Derp Patrol

Whatever anyone says, this summer along with the past 3 has been poor to say the least, with 2007 possibly going down as absolutely dreadful. Again, like last year, temperatures have not been too far from the averages, but many people seem to think that close average temperatures = good summers, which is simply not the case. July was a good indication of this, apart from the first couple of a days during the hot spell, the sun decided to go on holiday, and along with rainfall, this ruined July. If there had not been so much cloud and rain around, then July would have been a lot better, I for one do not mind if it is 20C and sunny, it is a lot better than 25C with cloudy skies. I don't think that anybody is misunderstanding what an average Brittish summer is, because to be honest, there isn't an average British summer. This is why every year people talk about whether it will be good/bad/wet e.t.c. And the same in Winter, our weather is so unpredictable and in some ways it is great, because it allows us to get the extremes of the summers of 2006,1995,1976 e.t.c and the extremes of the winters of the 1980s

average max 22.2C (-0.6C) average min 13.9C (+0.1C) max temp 31.6C lowest day temp 18.0C

17.2C - After a short warm/hot spell in the first week, the rest of the month to be dominated by high pressure as the jet moves north.

Why can't the MET office just accept that they made a massive mistake? http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8173533.stm This report tells us rightly that they only said 'odds on' but they still made it sound as if we were going to have a scorching summer, what was the need for all of this BBQ summer nonsense. 'But the organisation has defended its record, saying people have already forgotten the hot weather experienced across many parts of Britain in June. It also highlights the absence of the sort of major floods that blighted 2007 and 2008; and the largely fine weather for the Wimbledon tennis championship, the cricket Tests and the Open golf.' I wish that they would just admit that they made a mistake. They think that everything is ok because we had a 2 week spell of good weather in the space of 2 months, which is appauling. Also, it says about the lack of floods, but one would expect to not have many floods in an average British summer anyway..

Surely next year won't be as bad as this.. Oh well, in 3 weeks I go to Italy, the place I am going to is recording temps of 35C at the moment I've known many days in October to be better than this, this July has been very poor to be frank, I can't remember going so long in high summer without a 25C+ day, even in the last 2 years there was the occasional warm day..

Winter 7/10 - Winter was quite cold down here, not something that I enjoy unless there is snow, but otherwise it was pretty normal untill those days in early February when we had the best snow in donkeys years. Spring 7/10 - Spring was very good for me, I like winter, but after a while I need a change from cold temperatures, so Spring was great in that sense. I have no use for cold spells in Spring, because in my opinion cold is useless unless there is snow, and after mid March down here snow is pretty rare, and when it does come after mid March it rarely lasts untill midday. The only thing that would have made Spring better was if there was a greater range of temperatures. From late February untill late April practically every day was sunny with temperatures in the mid teens which was nice, but it would have been better if there were a few 20C+ in April. Summer 4.5/10 - Summer got off to the perfect start, sunny with temperatures in the high 20s, but then it fizzled out. If it had not been for the mini 'heatwave' at the end of June/early July then June would probably have been classed as poor overall, but I would class this June as decent. So far this July has been pretty awful bar the first few days. 3 weeks without any 25C plus in high summer is pretty rare, added to the high rainfall amounts, cloudy skies with lack of sunshine and chilly winds this July will go down as poor for many people. August is the decider on how this summer goes. If this weather continues then it looks like this will be the 3rd poor summer in a row.

So far overall this summer has not been too great.. We had nice spells in late May and late June, but in between it has been relatively poor with little sunshine here and temps below average at 21C best, it would feel nice if there was any sun but this has not been the case. I will not write of the rest of summer though because we still have about 2 months of it left if you include the first half of September, but so far it has been better than the last 2 years but still not great IMO.

Oh please... I have been waiting 2 weeks for at least some sunny weather..even sunny with average temps would be nice but for the past week here it has been cloudy and windy with showers almost everyday and temps below average hitting 21C at best. I don't mind if there is not extreme heat, 25C with blazing sunshine will do me perfectly

But for Summer in general it is more unusual to get long periods of the same type of weather, in winter it is less unusual because the jet is further south e.t.c

I do agree somewhat with the first half of your post, it is very dissapointing.. Looks like a fairly cool week ahead with temps slightly below average and always the chance of a shower..however I don't see how you can lose interest in summer, because we have the rest of July, August and maybe September for better weather. To the post above, yes, it isn't terrible - it has certainly been better than last summer so far, but I think people are annoyed because there doesn't look like there will be a change in patterns for a while. You could say that this weather is average, but it is quite unusual to have the same pattern continuing for weeks on end which this one could do. I would be fine if we had a mixture of warmer and cooler spells, but it doesn't look like this will happen. Anyway, don't lose faith with the rest of July yet, there are still nearly 3 weeks left and noone can be sure of what will happen after 5 days..

It is just my luck that I will miss some decent weather next week as I will be heading down to Cornwall/Devon on Saturday for a week.. hopefully when I come back the models show something better, but it looks like a disappointing week away from the SE next week. We do still have 3 weeks of July, the whole of August and potentially some of September for some decent weather though, so I will keep my hopes high

Yes, 22C in the sun does feel very nice, I would take average temperatures every day if it meant no cloud, but usually we end up with 22C with grey cloudy skies which isn't as pleasant. :winky:

If you read the post on the page before, someone said that the remainder of July would be unsettled, with us having to wait untill August untill the next settled spell. I wouldn't really call the next week 'average' heavy showers with little sunshine and temperatures struggling in the high teens in the NW and struggling to reach any higher than 20C in the south is hadly average

We are still in early July, we don't have a clue on what is going to happen after 5 days or so, so I wouldn't say that the rest of July will be poor. The GFS has been picking up on warmer signals, but it looks like it has reverted to typical atlantic weather untill it picks up on a new signal. It can't get too much worse than it is at the moment, so I am quietly optimistic that we will see some more settled weather soon, at least some sunshine would be nice so I can sit outside, so far this week has been cool and windy with little sunshine, temperatures struggling at 19C or 20C

That's strange, I don't know why that is happening About a typical British summer, I would say that a typical British summer contains a mixture of very warm/hot spells such as last week and then cooler spells such as this week in between, probably slightly more in the way of warmer spells though. It depends on where you live though, those in the north west, NI and Scotland are more likely to have cooler weather with less sunshine and more rainfall, and those who live in the south and east are likely to have warmer weather with less rainfall and more sunshine. Take last week as an example, whilst the south east saw temps of 32C, just a few hundred miles away in the west and north the temps at the same time were in the mid twenties and even lower in some places. So in my opinion there is no default summer pattern for the whole country.

2008 only had close to average temps because of high night time temperatures. Most of the summer in the SE consisted of temps in the high teens and low twenties, below the July average of about 22C-23C. The other poor aspect of the last 2 summers was the lack of any lengthy settled spells, only a short period last year in July which bought a few days of sunny weather and very warm temperatures. The last two years also saw the 30C just broken on only a few days and other than that practically the whole time it was either raining or cloudy. Just because the mean temperatures were close to average, it does not mean that a summer can be considered good, other factors including rainfall and sunshine should be included, who would want a summer with 22C everyday with grey cloudy skies?

Argh next week i'm going to cornwall.. just when the models show that the SE might get some decent weather.. :winky:

Tell me about dry.. only rain we have had in the last 3 weeks and maybe more was from a thunderstorm, my lawn is almost totally brown

That is just laughable . 15C maxes in southern England is barely possible in July, GFS really does mess up on temps sometimes.. I expect that maxes will be at least 4C-6C higher than what is being shown in some places..

I also love in summer how the sun takes so long to set, from about 9pm they sky looks really nice and it only starts getting really dark at about 10pm.. gorgeous. In winter though it just seems to get dark so quickly..

I'd prefer a climate where we had a good 3-4 months of winter, and then a short Spring and Autumn with a long hot and dry summer with a thunderstorm to top it off every 8-10 days. Similar to Moscow I suppose although Moscow is about as warm as London in Summer but does not have the same range of temps in summer, it never seems to get too hot or too cool which would be the only downside. However what I do like about the British weather is that it is so diverse, we can get 33C one day and then a few days later we can have 20C, it is certainly very interesting and is what makes the MO discussions so interesting :o :o

Nothing disastrous in my point of view in the SE. Yes it might feel a bit chilly in the evenings, and temps below average or average in the low 20s, but it will feel very pleasant in the sunshine - at least it will not be that wet. I struggle to remember the last time we had proper rain... we had a very small shower yesterday morning.. but the last time I remember getting rain before this was from a thunderstorm a couple of weeks ago. It has been very dry here which has been good, but the cloud cover has spoiled otherwise what I would call a decent June.

It will be generally cooling down with temps returning to average at about 21-23C next week for some spots, maybe warmer in the sun. The heatwave was over hyped IMO, it was far from a classic.. just a few days of hot temps which is not unusual for the UK, although Scotland did seem to have the better of it.

Very interesting Chion, I am fascinated by your posts and GP's as well, they seem to be very accurate as I believe you and GP predicted this current hot spell a few weeks ago. This current mini heatwave cannot be compared with 2006 at the moment.. These mini heatwaves are not too rare, we usually get a mini heatwave every year that lasts a couple of days, it's just that this one lasted for quite a while. What was fascinating about 2006 was that it lasted for several weeks and gave us temps of 35C+, 2003 gave us a shorter spell but with very high temps. It would probably take a long spell of hot weather for this summer to be compared with 2006 or 2003.. but who knows

Good end to the week, hopefully now some thunderstorms tomorrow. A bit annoyed that there was a fair bit of cloud cover this week, it could have been hotter but oh well