General summer chat

[CryoraptorA303]

42 minutes ago, cheese said:

I still occasionally look at the weather data for that day just to marvel at how utterly bonkers it was. Over 25C by 8am, 32C by 10am, 34C by 11am… just nuts. Seeing most of England with 37C-40C temperatures from London to Newcastle and everything in between will probably never be surpassed in terms of craziness for a very long time (if ever). 
 

Saying that, nobody expected 40C to be reached in the UK so soon, so who knows. 

We may not see the same kind of range for a while - After all, I'm pretty sure some of the records July 2022 broke were from 1990 or 1995, but I have no doubt in my mind that the south coast, south central England and East Anglia will see temps like this again in the very near future and will continue to do so. This happened just three years after 38.7°C at Cambridge and two years after the August 2020 heatwave, and four years after summer 2018 if you want to count that. But of course, we'll have to see.

[cheese]

14 minutes ago, CryoraptorA303 said:

We may not see the same kind of range for a while - After all, I'm pretty sure some of the records July 2022 broke were from 1990 or 1995, but I have no doubt in my mind that the south coast, south central England and East Anglia will see temps like this again in the very near future and will continue to do so. This happened just three years after 38.7°C at Cambridge and two years after the August 2020 heatwave, and four years after summer 2018 if you want to count that. But of course, we'll have to see.19 July 2022 broke our record from 

 

Our previous record was from July 2019. That heatwave broke records from 1990 up here. 
 

Since 2019, we have exceeded 34C on four occasions here. Mid 30s temperatures are slowly becoming more common, and exceeding 30C is now expected every year (2014 is the last year not to exceed 30C here). 

Edited January 7 by cheese

[Metwatch]

Edit: Nice to see summer thread up and running. Not expecting it to be a classic hot and dry one. I think drier than 2023 for sure, still not as dry as 2022. Maybe the best of warmth / dryness is in the second half of the summer. Looks like we are starting the year with quite a strong El Nino which doesn't happen too often, so we'll need to see if we get to ENSO neutral quickly and then maybe to La Nina towards the autumn.

Years that started with strong Nino include:

2016, 2010, 1998,1992, 1983, 1973, 1966, 1958

1 hour ago, raz.org.rain said:

The humidity factor is usually at its worst when we're hovering in the mid to high 20s. There were a few high 20s in my weather app back in summer with a "feels like" in the low 30s. 

The warmth last year reached high 20s, almost touching 30C both June and September before the thundery spells, but they were much more humid than what I remember in heat spike July 2022. 11/12th June and 7-9th September had dewpoints approach 18-19C, with a 20c dewpoint mid morning during 9th September, which felt like some of the most humid air i've experienced here. Did lower a little bit as the afternoon went. As Cheese mentioned earlier, humidity tends to drop a bit as afternoon progresses on a hot sunny day. The July 2019 heat spike, I remember it turning more humid by around sunset though.

Edited January 7 by Metwatch

[CryoraptorA303]

2 hours ago, CryoraptorA303 said:

I'm originally from the Ilford area and it often felt really grossly hot during heatwaves, so I'm betting a few yearly and heatwave maxima from the area have been missed over the years from the Met Office having no stations. The nearest is High Beach which is away from the urban area in SW Essex and is also at 110m and so is not representative of the area. Writtle is also way too far out.

Aldborough Hatch, quite a large open space in the area which is also adjacent to Dagenham & Barking and Havering, would be the perfect spot for an East London station. You also have other spots in Havering like Dagnam Park. Even Valentine's Park near Ilford town would do for a Kew Gardens-esque station. The Fairlop area, very close to where I'm from, and Hainault Forest County Park, would also be decent spots for a station.

Almost the entirety of south London is also missing stations. I'm sure there's several spots in which stations could be put. During the September 2023 heatwave, on a couple of days south London amateur stations widely recorded 34-35°C. Parts of western Surrey also saw these figures at amateur stations very widely. While these are not expected to hold up to official standards, it is quite plausible that a temperature above the 33.5°C maximum at Faversham in one of these areas may have been seen on the hottest days of the heatwave. Amateur stations in Tonbridge on September 9th were also showing 35°C quite unanimously, so Edenbridge may have also seen it if it was still around. Who knows what Gravesend could've recorded on the hottest couple of days as well.

To expand on this point, I have been taking a look at NE/SE London for suitable areas to put new stations.

 

Generally, with somewhere like London, you want to capture these seperate microclimates:

- Urban heat island

- Suburban windstill

- Exurban semirural

- Humid marshy

- Outlying upland

 

For north of the Thames, I have chosen:

Valentines Park, Ilford (Urban heat island)

Stepney Green Park, Stepney (Urban heat island)

West Ham Park, Upton (Urban heat island)

Hainault Recreation Ground, Hainault (Suburban windstill)

Dagnam Park, Harold Wood (Exurban semirural)

Rainham Marshes, Rainham/Wennington (Humid marshy)

 

For south of the Thames, I have chosen:

Greenwich Park (Urban heat island) (reinstallation)

Elmstead Wood, Elmstead (Suburban windstill)

Wandal Park, Croydon (Suburban windstill/Urban heat island)

Chelsfield (Exurban semirural)

Gravesend Broadness (humid marshy) (reinstallation)

Beckenham Place Park, Beckenham (Urban heat island)

 

This may seem like quite a lot of stations for one city, but the aim is to capture all the microclimates of London.

Considering wind directions, the north Thames stations could've recorded higher than 40.3°C during July 2022 with the urban heat island. Some of you will recognise Wennington as the village that burned down during that heatwave - A station at Rainham may have approached 41°C, or perhaps even exceeded it if the other north Thames stations recorded >40.3°C, with how extremely hot the local area must've been. The south Thames stations could've recorded higher than 33.5°C during the September 2023 heatwave and perhaps some higher daily maxima during August 2020. They could've also seen higher than 21.2°C during February 2019.

As a side note, I'd also reinstate the Cheltenham station and generally try to have at least one station per 10 miles, or in very remote areas, perhaps 20-30 miles. The South West especially ought to have way more stations than it does. It seems like a ton of those have closed up shop recently. Parts of the north have abysmal coverage as well.

[CryoraptorA303]

5 minutes ago, Metwatch said:

The warmth last year reached high 20s, almost touching 30C both June and September before the thundery spells, but they were much more humid than what I remember in heat spike July 2022. 11/12th June and 7-9th September had dewpoints approach 18-19C, with a 20c dewpoint mid morning during 9th September, which felt like some of the most humid air i've experienced here. Did lower a little bit as the afternoon went. As Cheese mentioned earlier, humidity tends to drop a bit as afternoon progresses on a hot sunny day. The July 2019 heat spike, I remember it turning more humid by around sunset though.

All major heat was incredibly humid this year - the 30°C heat in June felt more like 36°C come evening, and in September we were going at high 70s-low 80s humidity off peak and 50s during the day, even as we were going above 30°C. On one day we had a humidex of 37°C at around midday

July 25th 2019 was also disgustingly humid and is my worst climatic day so far. August 2020 is close with how consistently humid that was.

Edited January 7 by CryoraptorA303

[WYorksWeather]

Another factor worth looking at is the number of very warm nights, which is also growing quickly. Using CET data, and looking at days with a CET minima above 15C, sorted by decade, we see an initial peak of 61 such days in the 1930s (1930-39), followed by a fall to 16 in the 1960s. In recent decades this has climbed again, with a high of 96 such days in the 2000s, and 81 in the 2010s.

The 2020s, for 2020-2023, is already on 50 days. Probably on track to be the first decade to exceed 100. The number of warm nights is more concerning than the hot days, as it's generally much harder for people to shelter from overnight lows than daytime highs (air conditioned public buildings and workplaces are available, for example).

I would do the same thing for 'true' tropical nights and look at those trends (Tmin > 20C), but I can't find any UK-wide data. Happy to dive into the data if someone knows of a useful source.

[raz.org.rain]

6 minutes ago, WYorksWeather said:

Another factor worth looking at is the number of very warm nights, which is also growing quickly. Using CET data, and looking at days with a CET minima above 15C, sorted by decade, we see an initial peak of 61 such days in the 1930s (1930-39), followed by a fall to 16 in the 1960s. In recent decades this has climbed again, with a high of 96 such days in the 2000s, and 81 in the 2010s.

The 2020s, for 2020-2023, is already on 50 days. Probably on track to be the first decade to exceed 100. The number of warm nights is more concerning than the hot days, as it's generally much harder for people to shelter from overnight lows than daytime highs (air conditioned public buildings and workplaces are available, for example).

I would do the same thing for 'true' tropical nights and look at those trends (Tmin > 20C), but I can't find any UK-wide data. Happy to dive into the data if someone knows of a useful source.

There was one night during 2022 when it was so warm at 3am that I was out in shorts and a t-shirt and still sweating.

[CryoraptorA303]

Just now, WYorksWeather said:

Another factor worth looking at is the number of very warm nights, which is also growing quickly. Using CET data, and looking at days with a CET minima above 15C, sorted by decade, we see an initial peak of 61 such days in the 1930s (1930-39), followed by a fall to 16 in the 1960s. In recent decades this has climbed again, with a high of 96 such days in the 2000s, and 81 in the 2010s.

The 2020s, for 2020-2023, is already on 50 days. Probably on track to be the first decade to exceed 100. The number of warm nights is more concerning than the hot days, as it's generally much harder for people to shelter from overnight lows than daytime highs (air conditioned public buildings and workplaces are available, for example).

I would do the same thing for 'true' tropical nights and look at those trends (Tmin > 20C), but I can't find any UK-wide data. Happy to dive into the data if someone knows of a useful source.

Starling's Roost would have that info. And yes, the nights are becoming milder at an alarming pace. 2023 is overall our second warmest year ever recorded purely on the minima.

I would imagine it's a combination of more humid air, higher tropospheric temps and the overall warming of the climate meaning less and less heat is being lost at night as time goes on.

It seems like now even after only <32°C, nights are staying in the very high teens, even in June when the air should be cooler. I have no doubt we'll see >23.9°C daily low in August and >22.7°C daily low in June in the next few years, even with heatwaves that don't necessarily break the daily high records. The 26.8°C record from July 2022 will take a bit longer to be worked on, but even in this September, there was one pub run that suggested temps remaining as high as >27°C in London on Sunday 10th, which would've meant we had an all-time record outside of meteorological summer Of course, very unlikely to happen, but I do think we will start to see more strange things like the September 2023 heatwave, and extremely hot weather outside of meterological summer, and for some time we may end up with a September record above the June record, or perhaps even the May record above if a really severe heatwave materialises early in the year. I think we already have a lot of stations in the SW with an April record higher than the May record, so it appears to already be happening to some extent.

[CryoraptorA303]

9 minutes ago, raz.org.rain said:

There was one night during 2022 when it was so warm at 3am that I was out in shorts and a t-shirt and still sweating.

On the 19th it was still 19.4°C at Harwarden Airport (nearest station to the Cheshire area with data I can find, thanks Met Office ), so assuming you were already heat stressed from the previous day then this makes a lot of sense

[WYorksWeather]

9 minutes ago, CryoraptorA303 said:

On the 19th it was still 19.4°C at Harwarden Airport (nearest station to the Cheshire area with data I can find, thanks Met Office ), so assuming you were already heat stressed from the previous day then this makes a lot of sense

Even hotter here I think. 25.9C was recorded as the overnight minima at Emley Moor. Absolutely bonkers that night. I remember my bedroom remained over 32C all night.

[cheese]

Here we had a low of 21C on the morning of the 19th, and a low of 21C on the morning of the 20th as well. Two consecutive tropical nights. 
 

Bearing in mind that tropical nights are truly, truly rare here.

[Frigid]

58 minutes ago, cheese said:

Here we had a low of 21C on the morning of the 19th, and a low of 21C on the morning of the 20th as well. Two consecutive tropical nights. 
 

Bearing in mind that tropical nights are truly, truly rare here.

I took a few screenshots of some forecasts on the big day. This one, to this day still astonishes me.. the meto forecasting a low of 27C. I remember seeing that and thinking there is no way. How, an island known for cool wet summers see lows akin to Singapore. If that happened to occur, the mean for that day would be a jaw dropping 31.5C. Note that it went for 30C at midnight, something you'd expect in Dubai.

Granted, it got down to 21C at the main stations but away from rural spots and into the city centre it had to be around 23-25C. Truly an exceptional spell of weather. Glad to experience it but honestly, I hope to never see it again. 

[Cheshire Freeze]

8 hours ago, summer blizzard said:

Good to see the thread up. 

Just on this point though, it's important to note the difference between flip years and stable years. 

Years with La Nina to El Nino flips appear to produce good summers disproportionately, stable years do not. 

Years which start and end with positive ONI are.. 

1953

1958

1969

1977

1987

1991

1994

2003

2004

2015

2019

Compare this to years which start negative and end positive with ONI. 

1951

1957

1963

1965

1968

1972

1976

1986

2002

2006

2009

2014

2018

2023

You can see here that the rate of 17C+ months is about the same at ~40% of each summers producing at least one 'hot' month however you can also see that the infamous summers of legend are very much in the flip set (76, 06, 18). 

2024 is either in the stable set or the Nino to Nina set and i don't think you need reminding that the later is not often good. 

 

 

Nino to Nina would do me well.

As with every year, I hope to see a cool wet summer with plenty of convective diurnally driven downpours.

A few warmer days would be nice too but nothing excessively hot.

[Azazel]

Some storms would be nice here.

Our storm season seems to have moved to May and September.

[In Absence of True Seasons]

7 hours ago, Cheshire Freeze said:

As with every year, I hope to see a cool wet summer with plenty of convective diurnally driven downpours.

Is this mostly from a place of climatic regularity/normality? I.e, what pur summers "should" be in a maritime climate? Or do you personally prefer wet, cool weather? 

Seeing as most months in Britain are cool, cloudy and wet, I myself it's a welcome relief to get 2/3 months (if that!) out of the year which are warm and dry. 

Summers just aren't very useable for anything outdoors if it's mostly cool and wet. I've been camping and hiking in sodden conditions enough times to know there's just not much fun in it unless you're a bit of a masochist, or part duck haha. 

[summer blizzard]

7 hours ago, Cheshire Freeze said:

Nino to Nina would do me well.

As with every year, I hope to see a cool wet summer with plenty of convective diurnally driven downpours.

A few warmer days would be nice too but nothing excessively hot.

Yes, I was speaking from a heat point of view. 

I personally would love a 07/11/12 repeat.

[Weather Enthusiast91]

Not sure why we are talking about summer during the height of winter, but here it goes anyway. 

I would be very happy with average summer temps providing it was calm and sunny. But more often than not, average temps means mostly cloudy at best. I like a good plume anyway with thunderstorms added to the mix, though just like with snow in winter thunderstorms are hard to come by these days.

My preference is for dry heat over humid heat, but I'd take the humidity if it guarantees thunderstorms.

 

Edited January 8 by Weather Enthusiast91

[B87]

An average summer would be perfectly acceptable - if it is actually an average summer and not what people think an average summer should be like (not average in the 1960s, for instance).

Something like 1996, 2001 or 2005.

Edited January 8 by B87

[raz.org.rain]

5 hours ago, In Absence of True Seasons said:

Is this mostly from a place of climatic regularity/normality? I.e, what pur summers "should" be in a maritime climate? Or do you personally prefer wet, cool weather? 

Seeing as most months in Britain are cool, cloudy and wet, I myself it's a welcome relief to get 2/3 months (if that!) out of the year which are warm and dry. 

Summers just aren't very useable for anything outdoors if it's mostly cool and wet. I've been camping and hiking in sodden conditions enough times to know there's just not much fun in it unless you're a bit of a masochist, or part duck haha. 

Cool and wet summer would be a living nightmare considering we get cool and wet in autumn, winter and spring. Fortunately it's becoming increasingly less likely as time goes on, I'm convinced that summer 2023 was as bad as an early 2010s terrible summer redux can get these days. 2021 too, both relatively poor summers and yet we still got some prolonged heat out of them.

[In Absence of True Seasons]

2 hours ago, Weather Enthusiast91 said:

Not sure why we are talking about summer during the height of winter, but here it goes anyway. 

I would be very happy with average summer temps providing it was calm and sunny. But more often than not, average temps means mostly cloudy at best. I like a good plume anyway with thunderstorms added to the mix, though just like with snow in winter thunderstorms are hard to come by these days.

My preference is for dry heat over humid heat, but I'd take the humidity if it guarantees thunderstorms.

 

A few of us were talking about the disparities between summer and winter in the UK and how the maxes we were having for much of December were not far off the maxes on some of the days in July (2023). 

But the mods shifted it all over to this thread.

[B87]

10 minutes ago, In Absence of True Seasons said:

A few of us were talking about the disparities between summer and winter in the UK and how the maxes we were having for much of December were not far off the maxes on some of the days in July (2023). 

But the mods shifted it all over to this thread.

London had 4 days below 20c this July, with a lowest max of 17.7c. 

The warmest day in December was 15.3c. 

Those figures seem quite normal for a lowest max in July and highest max in December.

The 3 coldest days of the summer 2023 were 6 June (15.9c), 31 August (17.3c) and 24 July (17.7c).

Edited January 8 by B87

[In Absence of True Seasons]

8 minutes ago, B87 said:

London had 4 days below 20c this July, with a lowest max of 17.7c. 

The warmest day in December was 15.3c. 

Those figures seem quite normal for a lowest max in July and highest max in December.

The 3 coldest days of the summer 2023 were 6 June (15.9c), 31 August (17.3c) and 24 July (17.7c).

Is that max from the Heathrow measurements? 

The very cool weekend in July, I was in London and both Met Office and my phone forecast had the max down for 16c on whatever Saturday the 22nd I think it was, where it rained literally the entire day. 

The 31st August weekend I'd escaped to Slovenia, enjoying 27-30c by the lakes. Thank god.

Edited January 8 by In Absence of True Seasons

[B87]

5 minutes ago, In Absence of True Seasons said:

Is that max from the Heathrow measurements? 

The very cool weekend in July, I was in London and both Met Office and my phone forecast had the max down for 16c on whatever Saturday the 22nd I think it was, where it rained literally the entire day. 

The 31st August weekend I'd escaped to Slovenia, enjoying 27-30c by the lakes. Thank god.

It was. The 22nd had a max of 18.8c with 9mm of rain. The 23rd was back to normal with 24.3c.

[Weather Enthusiast91]

29 minutes ago, In Absence of True Seasons said:

A few of us were talking about the disparities between summer and winter in the UK and how the maxes we were having for much of December were not far off the maxes on some of the days in July (2023). 

But the mods shifted it all over to this thread.

That makes sense. Thanks. 

[raz.org.rain]

Some early outlooks...

Olympics organisers express concerns over the potential for extreme heat at 2024's Paris Olympics.

Could Paris be too hot for the Olympics next summer?

WWW.EURONEWS.COM

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France has escaped the worst of the searing heat this summer but organisers are remaining "very vigilant" about temperature forecasts.

 

27 December 2023: climate extremes causing chaos for nature, with shrubs budding too early, among other concerns.

Climate change: 'Chaos' for UK nature, as rising temperatures and extreme weather become the 'new norm'

NEWS.SKY.COM

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In 2023, the UK was hit with extreme heat and drought and is likely to have been the hottest year on record. Meanwhile, 2024 is expected to be hotter still.