Underrated summers

[Weather-history]

 LetItSnow! 

A Manchester summer index of 243, so it was a good one up here.

I have a lot of newspaper reports of thunderstorms and heat from that summer. 

Edited March 8 by Weather-history

[Sun Chaser]

 Harry233 In the summer, the far SW is probably more similar to (southern) Scotland than SE England, due to the angle of the SE/NW split we so often get. So a lot of plumes that Scotland mostly missed out on such as in 2015 or 2020, we also missed out on. On the flip side, when HP is stuck to our west and Scotland gets all the best weather - like April 2021, summer 2021, May 2023 - so do we, while the SE has mediocre weather at best. Having lived in Plymouth and London - for two cities only 200 miles apart, the good weather aligns for both a lot less often than you'd think!

[Summer8906]

From most recent to oldest:

2014 - two good or very good months (June and July). A poor August but no poorer than a lot of other Augusts from the past 15 years.

2005 - agree with this one. June mostly fine and settled, July mixed but August very sunny with cool nights. Aug 2005 was the polar opposite to most typical contemporary summer months (sunny, cool nights, lowish CET rather than dull, warm nights, high-ish CET)

2001 - mixed but with a slight emphasis on sunny.

1997 - often people rate this summer as unsettled overall but not so sure. June was cold and wet, true. But July was generally warm and sunny, if occasionally lapsing into Atlantic dull and wet; the warm and sunny dominated. Then Aug was consistently warm until the 19th albeit dull near the start of the month.

1996 - a lot of warm sunny weather particularly in June but also much of July and a good deal of August. More mixed than 1995 so frequently compared unfavourably with that year.

1994 - two good or very good months (June and July). A poor-ish August albeit one that would be very average for 2007-23.

1991 - often people rate this summer as unsettled overall but not so sure. June was cold and wet, true. But July was generally warm and sunny, if occasionally lapsing into Atlantic dull and wet; the warm and sunny dominated. Then Aug was very warm and sunny. (Note the copying and pasting from 1997 for June and July, the two years were very similar)

1990 - often rated as a good summer but July 1990 was more than that. A spectacularly hot and sunny summer month in my part of the country, as was much of August.

1984 - no spectacular spells but consistently warmer, drier and sunnier than normal

1981 (August only) - a spectacularly sunny, dry and settled summer month, and generally warm.

As for overrated I'd say 2020 and 2019 have got to be tops. 2020 was persistently cloudy and changeable with mostly cool daytime temps except one humid thundery week in mid-June, 4 hot sunny days around the summer solstice, a week of moderately warm weather with occasional sunny spells after mid-July, the brief heat spike at the end of July and the humid heatwave week in August. Rest of the time it was constant cloudy, damp, Atlantic-dominated dross.

2019 I also consider very overrated. While I missed the earlier part of it, looking at local reports June was very poor, July dry but rather cloudy and August (which I fully experienced) mostly unsettled and Atlantic-dominated apart from one hot week ending on the Bank Holiday Monday.

2021 was also poor but not many in the SE overrate it!

Edited March 8 by Summer8906

[Summer8906]

 LetItSnow! I remember reading about 1935. 1933 is well-known for being in the top league of 20th century summers but the following two, 1934 and 1935, were also generally good; each had two good months and one poor one IIRC so belong to the same class, presumably, as 1990, 1994, 2006 or 2014.

From the same era August 1932 and 1936 were IIRC good but the other two months poor.

Summer 1906 was another perhaps-underrated backloaded one?

Summer 1973 looked like a rain sandwich: a good June and August with poor July. I think many were hoping 2023 would be like that but sadly it wasn't. Good June and August but poor July is in fact rather rare though 2003 and 2005 were a little like that in the sense that July was the least settled in each case.

Edited March 8 by Summer8906

[Summer8906]

 Weather-history Regarding the 60s summers, from the MWR 1967 and 1969 both look "above average" to me which your summer index confirms. They both "look" better than all summers since 2007 except 2013, 2014, 2018 and 2022 - though sadly I'm not old enough to remember them so can't comment directly!

1964 also looks good-ish in July and August though with a poor June.

1968 looks very poor down in the south (despite benign looking synoptics... July looks very anticyclonic) but it is well known as an "inverse" NW/SE season.

 

Edited March 8 by Summer8906

[LetItSnow!]

 Summer8906 August 1934 was rather wet and cool whereas summer 1935 had a poor first-half to June and August 1935 was very autumnal from the 22nd onward, but it was generally very warm to hot and sunny with only brief unsettled interludes from the 18th of June to to the 23rd of August. June was spectacularly thundery and the breakdown at the end of August looked very explosive.

 

[Summer8906]

 LetItSnow!
 

Thanks. So summer 1934 would have presumably provided the same kind of experience as 1994, 2006, 2014 and perhaps 2018.

Oddly all those summers which go wrong in August are all even years!

Three fine summers on the trot is quite unusual, though perhaps 1989-91 or 1994-96 would meet the grade. Perhaps even 1994-97 (four on the trot) if you rated 1997 generously.

Edited March 8 by Summer8906

[LetItSnow!]

 Summer8906 1935 becomes considerably poorer if you include the extended summer months of May and September though as May 1935 was infamously cold with a snowfall event (uncannily the same would happen 20 years later in May 1955) and September 1935 was exceptionally wet, where as 1934 had a decent-ish May and September (May 1934 was very dry with a decent warm spell but September 1934 apparently was an oddity in that it was generally very dry and sunny in the south/east but extremely wet in Northern Ireland/the north-west).

Edited March 8 by LetItSnow!

[Greyhound81]

It was well before my time but the summer of 1949 seemed like a good one.

[Summer8906]

 Greyhound81 True though fairly well known.

I wonder what people consider the "famous" pre-1975 hot summers (let's say 1875-1974), the ones that most people interested in weather know about?

I've always understood them to be 1899, 1911, 1921, 1933, 1947, 1949, 1955 and 1959. Strangely all are odd!

Edited March 8 by Summer8906

[Summerlover2006]

 Summer8906 1900 seems like a good one apparently July was in the top 15 hottest of the century and it reached 32 degrees from the 16th to the 19th.

[Greyhound81]

 Summer8906Nothing from the 1960s in your list.  I have just had a look at nw3weather.co.uk (a weather station in London), and I can see how bad those summers were.  1965 looks amazingly bad.  1969 is probably the best of a bad bunch.

Edited March 8 by Greyhound81

[B87]

 Greyhound81  1964, 1967 and 1969 appear to be the only 60s summers containing anything resembling summer.

 Summer8906 1981 appearing again?! I can't imagine there was that great a difference between London and south Hampshire?

In London it had an absolutely dire June and July, on par with the worst of 2007-2012. August was the best month and had an average max of 22.8c and 218 sun hours, slightly sunnier than average.

[B87]

 Summer8906 1998, 2000, 2002 and 2012 were all even years that were disastrous in June and July, before August provided average conditions.

July 2000 seems to be an overlooked incredibly bad month, cooler and duller than July 2007 or 2012!

[Harry's House]

 Greyhound81 July 1965 may well be the worst summer month in my life.

[Summer8906]

 B87 Re 1981 I did state August only. June and July were cool and cloudy until the schools broke up. (I wasn't in south Hampshire at the time, but NW Sussex). I don't think they were as bad as 2007/12 though; the MWR suggests they were somewhat dry in the south (if cool and cloudy). March and May were the really, really dire months.

But the school holiday, from around July 25 to September 10, was fine, warm and sunny and few people ever talk about it.

Perhaps I am favourably biased towards it, though, as it is my first clear memory of a prolonged fine, warm and sunny spell in summer (1978-80 all lacking such spells). I was alive in summer 1976 but do not remember it.

 

 

Edited March 9 by Summer8906

[Summer8906]

 B87 I'd have to disagree about July 2000 too (sorry!)

A generally rather cloudy month but there was a week of fine weather from around the 16th-22nd and even outside that period it was generally dry.

So definitely not a terrible month, nor a terrible summer. "Benign" would be my summary for summer 2000.

Edited March 9 by Summer8906

[B87]

 Summer8906 July 2000 had an average max of 21.0c here (cooler than any July in the 07-12 period), and was extremely cloudy. Even if a terrible summer month has a week of decent weather, it's still a terrible month.

Simce I have been alive, only 1 July was colder - 1988.

Edited March 9 by B87

[Weather-history]

Interesting stat for my region, is that 5 of the last 8 summers have been wetter than any summer of the 1960s, whilst the other 3 were drier than any summer of the 1960s.

It seems the summer of the 1960s were less extreme either way and that is borne out in the Manchester summer indices. Nothing sensational, either way. Compare that to the summers of the 1950s when sensational summers were mixed in with some absolute stinkers.  Look at 1954-1955-1956.  Two of the worst summers of the 20th century sandwiching one of the best.

 

[SummerShower]

 Summer8906 yeah July 2000 was from memory unsettled and very cool for the 1st week, then benign for the rest of the month with both warm/sunny and cool/cloudy periods alternating.  Much like last august actually

in terms of underrated summers id add 1992 to the list.  June was very good, July was not unlike 2000, and August was at times sunny but very cool with any warmth limited to around 17th to 21st IIRC.

[MP-R]

 Summer8906  My overarching memory of July 2000 is the huge downpours and thunderstorms at each end of the month, particularly around the 04th/05th. Missed most of the settled stuff being on holiday the rest of the month.

[LetItSnow!]

 Summer8906 The interesting thing about July 2000 is that high pressure did indeed build in the second half with nice looking charts but the highest temperature that month was only something like 27C so it really was a very benign ridge of high pressure. Couldn't imagine that modest of a temperature nowadays.

Late July 2000 looks very slack. Was this a forgotten thundery period?

A very nice looking afternoon in London on the 21st. Heathrow shows this day as the warmest day of the month, a very tame 26C. Even the poor Julys of 1980, 1987, 1993, 2002, 2007, 2012 and 2023 had a higher maxima than that.

Only two days over 30C all year at Heathrow and they occured on the 18th and 19th of June.

[baddie]

Summer 2019 was an underrated one. I know much of June was dire, but the summer was good from the solistice onwards. Much of July was very good and was only dire on the 19th and after that insane heat spike on the 25th. August was a nice one too despite the middle of it being unsettled, and the Bank Holiday was a record breaker. September was nice until the equinox, but we all know what happened after

Almost the entire Astronomical Summer was very good, though I never seen a good reputation that summer overall

[Harry233]

 SummerShower I remember the second half of July 2000 being very pleasant and at times very warm particularly in the last week. The first half was very cool and dull but at least for Scotland it was very dry. I think western Scotland fared very well during July 2000 as I believe it was one of the sunniest Julys on record in Glasgow, similar to July 2011 where western Scotland had one of its sunniest Julys.

[Harry233]

 Summer8906 July 2000 was one of the driest Julys on record in Scotland. I think western Scotland fared very well with sunshine as well. It was slightly duller than average for me but until July 2005 it was the driest July since probably the 70’s.