August 1986

[damianslaw]

With a CET of 13.7 brrr.. August 1986 was an exceptionally cool month. Seems we will never see the likes again..

Anyone share any memories of it? I have faint memories, 8 at the time, but no distinct recollection. It came towards the end of a notably cold period commencing Jan 85, with a number of well below average months.

Looking at the models, the north at least was locked on the polar side of the jet with an airstream exclusively between west and north. Expect SSTs were very chilly that summer after the cold months beforehand.

We moan at this August, gosh if we saw another Aug 86 we'd have every reason to moan.

 

[emmett garland]

This was a remarkable month in Ireland after the dullest July on record .In early August parts of Kerry recorded 204.4mm of rain in 24 hrs  of what was an exceptionally wet month and coldest on record 13.4  I believe. We also had the pleasure of tropical storm Charlie which caused widespread flooding in the east on the 26th with over 200mm in 24hrs in Wicklow . I was 15 years old at the time and I just remember that month being rotten and cold.Nothing like what we are moaning about now. I would have given anything like the weather now just to get out on my bike.. Twas bad back then and as you say,will we ever see the like again.

[Sunny76]

I just remember it being grey and depressing for the majority of the month. Granted, I was only 10 at the time, so memories can be hazy from that age.

I also remember some overnight storms on a Sunday night some time during August that year. It was two sets of overnight storms.

On 20/08/2023 at 10:36, damianslaw said:

With a CET of 13.7 brrr.. August 1986 was an exceptionally cool month. Seems we will never see the likes again..

Anyone share any memories of it? I have faint memories, 8 at the time, but no distinct recollection. It came towards the end of a notably cold period commencing Jan 85, with a number of well below average months.

Looking at the models, the north at least was locked on the polar side of the jet with an airstream exclusively between west and north. Expect SSTs were very chilly that summer after the cold months beforehand.

We moan at this August, gosh if we saw another Aug 86 we'd have every reason to moan.

 

We don’t need an august as cool as 86 to moan, but this year has been fairly meh.

[Summer8906]

My memory of August 1986 as a whole is surprisingly hazy, though I remember Charley and its aftermath clearly.

I did spend the first 12 days (?) or so in Germany, so missed some of it. In Germany the weather was seasonable and "interesting" with warm sunny weather broken by two thundery outbreaks both of which had severe storms. One of the days, can't remember which, was probably the joint-hottest day I'd experienced to date (with another day in France in July 1983) when I'm guessing it reached, or nearly reached, 35C - we never saw those kind of temperatures in the UK at that time, am I right in saying 35C was never attained in the 80s in the UK and the absolute max was 34 in 1983 and 1989?

I would have returned around the 13th. I remember an unseasonable foggy episode in which the fog persisted all day, covering vast swathes of the German-French border region around Metz-Strasbourg. Not sure what caused this, the likes of which I've never experienced in summer. We then headed for Paris, when it was sunny and seasonably warm (low to mid 20s) before heading north to the UK the following day where the weather was unsettled.

This would leave about 10 days until Charley. Memories are scattered but I seem to remember a Saturday evening (must have been the 16th) which was dull with light rain, a midday at home when it was dull with light rain, and a walk I did in the countryside a few days (the Thurs or Fri) before Charley when it was... dull with light rain. So there seems to be a theme there!

I'm sure I remember all three days of the Charley weekend being stormy and wet, but it looks like Charley itself only affected the Monday and another system affected the Saturday. Looks like the Sunday was actually dry by the synoptic chart, but I can't remember it being so. The Tuesday remained very windy though brighter, and the Wed-Fri post-Charley were all bright, if cool, with scattered short-duration showers. If I remember right the very end of the month settled down with fine weather and this set the scene for the very dry and fine September.

The synoptics of Aug 1986 look unusual though. Looks like it was often a slack northerly, with occasional low-latitude Atlantic lows coming in and producing the dull wet episodes. These then migrated east and left the UK in a cool cyclonic N-ly airflow.

Also checked the charts for southern Europe in Aug 1986. Unlike most poor UK summer months, there were not particularly warm uppers over S Europe, except the far SW. Greece frequently had cool uppers (so I'd guess thundery); the pattern seemed to be that the cool upper air penetrated far south into the continent on a NW-SE track, though Germany was sometimes southwest of this train of cool air so had decent conditions at times.

 

 

Edited August 25, 2023 by Summer8906

[Summer8906]

13 hours ago, emmett garland said:

This was a remarkable month in Ireland after the dullest July on record .In early August parts of Kerry recorded 204.4mm of rain in 24 hrs  of what was an exceptionally wet month and coldest on record 13.4  I believe. We also had the pleasure of tropical storm Charlie which caused widespread flooding in the east on the 26th with over 200mm in 24hrs in Wicklow . I was 15 years old at the time and I just remember that month being rotten and cold.Nothing like what we are moaning about now. I would have given anything like the weather now just to get out on my bike.. Twas bad back then and as you say,will we ever see the like again.

What we don't get these days are cool night-time temps in the summer. The recent poor summers all seem to be characterised by above-average night-time temps.

Cyclonic northerly summer months seem to be a good deal rarer than previously, with most poor summer months SW-ly these days. This is perhaps the reason for the lack of seriously cool summer months, though why summer months with frequent high-latitude air outbreaks are rarer, I don't know.

Down in the south, July 1986 was a good deal better thankfully - the weather only turned bad after about the 20th - and June was very good, so while poor, it was not a spectacularly bad summer overall - probably better than 1985.

Edited August 25, 2023 by Summer8906

[A Face like Thunder]

I was lucky in that I was in Scotland for the bank holiday weekend and I was climbing one of the Bens in good weather as England & Wales were being affected by 'Charley'. And it wasn't a bank holiday there either. We camped in Dorset in late July 1986 and, although the weather was not particularly brilliant, it was certainly better than July 1985. I recall Prince Andrew got married on quite a nice day whilst we were camping, but I remember little else about July and August 1986.

Edited August 25, 2023 by A Face like Thunder

[Summer8906]

18 hours ago, A Face like Thunder said:

I was lucky in that I was in Scotland for the bank holiday weekend and I was climbing one of the Bens in good weather as England & Wales were being affected by 'Charley'. And it wasn't a bank holiday there either. We camped in Dorset in late July 1986 and, although the weather was not particularly brilliant, it was certainly better than July 1985. I recall Prince Andrew got married on quite a nice day whilst we were camping, but I remember little else about July and August 1986.

I remember the royal wedding was a bright but showery day, then we had a few days of dull and damp (but no deluges) southwesterlies to end the month. Looks like it became more cyclonic into August though this is when I left (escaped?) the country. What I do recall about the journey to Germany is how the weather got better and better: rather unsettled in the UK and the Nord-Pas-de-Calais, bright or sunny if still relatively cool with Atlantic-origin air in the Reims area, and warm and sunny once in the Metz-Strasbourg area.

Other memories include a hot spell at the start, including the school sports day, cooler weather by the 6th, and mostly benign weather until the 20th: the Monthly Weather Report suggests a fairly settled first 20 days: hot, then cool, then hot again mid month (which I actually don't remember) then cooler again.

 

Edited August 26, 2023 by Summer8906

[hillbilly]

From my records August started with a couple of windy days then fine for a few days.Cooler weather came on the 9th and the first real wet days came on the 15th,16 and 17th.A couple of warmer days on the 19th and 20th.Showery again on 21st,22 and 23rd before heavy rain on the 25th and 26th,rain also on the 27th and 28th ending the month with a couple of fine dry days.I do not have any temperature records but if areas in the South and away from the hills were the coldest August since 1956 you can only imagine what it was like at 340 metres in the Pennine hills where it is almost always windy,cloudy and threatening rain clouds.Also i think like Summer8906 in that night time temps really made this month so cool so unlike weather in the 2020s.

Edited August 26, 2023 by hillbilly

[damianslaw]

18 hours ago, hillbilly said:

From my records August started with a couple of windy days then fine for a few days.Cooler weather came on the 9th and the first real wet days came on the 15th,16 and 17th.A couple of warmer days on the 19th and 20th.Showery again on 21st,22 and 23rd before heavy rain on the 25th and 26th,rain also on the 27th and 28th ending the month with a couple of fine dry days.I do not have any temperature records but if areas in the South and away from the hills were the coldest August since 1956 you can only imagine what it was like at 340 metres in the Pennine hills where it is almost always windy,cloudy and threatening rain clouds.Also i think like Summer8906 in that night time temps really made this month so cool so unlike weather in the 2020s.

A lot of slack northerly sourced airstream inbetween southerly tracking low pressure systems seems to be the pattern of the month, hence cold nights. Second half appears to have been notably chilly and wet. September 86 was also cold I think.

[hillbilly]

46 minutes ago, damianslaw said:

A lot of slack northerly sourced airstream inbetween southerly tracking low pressure systems seems to be the pattern of the month, hence cold nights. Second half appears to have been notably chilly and wet. September 86 was also cold I think.

Just looked up some met office figures from my nearest station in Bradford.

Average highs for the month August 1986 is 15.9 deg and average lows at 9.3 deg

Augusts of 1985,1987,1988 and 1992 all had cooler highs lower than any since all around 17-18 deg

The coolest highs in recent times is 2014 at 18.1 deg  and also has the coolest low at 10.8 deg which includes all the poor summers since 2007,just goes to show just how cool 1986 was.

September 1986 is the coolest September since 1952.

[damianslaw]

1 hour ago, hillbilly said:

Just looked up some met office figures from my nearest station in Bradford.

Average highs for the month August 1986 is 15.9 deg and average lows at 9.3 deg

Augusts of 1985,1987,1988 and 1992 all had cooler highs lower than any since all around 17-18 deg

The coolest highs in recent times is 2014 at 18.1 deg  and also has the coolest low at 10.8 deg which includes all the poor summers since 2007,just goes to show just how cool 1986 was.

September 1986 is the coolest September since 1952.

I wonder if SST values were notably low during 1986 on the back of a cold 1985. 4 notably cold months in Feb, Apr, Aug and Sept. March also cold. Jan colder than normal. By October we returned to mild though. 

[Sunny76]

4 minutes ago, damianslaw said:

I wonder if SST values were notably low during 1986 on the back of a cold 1985. 4 notably cold months in Feb, Apr, Aug and Sept. March also cold. Jan colder than normal. By October we returned to mild though. 

But January 87 was freezing cold. The previous cold summer probably helped achieve a snowy winter period. 

[BruenSryan]

17 hours ago, damianslaw said:

I wonder if SST values were notably low during 1986 on the back of a cold 1985. 4 notably cold months in Feb, Apr, Aug and Sept. March also cold. Jan colder than normal. By October we returned to mild though. 

Back then it was the era of the cold AMO anyway. Strong colder than average anomalies widespread in our North Atlantic region, granted the resolution of the NOAA maps back then ain't great.

[reef]

On 27/08/2023 at 15:41, hillbilly said:

Just looked up some met office figures from my nearest station in Bradford.

Average highs for the month August 1986 is 15.9 deg and average lows at 9.3 deg

Augusts of 1985,1987,1988 and 1992 all had cooler highs lower than any since all around 17-18 deg

The coolest highs in recent times is 2014 at 18.1 deg  and also has the coolest low at 10.8 deg which includes all the poor summers since 2007,just goes to show just how cool 1986 was.

September 1986 is the coolest September since 1952.

September 1986 was very much like April 2021 here. It was the coldest September on record with a mean of 11.8C but also the sunniest with 202 hours. It was also very dry here with just 21.0mm of rain.

The low average temperature was mainly due to cold nights as the average min was 7.5C, a degree below the next lowest (2015). 9 days had mins below 5C.

I suspect if we had a year like 1986 now people would hate it. Just 30 days hit 20C or above in the whole year. Only 8 of those days were above 22C. It feels like another world now.

[hillbilly]

2 hours ago, reef said:

September 1986 was very much like April 2021 here. It was the coldest September on record with a mean of 11.8C but also the sunniest with 202 hours. It was also very dry here with just 21.0mm of rain.

The low average temperature was mainly due to cold nights as the average min was 7.5C, a degree below the next lowest (2015). 9 days had mins below 5C.

I suspect if we had a year like 1986 now people would hate it. Just 30 days hit 20C or above in the whole year. Only 8 of those days were above 22C. It feels like another world now.

Yes September 1986 averaged 11.05 deg at Bradford which would have been around 9 deg where we were at 340 metres and we had several groundfrosts,unheard of today,it was very dry with only 7mm rain and 170 hours of sun.

[philglossop]

August 1986 - dreadful month. We had a holiday at home that year in Cornwall and it just never got going, remember it being pretty cool throughout.

Then Hurricane Charley remains came along and washed out the August Bank Holiday. It was a dreadful day, we'd gone to Torquay but came home early as you couldn't get out the car for the rain! Came home and (funny how you remember some events) watched Pat Sudgen drive over a cliff and die in Emmerdale Farm. 

[LetItSnow!]

The stats at Heathrow for August 1986:

[reef]

3 hours ago, philglossop said:

August 1986 - dreadful month. We had a holiday at home that year in Cornwall and it just never got going, remember it being pretty cool throughout.

Then Hurricane Charley remains came along and washed out the August Bank Holiday. It was a dreadful day, we'd gone to Torquay but came home early as you couldn't get out the car for the rain! Came home and (funny how you remember some events) watched Pat Sudgen drive over a cliff and die in Emmerdale Farm. 

The end of the month was something else. Maximums here from the 25th-30th:

25th: 14.8C
26th: 14.4C
27th: 12.4C
28th: 14.6C
29th: 12.6C
30th: 14.6C

August 1986 was abysmal. Comfortably the coldest ever here with a mean of 13.7C, 103mm of rain and 128 hours of sunshine. Just 4 days above 20C all month and a high max of 22.0C.

[Sunny76]

3 hours ago, philglossop said:

August 1986 - dreadful month. We had a holiday at home that year in Cornwall and it just never got going, remember it being pretty cool throughout.

Then Hurricane Charley remains came along and washed out the August Bank Holiday. It was a dreadful day, we'd gone to Torquay but came home early as you couldn't get out the car for the rain! Came home and (funny how you remember some events) watched Pat Sudgen drive over a cliff and die in Emmerdale Farm. 

Lol, I don’t remember that, but I remember Jackie killing himself by accident with a shotgun in 1989

Edited August 29, 2023 by Sunny76

[Terminal Moraine]

August 1986 here was comfortably the coldest since I began keeping records in 1963 with a mean max' of 14.8c and a mean min' of 8.9c. The warmest day of the month was the 14th with a max' of 18.3c and it was one of only 3 Augusts not to reach 20c, the other two being 1985 and 1992 with with 19.6c and 19.8c respectively. Only 1 day reached 15.0c after the 17th and just to compare with Reef's records above the maximums here from the 25th to the 30th were.

25th; 11.7c

26th; 12.4c

27th; 12.3c

28th; 13.7c

29th; 12.7c

30th; 12.8c.

It wasn't a particularly wet month here until the arrival of ex-hurricane Charley with just 42.0 mm of rain up to the 24th, this was then followed by 78.1 mm from Charley and the month ended with 1.8 mm more rain than in 1985 despite the earlier year having 27 rain days ( 0.2 mm or more ) compared to 18 in 1986.

With regard to the temperature in particular it really does seem as if large chunks of the 1970s and 80s were a completely different climate to what we have now.

   

[Sunny76]

1 hour ago, Terminal Moraine said:

August 1986 here was comfortably the coldest since I began keeping records in 1963 with a mean max' of 14.8c and a mean min' of 8.9c. The warmest day of the month was the 14th with a max' of 18.3c and it was one of only 3 Augusts not to reach 20c, the other two being 1985 and 1992 with with 19.6c and 19.8c respectively. Only 1 day reached 15.0c after the 17th and just to compare with Reef's records above the maximums here from the 25th to the 30th were.

25th; 11.7c

26th; 12.4c

27th; 12.3c

28th; 13.7c

29th; 12.7c

30th; 12.8c.

It wasn't a particularly wet month here until the arrival of ex-hurricane Charley with just 42.0 mm of rain up to the 24th, this was then followed by 78.1 mm from Charley and the month ended with 1.8 mm more rain than in 1985 despite the earlier year having 27 rain days ( 0.2 mm or more ) compared to 18 in 1986.

With regard to the temperature in particular it really does seem as if large chunks of the 1970s and 80s were a completely different climate to what we have now.

   

The change came in late 1987. Months from December 87 and beyond, recorded more milder than average months compared to before the October storm of 87. Early 87 still recorded below average temps, and between 77 or so, many months were below average up until 1987.

[damianslaw]

August 86 was quite an exceptional month, not many to compare it to, but to then have an exceptionally cold September was very unusual. The exceptional cold in Jan 87 followed. Indeed Feb 86 - Jan 87 produced abundant extreme cold, not seen anything close since. 

[hillbilly]

19 hours ago, damianslaw said:

August 86 was quite an exceptional month, not many to compare it to, but to then have an exceptionally cold September was very unusual. The exceptional cold in Jan 87 followed. Indeed Feb 86 - Jan 87 produced abundant extreme cold, not seen anything close since. 

Not forgetting November 1985,the coldest November since 1923 only November 1993 has been remotely as cold since with cold Novembers in recent times of 2010 and 2016 almost 2 degrees warmer.

[reef]

21 hours ago, damianslaw said:

August 86 was quite an exceptional month, not many to compare it to, but to then have an exceptionally cold September was very unusual. The exceptional cold in Jan 87 followed. Indeed Feb 86 - Jan 87 produced abundant extreme cold, not seen anything close since. 

1985, 1986 and 1987 are the three coldest years I've got in my records. 1986 was the coldest of all at 8.80C.

A year like that now would be remarkable, especially if you compared it to the 1991-2020 averages:

Jan: 3.3C (-1.4C)
Feb: -0.5C (-5.6C)
Mar: 5.1C (-1.5C)
Apr: 5.8C (-2.9C)
May: 11.5C (0.0C)
Jun: 13.4C (-1.0C)
Jul: 16.1C (-0.6C)
Aug: 13.7C (-3.1C)
Sep: 11.8C (-2.5C)
Oct: 11.0C (0.0C)
Nov: 7.7C (+0.3C)
Dec: 5.9C (+1.0C)

The closest year recently for us was 2010 with a mean of 9.18C. I think that's probably the low limit now.

[damianslaw]

2 hours ago, reef said:

1985, 1986 and 1987 are the three coldest years I've got in my records. 1986 was the coldest of all at 8.80C.

A year like that now would be remarkable, especially if you compared it to the 1991-2020 averages:

Jan: 3.3C (-1.4C)
Feb: -0.5C (-5.6C)
Mar: 5.1C (-1.5C)
Apr: 5.8C (-2.9C)
May: 11.5C (0.0C)
Jun: 13.4C (-1.0C)
Jul: 16.1C (-0.6C)
Aug: 13.7C (-3.1C)
Sep: 11.8C (-2.5C)
Oct: 11.0C (0.0C)
Nov: 7.7C (+0.3C)
Dec: 5.9C (+1.0C)

The closest year recently for us was 2010 with a mean of 9.18C. I think that's probably the low limit now.

Yes probably need a major volcanic eruption to cause global cooling. Not had one since 1991.