Summer Discussion!

[Bottesford]

Leaves are turning to autumnal hues here, at least a week earlier than last year. In the early years of the millennium, they were notably green still in early November.

Yep seen that myself - esp in this more leafy place I've moved to! Trees looking more 'off green' and like they're just about to turn at any moment... A month early!

[Weather-history]

One of the worst type of weather for me. Grey featureless skies and nothing. Currently a light drizzle is falling but there is absolutely nothing redeeming about this weather.

Still only 77.9hrs of sunshine in Manchester, up to yesterday.

[Chris Knight]

Trees losing leaves, turning autumn colours, days of featureless cloud with nothing other than light drizzle, both my wife and I with sore throats, streaming eyes and noses, which are not colds, and EUMETSAT shows a plume of Sulphur dioxide from the Kasatochi eruption over the UK and Europe. All these in an August which started with a northern total solar eclipse, and had a partial lunar eclipse a fortnight later. Coincidences, I wonder?

[Weather-history]

Can this be the summer that breaks this run?

Summers ending in "8"

1888 CET: 13.7 Rain: 317mm

1898 CET: 15.1 Rain: 166mm

1908 CET: 14.9 Rain: 216mm

1918 CET: 14.9 Rain: 204mm

1928 CET: 14.8 Rain: 253mm

1938 CET: 15.3 Rain: 226mm

1948 CET: 14.8 Rain: 259mm

1958 CET: 15.3 Rain: 310mm

1968 CET: 15.1 Rain: 274mm

1978 CET: 14.5 Rain: 210mm

1988 CET: 14.8 Rain: 268mm

1998 CET: 15.2 Rain: 230mm

2008 ?

CET average: 14.9 Rainfall: 244mm

2008 CET: 15.4 Rainfall ~276mm

So the run continues and here to 2018 to see if it can break it.

[Thundery wintry showers]

Well, the settled period came... and ironically most of us had even less sunshine than during the wet weather that preceded it.

I notice the stats show that this has been the warmest "8" summer for a long while, though only just ahead of 1938 and 1958 (my guess is that the minima are the main reason). That's perhaps consistent with the warming trend, but certainly the dull wet trend hasn't been bucked this year.