest for 50 years

The heatwave lasted no more than three days and we had plenty of poor weather in autumn and winter last year, culminating in the wettest February on record and destructive flooding in several places. I would say the spring we had was adequate compensation for this (perhaps overcompensation). Even last June, which was the end of the persistent warm dry locked in weather pattern, I was backpacking in the Scottish highlands over the first two weeks, and the only sunny day I got was the day I was leaving. The good old UK summer killer, the stalled low. Force 7-8 crosswinds on the Ullapool-Stornoway ferry were great fun as well.

Maybe if we continue with a poor July, we might get compensation with a warm sunny August. Good Augusts have been rare over the last couple of decades, and it seems to often happen that if June and July are decent, August is a let down (e.g last year, bank holiday weekend excepted). It is very rare to have all three months of a season deviating significantly in the same direction from average.

I've had a look at the correlation between April rainfall and the following summer rainfall, and there is nothing significant. There might be a couple of years where an inverse correlation was present but it doesn't hold up over the last 50 or so years at least.

So far July has been notable for extremely dull days. It is ridiculous to need lighting on at solar noon in summer. Fortunately in my location the dull days have been interspersed with sunny days, except for the last two days of back to back clagfests. The dullness really makes it feel like autumn, as it feels like twilight has arrived an hour and a half before sunset. The gem squash in my greenhouse doesn't know whose climate it is experiencing. It went rampant in April and May, and I had problems with the greenhouse overheating (well over 40C on some days before I applied shading paint). June arrives and it is as if we swapped spring and summer around, the gem squash threw out loads of flowers but only this last week have actually produced any squash. It is as if they slammed the brakes on development as soon as we got into the meteorological summer.

Well, yes, that would be well above average in early March. Early March is still effectively winter, plant life doesn't wake up properly until near the end of the month and when the soil temperature starts to warm up.

There was a fair bit of spatial variation. It was a very wet month in the SW, but the SE counties had near average sunshine and rainfall. Hot and sunny days have always been short lived in summer, the UK is not the Mediterranean, despite the spring we've just had.

Yes you can. It might not have much, if any skill, but you can do one if you can find a predictor or two. There have been several attempts at seasonal forecasts for the winter NAO and UK winter.

You have to be careful looking at monthly averages, because they tell you nothing about the internal variability within the month. A summer month that is dry for 29 days in one location then gets a severe thunderstorm on the last day dropping four inches of rain will look like a wet month in the stats, when really it isn't, whereas a month with frequent warm sector clag and drizzle and 40% less sunshine than normal, but an absence of moderate to heavy rain might end up drier than average, but it would be a poor summer month in most peoples eyes.

I can relate to this. I don't like persistent clag in summer but I much prefer 20C to the 32C nonsense we had at the end of June. It is just so much easier to do stuff outside and sleep comfortably at night.

June was warmer than average, although wetter. We are not even half way through summer yet so best to reserve judgement of the seasonal forecasts until after the season has finished.

Yes it can get much worse, remember July 2007?

June was about average or slightly above in the south and east, Duller than average in the SW and NW England, west Wales, N Ireland and most of Scotland (again). UK actual and anomaly maps WWW.METOFFICE.GOV.UK Maps of climate variables for previous months, seasons and years

This is what is annoying for me. I could do with a good dose of rain for my allotment, but instead we get this change in the weather (expected at some point), that brings cloudy, cool and unsettled weather, but the rainfall amounts have been pitiful. It just evaporates within an hour of falling. If we are going to get November weather, might as well have November rain as well, but this cuirrent can't-be-bothered-to-drop-more-than-half-a-millimeter-at-a-time weather, and me having to manually cart around 100 litres of water to keep my crops alive is just another UK Swearing AGAIN-take, on top of some of the best Spring weather in living memory in a virtually unheard of period when no-one is allowed to make the most of it.

1996 an average summer? Not in Salford it wasn't. It was overshadowed by the spectacular summer the previous year but it was warm and dry from my memory, particularly August. It is ranked 29th driest out of 254 in the HadUKP data and about 100th out of 361 for temperature, so above average in terms of goodness of summer.

Daily Express, so likely the most extreme forecast they could find.

Maybe not for you, but it has for me, not as bad as a muggy night in high summer, but just warm enough that I struggled to sleep several times. There were some nights where it didn't drop below mid teens outside, which means my house stays at 23C most of the night, probably a bit higher in the bedroom as my central heating thermostat which shows the indoor temperature is downstairs. Opening the windows means I struggle to get to sleep because of noisy bastards.

Ok sorry, I thought you were having unrealistic expectations of the weather in the dark months, but you are saying that you appreciate warmth and sunshine because we have to deal with the autumn and winter grot. I certainly don't expect you to justify that, as I feel the same. Sometimes Spring feels like a tease season, when it gets to April, I hope for it to become warm enough to go outside without a jacket, but it seems to stay in the low double digits during the day for seemingly a long time, and I wonder if it is ever going to warm up. It nearly always does by the end of the month and into May. The lag in the minimun of sea temperature to the incoming solar radiation means Spring temperatures can be held back if we get a lot of polar or returning polar maritime airmasses. 1996 was a year where it seemed to take forever to warm up, it was chilly right through to at least mid May thanks to a wretched blocking Scandi high and persistent NEly winds.

Already had thunderstorms in Horsham, one Saturday morning/early afternoon in mid May. The only significant rain to fall in the entire month. I can appreciate a good electrical storm, but preferably not overnight. I don't appreciate being kept awake until 3am when I have to get up for work.

Too much damp I agree with but too much cool? What do you expect in the UK in autumn and winter? We can't have 20C in February every year.

Looks like another week of below average daytime temperatures for Horsham coming up, but still little in the way of useful rain. At this rate, June is going to be cooler than May and April. Has southern England borrowed an arid climate from the southern hemisphere? I'm finding it tough growing UK veg in these conditions. I do find the cooler nights better for sleeping, which is one plus.

Not a drop of rain in Horsham, and the Met Office have cancelled the wet evening that had been forecast the last two days, so another evening of dumping 200 litres of water on my allotment. No significant rain forecast for the next week, just a load of cool cloudy,dry, and completely useless weather. It is hard to cultivate UK crops in an arid climate.

Classic UK p**s-take weather. Yes the August bank holiday will be awful, because I have booked a scrambling course in Snowdonia over that weekend, and given I picked the worst two week period last year to go backpacking in Scotland, the late 90's/2000's trend of crap weather whenever I want to hike up a UK mountain may have returned.

The first half of May contained that annoying colder spell which produced frequent overnight frosts and fairly low daytime maxes, and was a nuisance for gardeners. Here in Horsham, there were more cold nights with ground frost risk than I can remember during the whole winter, which is why my potato crop got damaged despite earthing up. Up to that point, there was hardly any frost.