al78

Averages smooth out temporal and spatial variance so can be extremely misleading for judging how good or bad a summer has been. If a summer month had 29 warm and dry days and on the 30th day a MCS dropped six inches of rain, would you call it a wet month?

It was seasonal if it had occurred in another country. The coldest December in a century can hardly be described as seasonal for the UK in the same way that 40C in summer is not seasonal for the UK. The UK does not have a continental climate.

A typical English summer does not encompoass a record breaking warm June and a record breaking wet July in places. Lets just stop deluding ourselves that this summer has been normal.

Changeable normally includes some settled weather. July had the same weather throughout, unsettled for the entire month. The same type of weather for the whole month is not what I would call changeable, it was more like a rainy season.

There is also a long term warming trend so a -0.3C anomaly would be greater in magnitude without the warming trend.

Climatologically July and August are the warmest months so I'd question how normal it is to have a hot June and a cooler July.

Time to look forward to Christmas and the snowmageddon 15 day GFS forecasts.

Two days of cold rain and sleet with temps +2C here in Horsham. Same as a day I remember in February 2011 (or maybe 2010) where it rained all day with temperatures between 1 and 2C I see the UK bank holiday parameterisation in the model is working properly.

More serious is if parts of the sub-tropics become uninhabitable where a lot of people currently live and where much of the world's food is grown.

850mb geopotential height anomaly comparison between May and July says it all: The anomaly maps are virtually an inverse of each other. I don't recall the last time I saw such a stark difference between two months so close together (although I admit I haven't looked at very many comparisons).

I don't want heatwaves, I'd be happy with 21-25C with sunshine which is a good temperature for doing outdoor work and is sufficient in high summer to feel the warmth due to the strength of the sun. The issue this summer for me is the lack of settled weather on the weekends. I was away for a couple of weeks in July but aside from that, ever since early July there has been some rain on every weekend I think even when the forecast was for a dry Saturday or Sunday. Classic this morning, I had volunteered to assist with some work at my allotment site and didn't bring a coat with me as I recalled Sunday was forecast to be dry. As soon as I got there the heavens opened. This was in addition to the soaking I got when cycling home from town on Saturday morning. When you have a Mon-Fri day job and every weekend you get dumped on with rain it gets very frustrating, and we have very little of the meteorological summer left so I am hoping for a warm dry September (but please no stupid 30+C temperatures and tropical nights). Didn't July 2007 just barely fail to reach 30C?

Ah the joy of the UK's modern weather, from a full on rainy season to a blow torch with minimal happy medium in between. Is it really asking too much to get average conditions these days?

I have taps on site and I have four 250L water butts and two 100L butts for harvesting rainwater. Even when that lot is completely full, a month like May 2018 or August 2022 will see me get through that in three or four weeks then it is a case of getting there a couple of evenings a week with watering cans which takes considerable time and effort, and is one reason I don't really like prolonged periods (i.e. weeks) of warm/hot dry weather with minimal rain. When it comes to the other extreme of rain nearly every day and low sunshine levels like this July, molluscs are the primary threat to my crops. Nematodes have limited effect and slug pellets less so. A week or two away on holiday is enough for the damp soil loving perennial weeds to run riot and in the worst case it is almost a Herculean effort to get the plot back under control. I may try taking on a half plot which I think should be manageable outside of repeated weekends of poor weather. Today has been a fairly decent day but the sunshine rationing is still in effect going by the infill.

I get the impression that here in W Sussex, whilst the last six weeks have been poor, it has not been the worst affected area in the country and it could theoretically be a lot worse. Having said that, yesterday morning when walking to work in London I was wearing two layers and long sleeves and I felt chilly at 9:30am. That is not something I normally experience until at least the middle of September. Today is so far much better but again, the low pressure is forecast to come barrelling in over the coming weekend. I have decided to throw the towel in with my allotment as I cannot cultivate it properly if we are going to keep getting blocked weather patterns with nearly two months of poor weekends in the height of the growing season, or the other extreme of last year, weeks of no rain and uncomfortably hot.

Cool, cloudy and windy due to frequent low pressure systems. May was a month of two halves here in Sussex. The first half was like a can't-really-be-bothered attempt at some nice late spring weather, the second half was warm and dry.

From what I have seen it looks like changeable weather is most likely through the rest of this month although unlikely to be as wet as July. No sign of any extremes, more a gradual regression to the mean so occasional brief warm sunny periods interspersed with showers and/or frontal rain. Met Office long range outlook: "Sunday 13 Aug - Tuesday 22nd Aug Further unsettled weather is expected early in the period, bringing showers, some heavy and thundery, across the UK. Western regions are likely to see the greatest rainfall, but drier and brighter conditions are possible, the southeast of England having the greatest chance of this. Generally breezy across the country with temperatures for many around average for the time of year, perhaps slightly below in wet or windy conditions. The unsettled conditions are likely to continue through the middle of August, though western areas may see a reduction in the number of showers compared to earlier in the period. There is a low probability of spells of heavy rain and strong winds affecting southern areas towards the end of the period while temperatures are largely expected to stay around average. Wednesday 23rd Aug - Wednesday 6th Sep Conditions are likely to remain changeable towards the end of August and into early September. Some extended dry and settled spells are possible, but, overall, there is a slightly higher likelihood that conditions will be wetter than average during the period as opposed to drier. Rainfall is likely to be a mixture of organised frontal rain and showers with some of the showers possibly turning thundery. The potential for fleeting warm or hot spells exists, but in general, temperatures are likely to be around normal, or slightly warmer, for the time of year."

Not as bad as - RationalWiki RATIONALWIKI.ORG The "not as bad as" fallacy, also known as the fallacy of relative privation,[2] asserts that: "To be good, it is not enough to be better than the worst."

Possibly to encourage an extension of the holiday season and boost tourist trade at a time of the year people are expecting summer is just about over. It directs the jet stream southward meaning we are on the cold side of it. In winter this opens the doors for intrusions of Arctic air. In summer it means low after low steered across the UK bringing relentless cloud, rain and suppressed temperatures.

People don't, the hot and sunny weather almost never lasts long enough to adapt to it before the Atlantic dross comes roaring back in.

That was the year someone carelessly drove a car into me when I was cycling to work and I spend seven weeks in hospital. I do remember it getting uncomfortably warm/hot for at least a brief spell around late June or early July.

I don't think most people would:

Yeah, social injustice doesn't matter at all as long as you are not on the receiving end of it.

This is what happens when you have two decades of austerity and local authority budgets have been cut to the bone, certain things get neglected. When it comes to beautification, grass verges and flower tubs around towns and cities sounds like something that could be taken up by local volunteer groups if local authorities don't have the money/can't be bothered. In any case, the UK is now a country where there seems to be little pride in doing a good job, and people will often do the absolute minimum they can get away with to get the job done, look at pothole repairs for example.

If "proper cold" is defined as exceptional, then what do you expect other than the return period to be measured in decades?

Superb. It was primarily a guided hut-to-hut treking holiday booked through KE Adventures but with three nights at one hut to climb Galdhopiggen, the highest peak in Norway (which I didn't manage because my legs were fatigued) and a glacier hike. Weather was surprisingly good and very warm on the first day, didn't expect it to be so warm 1000m asl and a degree north of the Shetland islands. The landscape is reminiscent of the Lake District and Scottish highlands, which is not surprising as the geology is the same, but Jotunheimen is scaled up compared to the UK's mountainous regions (the landscape looks vast and massive from high viewpoints) and it has glaciers. The paths are excellent and well marked with periodic red T's painted on rocks although when you start crossing passes/gaining altitude the terrain gets very rocky/bouldery, similar to the Cairngorms above 1000m, which combined with large patches of firm snow left over from the winter means you have to be careful with your footing. I'd recommend a visit, the hut system is really good, it is dormitory-style accommodation (bunk beds and sharing) but all meals are included and taking that into account it is not that expensive.