BBC News report on the summer of 1998

[Weather-history]

Summer 1998 was one of the less impressive summers of the 90s but for me it was nowt compared to the summers of 2007 and 2012, in terms of badness. Here is a BBC news report on the summer and an improvement

[Weather-history]

Finally a decent spell of weather at least in the south

[Weather-history]

The heat starts to crank up, 7th August 1998

Edited November 27, 2012 by Weather-history

[Weather-history]

8th August 1998

[Weather-history]

A forecast of 34C

[Thundery wintry showers]

I think of Summer 1998 as a fairly typical example of a "westerly" summer- a succession of lows bringing a lot of cloud, rain belts interspersed with some brighter showery interludes, and the occasional short-lived ridge from the Azores High bringing dry cloudy weather to the north and sunshine to the south. Having said that, June 1998 was notably wet in many places and July 1998 was unusually wet in Scotland.

July 1998 contained a fair number of active "convective days" in Tyneside from the showery westerly flows in between the rain belts, but these were mixed with a large number of cloudy days with the odd bit of drizzle- the latter must have been particularly prominent over eastern and southern England as statistically July was rather dry but dull in those areas.

August was memorable in Tyneside for its distinct lack of "weather"- mostly dry, quite breezy, a fair amount of cloud, the odd bit of sun and the odd bit of rain, but it was very much a north-south split month and Heathrow Airport had 40% above average sunshine thanks to the persistent ridges from the Azores High.

[Guest pjl20101]

Funnily enough the CET of summer of 1998 was the same as 2007 and 2012. 1998 summer was very similar to last year as it had the strong -QBO component and a negative AO too. It was certainly the worst summer of the 1990s and I was on a D of E hack in the new forest as part of the expedition and it rained non atop. Putrid summer conditions.

[cheeky_monkey]

Funnily enough the CET of summer of 1998 was the same as 2007 and 2012. 1998 summer was very similar to last year as it had the strong -QBO component and a negative AO too. It was certainly the worst summer of the 1990s and I was on a D of E hack in the new forest as part of the expedition and it rained non atop. Putrid summer conditions.

Its funny how peoples perception of the same season differs...i remember 1998 as being a non descript summer..not as bad as 1992 or 1993 and definitely better than 2007..in fact i think 1998 was probably the least interesting year of the 1990s weather wise (apart from a warm February)...still with regards to summer the 1990s was the best decade for warm summer months in my life time.

[Snowyowl9]

1998 summer was just non-descript not that wet at all,there were a few thunderstorms/thundery showers earlier in the summer.

January had a very mild few days/nights.

Feb had the outstanding warm spell.

April had the outstanding spell for snow.

[Summer of 95]

It seemed like a very poor summer at the time (it was 10 years since a really bad one, and we'd got used to them bringing at least a few days of real heat every year)- but it has to be reassessed after the horrors of 2007-12.

 

June and July didn't have any truly hot weather, which is why it seemed poor. August was actually OK here, it was a north-south split rather than a SE/everywhere else like we keep getting these days. You can see the warm area on that map up to about Manchester, contrast the mid-August 2012 SE-only heat for example.

 

However it did not have anything approaching the rain of June/July 2007, July 2009, or summer 2012, the abysmal dullness of July 2010 and most recent Augusts, or the 3 months of cool cloudy dross that was summer 2011. In rating them overall, 1998 (and 2002 and 1993) are merely indifferent, rather than truly bad like the 2007-12 years.