CryoraptorA303

danm Agreed, I don't think daytime temps have been low as the Sun has been coming out almost every day for at least some time. The sunshine stats are as low as they are because of the insanely dull first week or so, without that they'd be below average but not to this level. A below average warmest day for sure (which is 23.4°C for Heathrow between 2003-2023), but not by much and falls well short of the lowest maximum of the period, which is 17.3°C in 2021. Temperature-wise, this is the kind of April expected of a backended post-Nino spring really, especially a Super, there's nothing that unusual about it. April 2016 was substantially cooler than this and was also wetter than average. The dullness and wetness, especially up north is the more notable feature imo.

In Absence of True Seasons Spring is the time of year that the west generally does have it better than the east coast. We are on the receiving end of the easterlies that are so common from April-June. The April-June period is the time of year you can generally bet on the west coast having a high percentage of days better than the east and is also the time that western England, Wales and Scotland have the most daily maxima.

B87 But how? Summer 2015 hadn't been dry, or hot for that matter aside from the two-day heat spike. This must be more of a London thing as nowhere else had brown grass in 2015.

Azazel I didn't say I enjoyed it, I said it's been less bad than the last couple of months. That in itself is a positive unless the only thing that will make you happy is the 1976/2018/1995/2003/2006/2022 mega hybrid, in which case you'll always be left wanting more. I saw quite a lot of that in the aftermath of 2022, plenty of people (especially northerners) complaining that June and most of July wasn't warm enough for them. Oh how the last year has vindicated 2022... That poor sod would still be getting downplayed if last summer didn't go how it did.

B87 There is really no reason why we should swing to the opposite extreme. An overall dry, settled summer with plenty of warm, sunny spells and no excessive periods of overcast weather followed by a dry autumn is enough. An extreme swing to desperately dry and hot would be incredibly damaging to nature after enduring an 18 month wet spell. There would not be enough time given to adapt to extremely dry and hot conditions.

Arctic Hare Thanks for the reminder that the grating pessimism going around is only being shared by a few here and not the majority at all.

B87 It didn't happen every summer in East London either. The only time in memory I remember it there is 2006. Again, I believe either selective memory or conflation of a few patches of sad grass and maturing grasses in high summer and burnt out lawns from excessive heat and aridity is happening here.

I seriously doubt that. 2011 maybe in June, but the other two?

Patience. Well, more like annoyingly springlike. I don't want to see anything remotely warm until March.

rwtwm It's still a lot less than the past two months. People need to see the positives that do exist or they'll never be happy.

B87 Whatever, if you and others want to keep being pessimistic then you can.

B87 Depends on if the area sees anymore notable downpours, so far the last ~2 weeks or so have largely been confined to sub-millimetre showers with a lot of the total coming from the first week. 50mm seems a bit of a stretch for Heathrow at this point. Either way, 50mm will be a lot lower than the previous totals for February and March, and on par with January that was mostly dry on its own but saw two big storms either side of the month. As I've said, you have to look at the bigger picture; this month has been significantly less wet than most of the last six*. Sub-50 is going to be nearly half of March's total for most of the south and way below February's 100+ in many areas. Not the outcome people wanted, of course, it's still not been a historic April, but it's a step up from where we were. *In the SE, I'm aware that it's been very wet further west and north.

So it was overcast for most of the day, and we had a brief shower, but the Sun is coming out for the afternoon it seems. This is what I mean, it's nowhere near as bad as March was. Both February and March were constant rainfests with virtually no Solar appearances at all round here. Over this month since the first week, the Sun has made an appearance virtually every day. So far south Kent seems to have blown the monthly average, but they were already close on around the 10th so they've clearly seen a drier than average mid-month. North Kent on the other hand is still quite below and along with Essex, south London, most of Norfolk, Lincolnshire, north Wessex and the far coast of the Sussexes and Hampshire might actually achieve a drier than average April. However it will nationally overall still be very wet with the SW Peninsula, Wales, the far north of England and Scotland recording levels of rainfall closer in line with a somewhat wet October. Sunshine also won't be completely horrific in the drier areas, certainly below average yes but far from the dullest month in recent history.

Not really the same as going yellow though. When I think of going yellow I think of full on masses of yellows and browns in fields, not the odd patch looking a bit sad. That's actually happening here now, even though the actual soil moisture is very high, it's been so wet for so long now that the top layers are starting to degrade or disintegrate the moment it starts seeing a net loss of water, which is obviously happening now with the lack of stormy weather that we saw in March and longer periods without rainfall addition. With the way some of the open fields are looking now (with a lot of grass washed away due to said disintegration and drowning), you'd think it's been dry for the past five years! It's actually quite incredible how quickly the water can disappear in high spring between the strong Sun, high ambient temps (most of the time) and the spring bloom drinking all of it. I suppose that's how you end up with something like the summer 2018 drought, have the weather turn dry right as the Sun is getting really strong and temps are rising. Within a couple of weeks despite the wet weather of March and April it was already dry.

Northwest NI It wasn't meant to be taken literally.

??? I believe you're remembering two or three exceptional summers (likely 1995, 2003 and 2006 with a hint of August 1997 in there). It most certainly does not happen almost every year, even these days. I do have quite a few memories of it being super dry and hot in 2006 with yellow grass everywhere (2018+ is outside the realms of young childhood), but I also remember plenty of summers where that wasn't the case. In my lifetime I can clearly remember 2006, 2018, 2019 for a short while, 2022 and June 2023 having dried out grass. Even August 2020 didn't quite get there and neither did July 2013 even though June had been dry as well.

No it isn't. It didn't even happen in 2013, let alone mixed bags like 2016. Yellow/brown grass means it's been hot and dry for a prolonged period. 2018 was the first time it happened since 2006. You'd probably have to go down to southern France for it to be a normal or expected occurence. Yellowed grass is the hallmark of a very hot and dry summer here, only climate deniers in my experience seem to think it should be a normal occurence. It honestly seems like you think a normal summer in the SE should be like southern France. I think you may be operating at about 50 years ahead of schedule.

Both June and July were very reasonable being average or sunnier than average: I know 2021 is one of those weird summers where it was worst for the SE and best for the west, and that's unusual and upsets those in the SE who feel they should have the best weather, but even on the east coast both June and July were average or only just below for sunshine. Overall it's a summer that will be remembered in history, and compared to the other summers within the decade of 2021 it is probably the most infamous alongside 2023, but in the grand scheme of things it's not on the level of notoriety for poorness. You wouldn't say 2006 was poor because August turned out much cooler and (at least on the east side) wetter than June and July had been. Ok, 2008 is infamous; I don't really think of it as such because it's right next to 2007 which obviously overshadows it in notoriety and timing. If it wasn't for 2007 then 2008 would receive all the beatings for being the first bad summer since 2003 and hold a comparable level of notoriety. Kind of like how August 2022 is fairly overshadowed by July even though August was overall the hotter month for most.

B87 I know, I was referring to the infamous summers in our history. Obviously the ones you listed don't count as infamous - Ok 2021 is borderline but I don't feel like June was truly bad enough to warrant it and the middle two weeks of July were very reasonable. Much different to a notorious one like 2012 or 2007.

B87 That seems a bit extreme to me... I don't think we should want to go right to the opposite extreme, just a change to something a bit more normal. The damage this would cause to nature after already enduring one ridiculous extreme would be huge. stainesbloke Zurich has had snow on multiple days now, some of it even settled for a while. Why couldn't this have happened in February? Bloody El Niño. As for continued unsettledness, this is still quite the change from the constant Atlantic lows we were getting, so progress is progress. Breaking the habit is the first step towards something better. I get people's pessimism at the moment, I really do, everything is going to and we still aren't seeing any truly warm weather in the near future, but the situation is now a lot better than what it was in March, at least down here. This April has also imo far surpassed last year, I'm seeing the Sun more or less every day now, the trees have bloomed and we've had a handful of warm days. Last April was completely dull, grey and rainy aside from all of a few days at the end of the month. Things are on the up.

I don't really remember specific months in 2007 as I was too young, but the infamous summers do have a habit of seeing notable improvement in August. I really can't think of any where August was the worst month. August was the worst in 2014 and 2017 but those aren't really infamously bad, just a mixed bag and overall unnotable in the grand scheme of things. 2010 might be the only summer that could be considered infamous where August was undoubtedly the worst, however is 2010 really on the same level as 2007 et al? I don't think so.

2010 - Winter, obviously, although spring was very pleasant this year as well. 2011 - Spring, would've been autumn if November wasn't among the warmest on record. 2012 - Autumn, probably the autumnest autumn of my lifetime. 2013 - What can I say, it has multiple choices. Has to be spring due to the very cold March, great memories especially as it was following on from what was already quite a cold winter that had already seen snow. 2014 - Autumn seems to have been the best season of the year overall, I can't say I remember much or have very good memories of this year aside from that it was very mild all year overall. 2015 - Autumn, of course I'm going to go with this as it's the only part of 2015 that wasn't an absolutely horrible time for me, but even then I think it had the best weather of the year aside from November. 2016 - Summer, round these parts aside from June it was warm, dry and sunny with the majority of the summer holiday that year being in the Sun, without it getting ridiculously hot at any point. 2017 - Spring 2018 - Spring as it had BFTE. 2019 - Autumn because it was the only season that wasn't an absolute disaster in any way, and it still had an extremely wet October.

Firmly average in the south and above average elswhere. Neither of those get anywhere near the quoted figures. >150% sunshine (has this ever even been reached in October at all?) & >30% rainfail and an anomaly in the region of 3°C is just an impossible combination for physical reasons. For a >+3°C anomaly in October you'd need the first 15 days to be very warm, with the nights still short enough and the wind strong enough to not have inversions get in the way and have nights stay warm as well, and then an extremely mild period with heavy cloud, likely frequent rain and next to no variation between day and night temperatures, essentially a version of December 2015 but in October and the first half of November. The very warmest Octobers on record were mostly extremely mild like this.

Bristawl Si Agreed, even with the showering in the first half of the day, the Sun came out for an extended period and it wasn't really cold, more just a bit windy on occasion. Comes off to me as a very typical April day tbh. I can think of much worse April weather.

Sun Chaser I still think there's a very good chance that this year's summer will be backended with August and September having the hottest and driest weather. Barring 2020 the most anomalously hot weather has been in either July or September since 2013 - and that one was just barely. August 2020's heatwave feels out of place as it's the kind of psychotic heatwave that belongs in a month like August 2022. That gives me an idea: What would August 2022 look like with the August 2020 heatwave inserted? I'll put the August 2020 heatwave first as the dates of the two major heatwaves overlap: 1st: 30.1°C Wisley 2nd: 36.4°C Heathrow, Kew Gardens 3rd: 34.6°C Burlands Farm 4th: 34.0°C Herstmonceux 5th: 35.7°C Burlands Farm 6th: 36.2°C Burlands Farm 7th: 35.7°C Burlands Farm 8th: 30.0°C Burlands Farm 9th: 30.2°C Westonzoyland 10th: 31.8°C Wiggonholt, Usk 11th: 34.2°C Wiggonholt 12th: 34.5°C Wiggonholt 13th: 34.9°C Burlands Farm 14th: 34.2°C Cambridge 15th: 32.1°C Coningsby, Cambridge 16th: 28.3°C Cirencester While it misses 1976's record by one day, surely it's a genuine challenge for the most anomalously freakish heatwave ever recorded as it's overall consistently hotter than 76. Not to mention, knowing how the rest of August 2022 went, this must constitute the hottest month ever recorded. The thing is, I can kind of see how this heatwave could've happened for real in 2020. Looking at the day after 35.7°C at Burlands Farm, Porthmadog reached 29.8°C which suggests that the wind turned easterly instead of continuing west as most receding heatwaves do. In that case there is a chance that the hot airmass fails to clear, after which it evolves into the 2022 heatwave and we get a freakishly long and hot heatwave overall. If you want to beat 1976's record then I'd suggest holding this heatwave after a year like 2022, that way the ground is extremely dry, the initial heatwave loses less of its potential to evapotranspiration (and it's hotter than it was in 2020 in the first place as the ground wasn't horrendously dry in the epicentre like in 2022) and there's a lower chance of it collapsing in the transition to the second phase, and you'll probably get an extra two or three 30°C days out of it which will be enough to defeat the record. For maximum damage, you could have the August 2022 heatwave first, that way the 2020 phase will reach even higher temperatures. If I was really going for the absolute maximum damage, I'd hold the heatwave over the July-August border so we're working with peak climatology throughout, and while that combined with the other factors might be enough to defeat the nonexistent 32.2°C record from 1976 as well, this somewhat defeats the purpose as I was trying to imagine the calendar month of August 2022 with a heatwave like this that would almost certainly propel it to the hottest on record.