Augusts since 1975

[Bradley in Kent]

Hello all,

I feel the Met Office time series for August explains a lot of the comments about the month.

We of course tend to only remember the hot ones, especially as most of the population (Boomers and Gen X) were at school age during the hot ones in the 70s, 80s and 90s. Even I, who was born in the 90s, will be old enough to notice the lack of hot Augusts compared to early childhood. I too remember the holidays as long, dry and sunny as a young child before entering adolescence where the holidays became more mediocre from the mid '00s onwards. 

To use average day maxes of 20c or above for the UK as a benchmark, we've had the longest 'hot August draught' for 100 years or so. 

Augusts have got warmer overall, but mainly because of the absence of cold ones. Before I was born, it seemed August was much more varied with belters mixed in with some horrorshows. Since '03 it seems, August as settled into an 'okay' mode, nether hot or cold. 

We must be due a hot one soon!

 

[Sunny76]

20 hours ago, hillbilly said:

Yes you are right,we havnt had any August's remotely close to being as cold as some of those 80s August's and all those '85 to '88 were garbage but what the 80's did have was being able to make up with 3 amazing August's all better than any August in the last 18 years with 1983,1984 and 1989.Even 1981 and 1982 were decent in these parts.

1997 you say was wet,that may be the case but i think you will find that came in lumps as the most of August 1997 was again amazing,very warm and sunny,in fact in these parts it was only average rainfall at 60mm anyway.

For me you can look at the stats all you like but when it rains almost every day and the rest is mainly cloudy or a cool stiff Northerly wind it doesnt make up an average August,it is not too much to have a week of mainly dry,sunny and warm weather in an Average August.Yes it hasnt been that wet in total rainfall and it hasnt been that cold but in my book unless things pick up a lot very quickly this August will be pinned with lots of other recent August's firmly in the Poor list!

Even in a poor August during the 80s, we still managed to get a few hot days mixed in between the cooler conditions, and storms. 1987, and 88 both provided those. Something August 2021 has failed to achieve.

[Sunny76]

1 hour ago, Bradley in Kent said:

Hello all,

I feel the Met Office time series for August explains a lot of the comments about the month.

We of course tend to only remember the hot ones, especially as most of the population (Boomers and Gen X) were at school age during the hot ones in the 70s, 80s and 90s. Even I, who was born in the 90s, will be old enough to notice the lack of hot Augusts compared to early childhood. I too remember the holidays as long, dry and sunny as a young child before entering adolescence where the holidays became more mediocre from the mid '00s onwards. 

To use average day maxes of 20c or above for the UK as a benchmark, we've had the longest 'hot August draught' for 100 years or so. 

Augusts have got warmer overall, but mainly because of the absence of cold ones. Before I was born, it seemed August was much more varied with belters mixed in with some horrorshows. Since '03 it seems, August as settled into an 'okay' mode, nether hot or cold. 

We must be due a hot one soon!

 

You are right. As a person who was born in the mid 70s, I remember August as being a hot sunny month,  but those memories came from 83 and 84 when it was consistently hot and sunny.

I remember August 85 being cold and windy, as well as 86. 87 and 88 were mixed bags, and 89 was mostly hot and sunny with some cooler rainy days mixed in. 
 

1990 was a classic August for hot sunny dry weather, and 95 was the ultimate classic. 2003, and 2013 are probably the best ones in the last 20 years. 
 

2018 was decent, although it became much more cloudier later on, but we did ok with a very sunny May to early August period, so the cooler cloudy stuff wasn’t such an issue for most.

Since then, august and summer has been a let down. 

[Summer8906]

Would rate (for central southern England) the Augusts since 1979 as follows. Note in some cases I have had to use old monthly weather reports where my memory is a little vague. This is also highly subjective rather than based on any mean maxima, sunshine hours, etc.

Good - 1981, 1983, 1984, 1989, 1990, 1991, 1995, 1998, 2003

Above average  - 1996, 1997, 2005, 2016

Average - 1982, 1987, 1993, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2007, 2009, 2012, 2013, 2018

Below average - 1988, 1994, 1999, 2004, 2006, 2011, 2014, 2017, 2019, 2020

Poor - 1979, 1980, 1985, 1986, 1992, 2008, 2010, 2015, 2021

 

This breaks down into:

1979-88: 3 good, 2 average, 1 below average, 4 poor

1989-98: 5 good (!), 2 above average, 1 average, 1 below average, 1 poor

1999-2008: 1 good, 1 above average, 4 average, 3 below average, 1 poor

2009-18: 1 above average, 4 average,  3 below average, 2 poor

2019-21: 2 below average, 1 poor

It seems there were a lot of poor Augusts early (before 1989) and late (since 2009) but the early period had three good ones. As expected, the decade 1989-98 comes out best. The turn-of-the-millennium years seemed to have a lot of indifferent Augusts (except 2003) but only 1999 and 2004 actually seemed below average. The period since 2006 is very notable IMO for a lack of even goodish Augusts: the only one I would classify above average was 2016.

 

[Summer8906]

On 21/08/2021 at 15:43, Sunny76 said:

Even in a poor August during the 80s, we still managed to get a few hot days mixed in between the cooler conditions, and storms. 1987, and 88 both provided those. Something August 2021 has failed to achieve.

I think August 1987 in particular seems to get a bad press, and that is perhaps true in the east. I don't remember any prolonged bad weather though - and  remember about 10 days of warm/hot and predominantly sunny weather from around the 13th-21st. Not extreme heat - more like around 24/25 with a couple of days at 27 - but nice enough. Furthermore there were some reasonably fine days earlier in the month as well. Then a thundery breakdown and a cool northerly for a few days, but this was more intense in the east and further fine weather developed further west round the bank holiday weekend. So perhaps below average for the east, but from central southern England westwards, about average and mixed?

Edited September 3, 2021 by Summer8906

[Summer8906]

On 18/08/2021 at 17:14, LetItSnow! said:

1981 had the infamous daytime darkness storms on the 6th & overall was the best August since 1976, though still unremarkable otherwise.

I would beg to differ - it probably depends in what part of the country you were in, but in western West Sussex, it was a classic summer month only matched or exceeded by 7 other years since, all of them between 1983 and 2003. Perhaps rather like 1998, much better in the south than the north?

On 18/08/2021 at 17:14, LetItSnow! said:

1982 was non-descript from what I've researched.

Indeed - so nondescript I can hardly remember it, despite remembering the other Augusts around it very clearly!

 

[Summer8906]

On 20/08/2021 at 07:30, Weather-history said:

Guardian reviews of Augusts 1988-2003

1988  198919901991

 

1992  1993  1994 1995  1996 

 

1997  1998  1999 2000 

 

2001    2002   2003 

 

I'm slightly puzzled by what the 'warmest' temperatures relate to, e.g. Lowestoft 20.7 and Ross-on-Wye 22.9 in 1988 and 1989 respectively. Both seem too cool for a mean max. For example f the best was 20.7 in 1988, this would mean either 1988 was a really cool August, which the summary does not suggest, or the selection of stations was a particularly cool lot; and if the highest mean max in August 1989 was 22.9, either the month was obviously a lot cooler than I remember, or again it was a particularly cool group of stations.

Conversely, both figures seem too high for a mean temp, even 20.7 for a mean temp would be unusually hot.

 

Edited September 3, 2021 by Summer8906

[Thundery wintry showers]

I was in South Tyneside during the 11 August 1999 eclipse and remember that it was quite a sunny day up north, although the eclipse was only partial there, and the areas that had a full or near-full eclipse were relentlessly cloudy during the eclipse.  There was a period of about 20 minutes when it went darker than usual.

One thing that has always stood out for me with the August stats is the UK sunshine totals - only three Augusts (1947, 1976 and 1995) managed more than 200 hours of sunshine, but all of them had over 240 hours!  There is quite a jump back to 2003, which was just short of the 200 hour mark but ranked 4th sunniest.  August 2003 fell behind the other three mainly because of near-average sunshine in parts of Wales and the south-west, but it was a very sunny month in the north-east.  It shows that it's difficult to get prolonged sunny weather covering the vast majority of the UK in August, but there were three standout Augusts that managed it. 

Being born in 1984, I only lived through one of them, but it did stand out somewhat.  After the first few days, there was surprisingly little sea fret in Tyneside during August 1995 despite the frequency of easterly winds, hence 267 hours' sunshine at Tynemouth and 263 at Sunderland.  It was often cooler near the coast though, with mean maxima of 19 to 21C at coastal sites, contrasting with 23C at Durham.

For me, August 1996 stood out to some extent too in that it reached 30C on the 18th, very unusual for the north-east coast of England, and had quite a few thundery outbreaks.  Mike Hulme's stats in the newspaper articles (thanks for uploading those) shows marked regional variations in that month, with some areas having just close to average sunshine but other areas were much warmer and/or sunnier than average (though of course not as warm or sunny as August 1995).

Edited September 3, 2021 by Thundery wintry showers

[LetItSnow!]

2 hours ago, Summer8906 said:

 

I'm slightly puzzled by what the 'warmest' temperatures relate to, e.g. Lowestoft 20.7 and Ross-on-Wye 22.9 in 1988 and 1989 respectively. Both seem too cool for a mean max. For example f the best was 20.7 in 1988, this would mean either 1988 was a really cool August, which the summary does not suggest, or the selection of stations was a particularly cool lot; and if the highest mean max in August 1989 was 22.9, either the month was obviously a lot cooler than I remember, or again it was a particularly cool group of stations.

Conversely, both figures seem too high for a mean temp, even 20.7 for a mean temp would be unusually hot.

 

I’m surprised Aug. 1988 was mentioned as average as it had a C.E.T. of 15.2, not desperately cold but certainly cooler than average.