Summer 2012

[Ladyofthestorm]

2007, 1996 and 1998 werent great either, very wet and dull, local shows called off, hay ruined, crops gone mouldy and so forth.

[Milhouse]

2007, 1996 and 1998 werent great either, very wet and dull, local shows called off, hay ruined, crops gone mouldy and so forth.

1996 might not have been great in your area but if someone offered me a repeat of Summer 1996 i would grab it instantly.

[AderynCoch]

1996 as a whole was a very dry year here, exacerbating the drought issues which started in 1995 with that long hot summer. The hosepipe ban went on for ages.

[Thundery wintry showers]

This summer is proving to be notable, I feel, for the large number of non-descript "non-weather days" with lots of cloud, the odd bit of sun and the odd bit of rain, as well as the very wet days. I don't normally associate very unsettled/cyclonic weather patterns with this sort of weather, because traditionally in cyclonic summer setups you get rain belts interspersed with bright showery weather, but this summer's depressions have often produced so much cloud cover that the days in between rain belts have been mostly grey and drizzly. Today had no sun at all and struggled at 14C for most of the day, here in inland north Yorkshire it was like one of those days you get in Tyneside with a cloudy north-easterly flow!

As a fan of convective weather and variety as well as warmth and sunshine I can usually take at least some positives from unsettled spells, but in the current regime it's hard even for me find any on a large majority of the days. I would certainly have very few complaints if someone offered me something akin to Summer 1996 right now, and would even consider a repeat of July/August 1998 or 2007 as an improvement.

[I Cumbria Marra I]

dont think iv seen a totally blue sky since the hot spell in late may, depressing weather.

[Richard2901]

Predictions that July couldn't be as bad as June have proven correct. July hasn't been as bad as June it has been far worse.

Sunshine for the first 10 days of this vile July has totalled just 9.2 hours here. I have been recording sunshine since October 2006 and this is the dullest first 10 days of any month beating the previous lowest total of 11.5 hours for 1st-10th January 2008.

Worse still Edinburgh has recorded 1.6 hours sun for July so far which would be a shockingly bad total for 10 days in winter. You'd think the recorder must be at fault but the endless cloud on the satellite images confirms just how dire it has been. There has been no sunshine for 6 days now which must surely be a UK record for July?

http://www.weatherca...obsid/3166.html

Over the past 5 weeks I have recorded just 78.7 hours sun which equates to a woeful 41% of average. So far outside the range of normal variation it's unreal. There have only been a very small number of summer months as sunless (August 1912, July 1931, August 1963) never mind a full 5 week period.

For Eastern Scotland this truly is a run of dismal summers without parallel in recorded history

[Milhouse]

For something that is supposed to be variable and everchanging, we seem so stuck in a rut its unbelievable. To have a southerly tracking jet since April its truly shocking. And for it to have coincided with Summer for the past 6 years is just horrendous. The Azores high has been knocking on the door quite a few times this Summer so far but there seems no let up in the train of low pressures heading our way. Therefore a promising ridge just seems to get squashed nearer the time. Why cant low pressure track northeastwards over the top of an Azores ridge like it used to without bulldozing it out the way and heading straight for the UK. The answer seems to be that big fat high that is constantly stuck over Greenland that never used to occur in summers before 2006.

Edited July 10, 2012 by Milhouse

[Weather-history]

June 2012 was yet another summer month that had a -ve NAO.

[Snowy Easterly]

WOW, i know this is extremely unlikely as its deep FI, but it would be a very nice birthday for me

http://modeles.meteo...fs-0-384.png?12

surprise surprise the weather for my birthday couldn't be more different from that chart, goes to show GFS FI is pointless and should be scrapped

[Bottesford]

Of course this summer has been dire but at least up to now it has felt fairly warm & humid so even though the skies were slate grey with water coming out of them it has not felt cold.

However today has changed that. I got home to a chilly house, the warm slippers have replaced the sandals and socks (bare feet this summer I think not!) and upstairs windows remain firmly closed (downstairs not been open since May). It's 13.7c at the moment - lower than I'd like to see at any time of day in summer never mind only 10:20pm.

It goes from bad to worse - wet, grey and now cold too?!

[damianslaw]

2007, 1996 and 1998 werent great either, very wet and dull, local shows called off, hay ruined, crops gone mouldy and so forth.

Agree 2007 and 1998 were very poor summers along with 2008, but 1996 was a preety decent summer with lengthy dry sunny spells and often warm. Not sure how conditions were in NE Scotland, but I don't recall many wet periods or slow moving low pressure systems. 1996 as a year was very dry.

The difference between this summer so far and those of 2007, 1998 and 2008 is that all those summers came on the back of preety decent conditions in April and May, April 07, May 98 and May 2008 brought lengthy very warm dry sunny conditions. Yes we had the glorious late May spell this year but it came after 6-7 weeks of dismal wet cool weather, and the lovely second half to March came far too early in the season. As many have stated apart from the period 19-30th May, our weather since the 1st April has been terrible, easily one of the worse April - mid July periods for a long long time. Normally this period brings on average brings plenty of dry settled sunny weather and is much more likely to do so than the mid July - late March period. Its a depressing thought as we are now entering the wetter second half of the year.

We have seen lengthy unsettled periods month after month.. May - Dec 97 was preety unsettled throughout, July - Dec 93 also, but its rare for an unsettled lengthy spell to set in at the start of April and persist through until mid July with such persistance.. such spells are more likely to set in around now, or in September or November.

[AderynCoch]

I don't know whether or not to be surprised with the atrociously-low sunshine statistics any more.

Approaching mid-June, I was utterly flabbergasted at the paucity of sunshine at a wide scattering of stations (Bournemouth Hurn, Brize Norton, Nottingham, Leeming) - all with less than 20 hours, and as low as 12 hours at Bournemouth. I previously thought it was practically impossible to have running totals so low coming up to mid-June. I really had seen everything now.

Only I hadn't. A mere month later and Scotland has a number of stations which haven't even reached 10 hours yet never mind 20. Check this lot out:

Lerwick - 9.9

Leuchars - 9.3

Aberdeen Dyce - 8.0

Prestwick - 8.0

Eskdalemuir - 4.6

Edinburgh Gogarbank - 1.6 (no, your eyes don't need testing - one point six hours of sunshine a third of the way into July)

I should point out that I noticed those running June totals for those English stations around the 12-13th of that month, so the Scottish July figures are a couple of days behind in that respect. Also, the first half of June has slightly longer daylight hours than the first half of July. But both of these factors are negligible really.

What next? A completely sunless first half of August?

[Aaron]

24 hours here, I have to say I haven't noticed the extreme cloudiness at all.

[Aaron]

Of course this summer has been dire but at least up to now it has felt fairly warm & humid so even though the skies were slate grey with water coming out of them it has not felt cold.

However today has changed that. I got home to a chilly house, the warm slippers have replaced the sandals and socks (bare feet this summer I think not!) and upstairs windows remain firmly closed (downstairs not been open since May). It's 13.7c at the moment - lower than I'd like to see at any time of day in summer never mind only 10:20pm.

It goes from bad to worse - wet, grey and now cold too?!

Ha, I hardly ever wear any footwear or even socks inside the house. My hands and feet are cold say other people but I don't feel it myself.

[reef]

Today has been a very poor day, not much in the way of heavy rain but completely overcast and 4.6mm gradually falling over the 24 hour period. The maximum temperature of 14.6C was the lowest in July since 2004 and only 1.7C above the record low max at this site.

We're only up to around 30 hours of sunshine here aswell, which is exceptionally low. Each of the remaining 21 days of the month would need to record on average 6.6hrs of sunshine just to reach the current dullest July of the last decade, which was 2002 with 168 hours.

[AWD]

Due to the lack of warm sunshine over the last few summers, storms are also lacking too. I haven't seen a Thunderstorm in my location for many a year now.

I remember when we used to have decent summers back in the 90's. I could almost guarantee myself a storm or two each season, which for my location is pretty good.

[Milhouse]

Netweather forecast hinting at a greater influence of the Azores high as we head towards the end of July. Kind of ties in with what the models are showing.

[Scorcher]

Agree Milhouse, I think people are being too negative which is understandable given the horrors we've experienced so far this summer but I can see major improvements in the models. No prolonged hot spells but the Azores High looks likely to begin asserting its influence with any depressions tracking further north than previously. It should at least assure the odd warm and sunny day here and there interspersed with cloudier spells, so perhaps a more traditional pattern for the second half of the summer which I think we'd all take in a heartbeat right now!

[bringmesunshine]

surprise surprise the weather for my birthday couldn't be more different from that chart, goes to show GFS FI is pointless and should be scrapped

Happy birthday anyway SE. Don't let it beat you - it's only weather.

[Carl46Wrexham]

We've actually got some sunshine today. Incredible. Looking out of the window, it is almost possible to believe you are looking at a July day that is finally worthy of the name. Then as soon as you step outside, the illusion is shattered. Oh yes, the sun is making an all too rare appearance, in this shoddy half arsed excuse for a summer, but then so is the nagging wind. A noticeable breeze (15-20mph) from the NW, that in shade temperatures of 15c ( a bad joke at this time of year) makes it feel horribly cool.

I hate "Summer" 2012.

Edited July 11, 2012 by Carl46Wrexham

[Thundery wintry showers]

I concede that I would slightly prefer a change to benign non-descript weather (cloud, the odd bit of sun and the odd bit of rain) to a continuation of what we've been having, but I am struggling to be enthusiastic about it, especially having had quite a lot of it in between rain belts recently. I am also mindful of the likelihood of me clashing with a mindset of, "who in their right mind wouldn't be enthusiastic over 'non-weather' after the recent wet weather?".

Talking of 'non-weather', even today in N Yorks has somehow ended up grey and damp following a bright showery start, as sharp showers and the odd rumble of thunder have merged into an area of near-continuous moderate rain. I think it's rather like throwing five dice and getting five ones- these things are statistically unlikely but can arise on occasion by chance, the same can be said of the unusual synoptics so far this summer for that matter.

Edited July 11, 2012 by Thundery wintry showers

[Richard2901]

Another astonishing statistic: Dyce has now racked up 15 sunless days this summer. Only five other post war summers have recorded as much in their entirety and we're not even half way through yet

Record was 19 days in 1958 followed by 16 days in 1978 and 2011 with 1963 and 2007 also recording 15.

Pretty much a certainty that a new record will be set. Possibly even by the half way point if the horrific forecasts for the next few days are correct

[Slowpoke]

To be honest, here in Blackpool, the last 6 days starting Saturday have been the best of the summer thus far - even though the same can certainly not be said for the rest of the country! Saturday was beautiful and it got up to around 23.5C. It's been sunny and relatively warm every day since! Even today got up to 20C and it's been sunny. Still 18C now @)

[Snowy Easterly]

been shocking here this week, cool and very wet, what a horrible birthday i had yesterday i got soaked

[Summer Sun]

There are hints from the beebs 10 day outlooks that some warmer weather could finally be on the way for the south and Jersey

With London geting to 26c and St Helier, Jersey hitting 27c

http://www.bbc.co.uk/weather/3042091 - 23rd

http://www.bbc.co.uk/weather/2643743 - 22nd onwards