Good years that are followed poor years/vice versa

[Summer8906]

 LetItSnow! 1999 I would rate as thoroughly average, I think, but distinctly mild.

Jan and Feb were mild and westerly, Jan was wet, Feb drier.

March was a little mixed but had a fairly lengthy warm, sunny spell in the middle.

April was mild and rather changeable and dull but did feature a short wintry spell mid-month and a short warm, sunny spell at the end.

May was mild, somewhat changeable, probably about average for sunshine and rainfall, and very thundery later.

June was fairly dry but not especially warm or sunny. It was thundery at the start and around the 26th.

July was notably warm, dry and sunny.

August was wet and sometimes thundery, it started warm but became cooler. The very end was fine.

September was famously fine and warm for 11 days before transitioning to very dull and wet but still very mild for the second half. Not unlike 1981, but milder.

Both October and November started and ended unsettled but had lengthy fine, anticyclonic spells in the middle.

December was wet and stormy but did have a few wintry interludes with a settling snow event in southern Hampshire around the 18th, like 1997.

A thundery summer, with only 1992 and 1994 comparably thundery in the 90s.

Edited July 17 by Summer8906

[Summer8906]

For other examples:

Could 1929 and 1930 qualify? 1929 seemed to be predominantly good until September, with a wet final three months

1930 if I remember right was mostly fairly dull and wet, on the whole.

[LetItSnow]

 Summer8906 I wasn't aware summer 1992 was overly thundery. In fact I remember reading August 1992 wasn't that thundery with an unusual frequency of frontal rainfall instead of storms. Could be wrong. You were there, I wasn't. 

I think that 1929 vs 1930 would work. Seemed fairly sunny as well. March 1929 was extraordinarily sunny. There was one of the few genuinely cold winters of the early 20th century during the winter of 1928/1929. Autumn 1929 was incredibly wet and stormy at times and this continued into December, very similar to autumn 2000. Very abrupt shift I think. I think as soon as the calendar turned to the 1st of October it just flipped to extremely wet and stormy.

Edited July 17 by LetItSnow!

[Summer8906]

 LetItSnow! 1992 was fairly thundery with a number of notable outbreaks.

There were a number in the last week or so of May which admittedly isn't summer, with the second week in June having a slack NE-ly and daily storm development for around 3 days, I remember "storm chasing" one of these on the 10th only to see it die as it started to get dark.

July and August were both pretty dull, wet and Atlantic-driven but did feature two really notable transient plumes followed by severe and prolonged thundery activity. The first was on July 20th and the second featured two consecutive thundery nights on Aug 7/8 and Aug 8/9. The first, if I remember right, involved a thundery warm front from the south producing a Tc warm sector, and the second was then on the following cold front as the Atlantic got in (and remained in for the rest of the month).

September then featured a late outbreak on the 18th, which again isn't true summer but might qualify by being just the right side of the equinox...

Edited July 17 by Summer8906

[LetItSnow]

 Summer8906 Interesting that August 1992 was blisteringly hot to our south-east. I can't remember off the top of my head but I'm assuming that the pattern was somewhat like now, an active jet with a large contrast between cool and wet on the north side of the boundary and very hot on the southern side due to momentum gathering hot air from the north. The difference with then and now is that then you'll notice into northern Africa it was closer to normal with the heat sort of transplanted, whereas now the balance has completely been thrown off and it's now a case of heat vs extreme heat.

I wonder if perhaps 1991 vs 1992 would qualify for this list. I don't think either years are shining examples of the best weather conditions but 1991 had a lot of seasonable weather with a long, cold winter, mixed spring, dreadful start but then eventually decent summer and a dry fairly seasonable autumn. 1992 on the other hand seems to have been a year of a lot of quite bland weather with the extremes happening perhaps at the wrong time. If May and June's warmth and dryness were transplanted to July and August and the cold anomalies in October shifted to December then 1992 would have been alright.

On the topic of 1992 while we're at it, it an interesting year over the pond as a large swathe of America had an extremely cold summer. I remember reading a forum which was like an American Netweather and parts of the Midwest and into Canada would have spells of weather not getting out of the teens Celsius and dismal rainy conditions. 1992 over there was a year for most with no winter and no summer. Sort of was their 1974.

Edited July 17 by LetItSnow!

[Methuselah]

1963 and 1964: the optimism in the run-up to winter '64 was not realised! 

[LetItSnow]

 Methuselah Well you went from one of the coldest on record to the driest on record! Winter 1964 must have been a doozy. 

[Metwatch]

2 hours ago, Harry233 said:

Is there a way you can view all those anomaly charts back that far?

On the Met Office website they only go back to 2001, but the ones from much longer ago I don't think freely available or even been made, only on some select rmets articles like the one I linked above for specific years or seasons.

[LetItSnow]

 Metwatch They used to be availible back to 1910 but were taken down from the MO site years ago for no good reason.

[Squally77]

 LetItSnow! This was the direct effect of the eruption of Mount Pinatubo the previous June which didn't impact on our weather much. Only examples I can think of is October 1992 and July to November 1993.