Summer 2012 - worst summer ever?

[Harry233]

One summer that I will never forget for the wrong reasons - Summer 2012. I have never experienced a summer so poor and I hope I never experience a summer so bad again. What is everyone’s memories of this summer and have you recorded a worse summer or remember any worse.

June - An absolute borefest and so cold. Maximum temperatures were nearly 3.C below average for me and it was by far the coldest June I have recorded. There was five days the whole month where it was dry, sunny and settled all day and that was the 2nd, 4th, 18th, 19th and 20th. The rest of the month was cold, wet and very windy. It genuinely felt like October most of the time. The only saving grace it wasn’t exceptionally wet, it was the fifth wettest I’ve recorded since 1999. 2002, 2004, 2007 and 2017 were all wetter. We missed out on the brief hot spell on the 28th with just more of the same steady rainfall and relentless cloud.

July - Continued pretty much exactly from where July left off there was a brief respite between the 4th-6th with some slightly better weather but nothing worthy to note. Then the bad weather restarted again by the 7th and this continued until the 23rd, more Atlantic rubbish, temperatures barely getting to the mid teens, wet, overcast with only brief sunny periods. The weather did somewhat improve by the 24th but again we missed out on the heat. The closing days were again slightly better than the rest of the month but still rubbish.

August - Continued unsettled but thankfully not on the scale of June and July and weirdly the warmest and driest weather of the whole summer was during this spell. Spells from 4th-8th, 10th-13th, 17th-21st, were all pretty good temperatures getting into the mid 20’s and with plenty sunshine. Aside from those periods though the weather was still pretty wet and cloudy but thankfully a little bit warmer.
 

Definitely the worst summer I can remember and I hope to god we never get a summer that bad ever again some notable stats during this season. Particularly with maximum temperatures, well below average except in August. Rainfall well above average in all months and sunshine well below average expect in August.

Highest maximum temperatures

June: 20.2.C (20th) (average: 25.1.C) 4.9.C below average

July: 22.4.C (25th) (average: 26.6.C) 4.2.C below average

August: 24.7.C (11th) (average: 24.9.C) 0.2.C below average 

Mean maximum 
June: 15.4.C (average: 18.3.C) 2.9.C below average 

July: 17.9.C (average 20.1.C) 2.2.C below average 

August: 19.3.C (average 19.5.C) 0.2 below average 

Overall: 17.5.C (average 19.3.C ) 1.8.C below average

Rainfall 

June: 101mm (158% of average)

July: 138mm (171% of average)

August: 107mm (129% of average)

Overall: 346mm (153% of average)

Sunshine

June: 107 hours (65% of average)

July: 99 hours (57% of average)

August: 143 hours (93% of average)

Overall: 349 hours (72% of average)

 

Edited February 11 by Harry233

[Derecho]

Has to be up there with the worst in my life time though I think 2007 has to edge it here because of the floods. The jubilee celebrations took place in weather that is as bad as you can possibly get for June.

August was quite reasonable though and I think the weather for the Olympics was quite nice.

Quite a few thundery days to keep things interesting, though the big plume in late June we was unlucky for. The storms went to our south through Lincolnshire. Just very dark clouds and constant distant thunder here.

Easily the most unstable synoptics I can remember with some decent hail storms in the Midlands and a tornado in southern Lincolnshire with the chase footage looking like something out of the Great Plains in the US.

[North-Easterly Blast]

I think that the summer of 100 years previously was much cooler and wetter than 2012.

[raz.org.rain]

An article published in October 2012 attributed that poor run of summer weather to a notably warmer North Atlantic...

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[Harry233]

 Derecho the 2007 floods were definitely something else. We missed out on all the floods that year, summer 2007 was still a poor summer. But July and August for me at least had average sunshine and August was actually quite pleasant most of the time albeit cool.

 North-Easterly Blast I couldn’t begin to imagine how awful summer 1912 must’ve been.

[Weather Enthusiast91]

It's certainly up there as being one of the worst, but I don't think it was as bad as summer 2007. As bad as summer 2012 was, it did have that thunderstorm event at the end of June as well as a hot and sunny spell in late July. Summer 2007 had nothing interesting going for it at all.

[Harry233]

 Weather Enthusiast91 Summer 2007 was another poor summer. I recorded my dullest June that year only 74 hours compared to 164 so only 45% of average. However for me anyway the saving grace for summer 2007 was despite the rain and cool weather in July, it wasn’t an overly dull month plus it wasn’t exceptionally wet. July 2002, 2009, 2010, 2011 and 2015 were all wetter and August 2007 was actually sunnier than average. We missed a lot of the flooding and there was still a few useable good warm days in July despite the mainly wet weather. August wasn’t overly wet either and there was many sunny days towards the end of the month which made up for it.

[danm]

Awful Summer, but I do think 2007 was worse. June 2012 was probably one of the worst ever Summer months, but 2012 still had better moments, such as a brief hot spell at the end of July and a fairly decent August for the south, with a lot of pleasantly warm and sunny weather. 2007 though just did not kick in, I think the top temperature was about 28c which is pitiful. 

Edited February 12 by danm

[Harry233]

 danm suppose 2012 did have more hot weather than 2007 and probably even 2008 and 2011 as well. Always good to see other people’s opinions on these topics.

[cheeky_monkey]

I was living in Calgary in the summer of 2012..on the contrary to the UK it was one of the hottest summers on record for Western Canada 

[Weather-history]

2012 was the worst summer since the 1950s up here. 

Often forgotten that summer 2007 started off not too bad.   There was little rain until about after the first 10 or so day and June was above average for the CET. The rainfall was concentrated in about a 6 week period. The end of July and August was not that wet. 

 

 

Summer 2012 was bad from the start, remember the Diamond Jubilee weekend?  Just never got going at least up around this neck of the woods. 

[reef]

I rate Summer 2012 as worse here despite the floods in 2007. 2007 had over 100mm more rain than 2012 but it all fell in the period 12th June - 26th July. From 27th July - 18th September 2007 only 6 days had measurable rain. August only had 51% of average rainfall and managed 210 hours of sunshine. 

2012 was just consistently wet, dull and cool and also came after a shocking April and May (apart from the last third of May). Like 2007 the best month was August, but that failed to make up for the rest of the summer and it finished with over 100 hours less sunshine than 2007 and only topped 25C twice.

The summer index values bear this out. 2007 finished on 221 but 2012 was the second worst on record after 1987 with just 194.

[Metwatch]

Another thread on summer 2007 vs 2012 might find of interest.

[Frigid]

1 hour ago, Weather-history said:

Summer 2012 was bad from the start, remember the Diamond Jubilee weekend?  Just never got going at least up around this neck of the woods. 

That weekend was incredibly chilly for the time of year, the 3rd June saw single digit maxima. Interestingly, the Platinum Jubilee 10 years later saw almost the same weather. 

2012 did have its fair share of warm weather though, with its March and May heatwave. End of July saw some warm days and August during the third week. Can recall the first 10 days of September being quite warm at times. 

[North-Easterly Blast]

 Weather-history August 2012 was slightly above average for the CET, and had quite a warm spell mid-month, though the month was still often unsettled though not as wet as June and July.  Summer 2012 had a cool and wet June and July, but then turned warmer in August; whereas summer 2014 was the opposite, that was generally warm in June and July but turned cool in August.

[Weather-history]

 North-Easterly Blast

So?

I go off an index.  Summer index for 2012 was 164, 2007 was 174

 

[Scuba steve]

Remember it was terrible I booked 2 separate week long holidays one to corfu the other to Halkidiki outside my normal 2 weeks 

[Harry233]

 Frigid Yep September 2012 was very pleasant during the first 10 days, then it completely flipped and became cold but it was still very pleasant for most of the month and had some very cold nights.

[Harry233]

 reef that’s similar to me. 2007 did still have useable spells of weather but the heat just never came to much, even 2008 and 2011 had some brief settled warmer periods. 2012 just never seem to have got going at all.

[Summer18]

June in particular was appalling, that Jubilee weekend was the stuff of nightmares. I remember every Friday in June that year was terrible. 

I think as a whole 2008 was equally as poor though. 

Edited February 12 by Summer18

[Weather-history]

 Metwatch

Here's my post from that thread.

June 2007

CET: (Jun 1-12): 16.4°C (+2.9 degC) 

E&W Rain: (Jun 1-12): 4.4mm ( 16 per cent)

E&W Sun: (Jun 1-12): 75.8hr (100 per cent)

Shows that June 2007 didn't start out too bad. Look how dry it was up to the 12th

Edited February 13 by Weather-history

[danm]

Here is why 2012 as a whole, despite the diabolical June and first half of July, doesn't go down as the worst Summer in my book. End of July, August and early September was actually pretty respectable. A decent amount of warm, sometimes hot, and sunny weather down here:

 

[Thundery wintry showers]

There is some regional variation around this - I would probably assess these summers differently if I'd been in one of the flood-affected areas in 2007 - but I spent that run of wet summers from 2007 to 2012 in the England E and NE region (between Tyne & Wear, the Vale of York and Norwich) and 2012 sticks out for me as the worst of those summers. June 2012 was almost relentlessly dull and wet, as was most of July and the second half of August. I remember quite enjoying the back end of July 2012 and the first half of August, which had some warm sunshine and some thundery downpours, but that was it. Also, June 2012 saw a stream of deep, autumnal depressions that seemed to coincide with every weekend. My birthday (22nd) was a grey, wet, windy, autumnal day.

I didn't get the warm sunny start to June 2007 as I was living near the east coast then, where it was grey with a lot of low cloud off the North Sea, but the eastern coastal regions that were very dull in June had near average sunshine in the wet July and then quite a dry and sunny August with average temperatures.

But I doubt that the summers of 2007 or 2012 would be able to compete with the summer of 1912, particularly in north-east England where Durham failed to reach 100 hours of sunshine in each of the three summer months. For the UK as a whole, August 1912 was comfortably the coolest, wettest and dullest August on record. It was substantially duller even than August 2008, and that's saying a lot.

[Addicks Fan 1981]

 Weather-history I think @Tamaraposted in previous model threads with what went wrong with summer 2007.  AAM dropped, we had an easterly QBO that integrated with negative winds across the troposphere aligning with weak sea ice, in tandem with la niña developing that made our summer of 2007 pretty appalling.   Also we were going into a much weaker solar cycle which was 30% weaker than cycle 23 was so it said it all when there seemed to be a pause in our warming climate.    

[Addicks Fan 1981]

 danm weird also that umbrella by Rihanna featuring Jay z was number one for the majority of summer 2007 which coincided perfectly really.