al78

We are not "constantly bombarded". Amber warnings aren't that common and red warnings are very rare, usually once a year or less. Yellow warnings are quite frequent but they are not threat to life warnings, they are more nuisance weather with a low probability of transport disruption. It feels like we've had more than usual recently because the weather has been constantly unsettled for weeks with lows barrelling across the UK. What makes this recent low worse than others is firstly the very strong winds from an unusual direction (trees have evolved to brace against high winds from the west/south-west, not the east (or north as in Arwin), and secondly, a stalled front bringing three days of continuous rain across high ground and that much water gets chanelled into the river valleys where people live.

Fortunately at my job we have access to mapped return periods of rainfall and upstream rainfall, and 25+ year return periods go beyond "it's called autumn". There are always people who make stupid comments like that, they said it when it is just summer when it was pushing 40C last year and wildfires were breaking out. Next they'll be telling Floridians to stop whinging about hurricane Ian last year because it was hurricane season, what do you expect?! Some people need a good whack with the reality stick and need to accept that when adverse weather conditions occur, there is going to be disruption and likely tragedy as well, and denying the truth doesn't change the truth.

Ah sorry, I'd forgotten about that October warm spell which never really lived up to expectations. Yes this year has been poor overall weatherwise, one spell of warm sunny weather in late spring/early summer then punishment weather since, although August wasn't that bad here in Sussex. I'm hoping for better weather next year. I have downgraded to a half plot on my allotment site which will be much easier to keep on top of and have relocated to a plot that isn't next to a hedge and a ditch, so am hoping slugs will be less of a problem. Fingers crossed the Scottish highlands sees a stalled anticyclone next May when I am up there for a week and a bit hiking in the stunning Torridon/Wester Ross landscape.

At my workplace we've been issuing weather bulletins and alerts almost continuously for the last month, including on weekends, and whilst the weather has been interesting I am finding the constant barrage of Atlantic lows and lack of any settled anticyclonic conditions tiresome now. Given we've had two near record breaking wet months earlier this year, we don't need a third one.

If you are talking about the first week in September, I fail to see how a record number of consecutive days of 30C can ever be classed as a hot spell flop, unless you have grossly unrealistic expectations of the UK's weather.

I will remember it as the year of randomised wet and dry seasons.

I assume March was very wet as well? Your stats show on average it has been raining on half the days in the last three and a bit months. I suspect that will swing in favour of dry days if you went back to May.

Spot on. Being annoyed about getting soaked in a downpour is not the same as wishing it would never rain again. As a gardener and someone who enjoys hiking I don't like prolonged wet spells with near continuous clag (no views from the hills), but at the same time I don't really like prolonged hot dry spells as that can be just as problematic for my allotment crops. There is such a thing as a healthy balance, and disliking one extreme does not imply a wish for the other extreme.

9.4C was in Lerwick, and the Sheltand islands are a borderline Polar maritime climate so people living there should expect most of the year to be cool or cold.

Summer 2023 felt worse than the stats suggest because monthly or seasonal stats completely smooths out temporal and spatial variation. If a summer month has 30 days of bone dry sunny weather and one day where a slow moving MCS drops six inches of rain, is that a wet month? The monthly stats would say yes but human perception and usability of the weather for enjoyable outdoor activities would say no. Down here in Sussex this year for me has mostly been a write off, and I say this from the perspective of someone who's hobbies largely consist of outdoor activities. When my allotment is wrecked by rampant perennial weed infestation and huge mollusc outbreaks from the persistent wet weather in July, because I made the stupid decision to go on holiday a couple of times, when I cannot work on my allotment properly in spring or most of summer because the year's weather has consisted of random wet and dry seasons, meaning the ground is either a claggy mess (March and July) or baked solid (late May-June), when I have a weekday job and I look forward to getting out on the weekend only to find it is a rain-fest AGAIN, when I have to dress like I am hiking up in the Cairngorms just so I can cycle to town or the station without getting soaked, when I visit family and hope to get out in the big hills of the Lakes or Snowdonia but it ends up being five days of unsettled weather and clag, I feel the summer and the year in general has been lousy. Trying to claim the summer has been fine because of CET stats is like saying no-one living in the UK has any business complaining about anything in the UK because the country ranks highly in global stats in terms of quality of life indices. It comes close to gaslighting.

Even in my part of SE England, July this year felt like car touring holidays in the Scottish highlands with my parents in the 1990's at around the same time of year, every year, where on a week's holiday, we'd be doing well to get two decent summer-like days.

Doesn't flaura and fauna respond to daylight hours as well as temperature in the middle latitudes?

I would be cautious in attributing too much to El Nino this year. Having observed the Atlantic and Pacific hurricane/typhoon seasons this year, it is apparent that the atmosphere has not responded in a classical way to the moderate El Nino SST conditions, with the normally higher than normal vertical wind shear over the tropical Atlantic and Caribbean Sea largely absent, and what would normally be expected to be a very active typhoon season during an El Nino year has just recorded the joint least active September on record with only two named storms in the month (normal is five names storms in what should be the second busiest month of the year).

There is some truth in the statement. Extreme temperatures are primarily caused by a very specific set of conditions which need to come together simultaneously. What anthropogenic climate change can do is load the dice to make some extremes more likely, or make comparable extremes equally likely with a lower requirement of precursors. An example would be if sea levels are rising, significant storm surge events should become more likely. It can also make such extremes more likely by making the synoptic conditions for those extremes more likely, e.g. if blocked weather patterns are becoming more common, extremes in monthly statistics become more likely. Due to the rarity of extreme events and the high noise to signal ratio it is not always possible to see trends now even if climate change is having an influence.

Hopefully not, it is a tedious fallacious argument, although when it comes to summer 2023 in W Sussex at least, it was only really July that was awful. June was warm and dry. August was poor for the first half and fairly decent for the second half, a month of two halves very much like the inverse of September.

For environmental reasons I minimise flying as much as possible but I did relent this year and went to Norway (Jotunheimen) where I experienced much better weather than I would normally expect. The Scottish highlands have always drawn me for their outstanding natural beauty, fantastic geological fingerprints, familiarity, no language barrier and ease of access to the remote and beautiful parts. One area the UK does excel is public rights of access to beautiful parts of the country. The risk of sustained poor weather is a price worth paying and the reason I take my holiday in May or June is firstly because climatologically that is the driest and sunniest time of year, and secondly, midge activity is normally very low. On the days I catch settled sunny weather I always have a fantastic time on the hills, and even if the hills are clagged over there are loads of low level scenic walks, and the larger waterfalls look great after a period of rain.

Didn't we have 21C recorded in February one year, I think it was the same year when moorland fires were breaking out around Saddleworth in the Pennines.

From my (distant) memory of family holidays in the Med I recall the heat was more of a dry heat whereas heatwaves in the UK tend to be accompanied by haze and energy sapping humidity that prevents overnight temperatures cooling down much, disrupting sleep and causing health conditions amongst the more vulnerable members of the population. The other huge difference between the UK and places where hot weather is part of the climate is that if you feel uncomfortable all you have to do is walk indoors because either the buildings are designed to be resilient to overheating and/or air conditioning is widespread. When I have been to Florida and it was a humid 28C, whenever I stepped indoors I needed to put a long sleeved sweatshirt on the air con was so powerful. The UK's resilience to even modest deviations from climatology is dreadful by comparison, e.g. the railway's have speed limits and disruption when the lines buckle in 30C temperatures which are experienced in all but the very worst summers in SE England. Not unusual to have wet and windy weather around peak hurricane season from recurving hurricanes which is what is happening this week.

I agree the temperatures in the first half of September were ridiculous and uncomfortable (for me at least) and were what we should have had in July, but low to mid 20's is pleasant after a summer that has pretty much been a continuation of randomised wet and dry seasons that have dominated this year. I'll take what warmth we can get at this time of year as we are very soon going to enter the six month grot peried of the year known as October and GMT. Already looking forward to my hiking holiday in NW Scotland next May even if it will probably be another five days of clag out of seven experience like last year..

It is possible to prefer a happy medium. It is not a choice between one extreme or the other. I don't like hot weather in this country but at the same time I don't like a summer month where it rains nearly every day with low sunshine levels. Both situations are undesirable for different reasons.

The problem with ear plugs is they are only a temporary fix. They do work but at the expense of ear pain with long term use.

No because of outside noise. One neighbour has a reverse alarm on his car so have to deal with BONG BONG BONG BONG BONG late in the evening and at 7am some mornings, plus other people's screechy sprogs first thing in the morning. I open the windows in the evening and close them before going to bed but that only cools the house to 24C which is still too warm for comfort when trying to sleep.

Must be autumn now, my French beans are dying, about six weeks earlier than normal.

I find 27C too warm. My house heats up quickly and doesn't cool down much at night so leads to sleep disruption and daytime fatigue.

LOL.