Sunshine Levels June 2012 - Your Stats

[damianslaw]

Whilst the exceptional amounts of rainfall so far have been quite rightly well documented, another notable aspect of this month has been the absence of sunshine.

I can't remember such a dull June. June is normally the sunniest month of the year nationwide. Too many days have seen only glimpses of the sun often first thing in the morning and late in the evening. Other days like today have seen leaden grey slate skies.

I'd be interested to hear about sunshine levels across the country. I think across the country as a whole we have only seen about 60% of the average, but I suspect there are some marked regional variations.

[Terminal Moraine]

40.10 hours here so far this month, this is 32% of the 30 year average for the first 22 days of June. There have been 9 completely sunless days, the most in any summer month in the last 35 years.

[Richard2901]

Dreadful with just 69.7 hours (55% of average) and 33.7 hours of that were in the first 4 days. That leaves just 36 hours in the 18 days to 22nd.

There have been only 4 completely sunless days but a further 6 with 0.1 hour and one with 0.2 hours. So 11 effectively sunless days and today looks being number 12 which would equal the total number of days with under half-an-hour sunshine recorded during the whole of last winter.

June 2007 was even worse with just 47.5 hours up to the 22nd and 88.6 hours in total. This works out at just 17.1% of the possible total - the worst for any month I have recorded followed by August 2008 with 20.4%.

This month to date works out at 18.3% of the possible. So the three cloudiest months in my records will end up being summer months.

By comparison the lowest percentages for winter months have been 23.8% for Jan (2010), 24.3% for Feb (2011) and 27.7% for Dec (2008)

[Summer of 95]

The percentage of what's possible is a really good way of measuring it, and it really does show how dull Britain is, especially in summer.

Shawbury in July 2010 came out similar to June 2007 in Aberdeen: 86 hours out of a maximum of about 505 (16.3x31)= 17.03%. Shocking. By contrast the Marches of 2003 and 2012 both managed over 40%, August 1995 about 60%- 273.5 out of a maximum of about 455.