Perceptions Of Summer 2011

[Rollo]

Now that summer 2011 is receding into distant memory I think it would be of interest to see how members remember it.

From my point of view it began here in the North East quite nicely but rapidly went downhill from the end of May,if one accepts summer months to be June,July and August then all we achieved was the odd lovely day which were surrounded by some very heavy downpours,all in all a very disappointing season for this area.

[Thundery wintry showers]

I enjoyed the period from 25 June to 12 July (plenty of convective activity, plenty of sunshine in between, a heatwave on 26/27 June, and a dry sunny interlude in the first few days of July). However, it's going to go down as a disappointing summer overall because of the persistently cloudy and often cool weather from mid-July onwards, while the 1st-24th June was pretty mediocre.

Monthly ratings are affected by personal preferences, but my monthly/seasonal ratings reflect my above statement- I gave June 6.0, July 6.5 and August 4.4, and the summer as a whole got an a weighted average of 5.7, compared with the 1993-2010 average of 6.2, also making it the worst summer since 2008 by that measure. Thus, while not outstandingly bad in my opinion it did prove to be something of a disappointment.

Since I don't record sunshine or precipitation to less than 1mm resolution I can't calculate Mr_Data's summer index (which is a weighted function of sunshine, max temperature and no. of raindays) directly but estimates based on Met Office "actual and anomaly maps" suggest that it would come out as the worst summer since 2008 via that index also.

Onto the hard stats, and Cleadon's mean temperature and rainfall were both almost exactly equal to the estimated 1951-2000 and 1961-90 averages, though slightly cooler and wetter than 1971-2000. However, there were only 11 days which reached 21C or above.

[Jack Wales]

Summer (if you can call it that) has been very poor here. Very cool, often windy / wet and I cannot recall a settled period lasting more than two days. I'm not sure about elsewhere in the UK but the most summery months in these parts were March and April.

[Milhouse]

August was the best month of the summer for me. It had by far the most dry and warm days compared to June and July, despite it never getting very warm. The first half of July was quite decent but the second half will go down as one of the worst summer spells i can ever remember. It was characterised by constant dreariness and poor temperatures barely reaching 16c on several days. Even though June had the best day of the summer (the 26th) the rest of the month was also poor. I dont recall much that went on in June but a look at the models show it was plagued by frequent low pressure which explains why i dont remember much in the way of prolonged settled conditions.

[ForeverPomeroysnow]

July had its moments but since the end ofApril very poor in Co.Tyrone

[Aaron]

Only people in the north west of England, the east of Scotland and perhaps the far north east of England and maybe Wales can call this summer truly dire.

It's been okay here, and the Met Office back me up on that one. Precipitation has been below average, and sunshine slightly above average..

[Skip Spence]

Very disappointing here; cool, often wet and worst of all completely overcast most of the time. Although not as dire as 2007 and 2008, both 2009 and 2010 were significantly better, particularly the first halves of both.

Summer 2011 - definitely one to forget.

[Optimus Prime]

A summer that seemed to just blend in as a typical British summer. Some heatwaves but mostly temperate temperature wise. April 2011 was undoubtedly the best month of the year.

[Jon Somerset]

Heatwaves didn't get going the further west you went. I can only remember late June and early July as weather I would expect for a normal summer. Since then the only pleasant settled period of relatively warm, high pressure weather has been this week! I had to go abroad to find summer this year. There was some half-decent weather in August in the early days, but all seemed to appear on woking days. We were dogged by cloud and coolness here and it felt rare to go above 20C.

As I said in other threads, I think that this year has been as bad if not worse than the last four years - with last year redeeming itself a bit with a bright dry if not warm August.

Far too much cyclonic weather and no anti-cyclones for weeks on end does not a summer make in my eyes.

[jy]

Here in Central Southern England the Summer has from a selfish point of view been fine,none too hot,fairly dry with decent sunshine amounts,i say selfish because i garden for a living and struggle badly in high temperatures and humidity,we did get lucky though because,as with last year the lawns were about to go white/brown again when we got much needed rain in the nick of time.

[damianslaw]

Another dissapointing summer in the main it has to be said. Whilst we were spared torrential downpours and intense lengthy rainy periods (compared to summers 2007, 2008 and 2009), on the temperature and sunshine front is was very poor indeed. July was woeful in terms of temps, nightime minima very chilly indeed, no memories of long warm summer evenings perhaps the most notable feature of the summer. August once again was the worse of the three summer months - another exceptionally dull cloudy affair with no proper warm day. June was preety average. However, it was a good summer for outdoor activities, never too warm or wet to make for uncomfortable conditions.

I did have the fortune of spending the first half of July in Wales and SE England and enjoyed many a sunny pleasant day - my comments above reflect conditions experienced in the Lake District. I think the Lake District saw its summer in April and the opening days of May - since then it has been persistantly unsettled with not one decent settled spell of any great length i.e. 5 days+.

[Lake District Blizzard]

July was woeful in terms of temps.

Sorry i have to disagree with that, unless you purely mean night minima.

1st - 5th was sunny with temperature between 19-22c, with 24-26c widely on the 4th

10th - 14th sunny, temps 19-21c

23rd - 27th unbroken sunshine everyday temps 20-23c

29th - 31st sunny, 21c each day

Now with a mean max of around 20c in such a cool month nationwide the lake district did pretty well, both june and august were well below average on the maximums

Thats 3 spells of warm sunny weather lasting 5 days, although if you weren't here for the first half you missed 2 of the 3,

Edited September 18, 2011 by rjd1000

[Richard2901]

My perception is of a vile, putrid horror show that started bad and just got worse and worse. It's a perception well backed up by the facts which show it to rate amongst the coldest, dullest and wettest summers on record.

My summer index shows the only worse post-war summers to be, in order of awfulness: 1948, 2007, 1987, 1963, 1966 and 1954.

Never before have five successive summers scored worse than average although 1962-66 came out worse than 2007-11 overall but 1964 rated slightly above average.

What is even more galling is that all of those summers above, except 1966 and 2007, were followed by decent Septembers and even those two were nowhere near as dire as 2011. If anything this September has turned out even worse than the summer.

Over 50mm rain so far this month, just 5 dry days and a horrific 52 hours sunshine. Since 16th July I have recorded just 208.5hours sun or 65% of average making it not only the worst spell of weather I can recall at this time of year but one of the worst at any time of year. It is also less than I recorded during April alone which has turned out to be the sunniest month this year.

Only 6 of the last 23 days have recorded as much as 3 hours of sun and the last time 2 consecutive days managed 6 hours was 19th and 20th August. It feels like late October already with all this incessant depressing gloom

Summer 2011 may not quite have managed to be the worst post-war summer but unless there is a big turnaround in the next 10 days then the June to September period may well go down as the worst.

Edited September 18, 2011 by Richard2901

[damianslaw]

Sorry i have to disagree with that, unless you purely mean night minima.

1st - 5th was sunny with temperature between 19-22c, with 24-26c widely on the 4th

10th - 14th sunny, temps 19-21c

23rd - 27th unbroken sunshine everyday temps 20-23c

29th - 31st sunny, 21c each day

Now with a mean max of around 20c in such a cool month nationwide the lake district did pretty well, both june and august were well below average on the maximums

Thats 3 spells of warm sunny weather lasting 5 days, although if you weren't here for the first half you missed 2 of the 3,

Ok granted maxes were not too bad - but hardly exceptional. I did miss the first two spells you mentioned, I'm surprised at how warm temps were during those periods...

Still summer 2011 as a whole was a poor one for the Lake District in terms of temps and sunshine, lost count of the number of cloudy days we recorded - no denying this fact.