Summer 2014 will have heatwaves and be very dry

Reasoning - this winter has been very wet and low pressure dominated

The weather is an equilibrium system and dries to balance out - this is the reasoning

Just as we get a cycle of cold winters and mild winters along with cool summers and hot summers - the system tries to balance out

Indeed you need look further than last year where the first 6 months were cold or cool with that record cold March to add - followed by a heatwave July and above temps for the rest of the year to balance out

For those who have a knowledge of chemistry - there is something called Le Chateliers principle used in reversible chemical reactions which states that if a chemical reaction is driven forward in one direction, the system tries to drive the reaction the opposite way in order to reach a state of equilibrium

I believe the weather is the same - it does have a high degree of entropy - disorder - but does adhere to this principle - whether looking at weather patterns in a shorttimeframe or a large timeframe

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The thing with last year that it involved a blocked pattern with high pressure often to the west or north of the UK and it is that which effectively caused winter cold to "extend" well into Spring. Indeed while Southern and Western side of the UK did get to enjoy a decent summer, it took ages for it to get going over the eastern side due to a "prevailing" north east wind. As a result, it never really got properly warm over that side of the country (including Kent, of course) so it ended up as being a "faux" summer with our "home grown" heat - at least it is in my eyes. I remember being unable to sit in the garden without getting covered with goosepimples until late July!
  A PROPER summer is where high pressure often keep branching in from the Azores or being anchored off to the E or SE of the UK so we have wind coming in from the near continent = blazing sun and real heat over more of the country.
  But I can see where you are getting at as I can remember how January and February 1990 went along on a very wet and stormy note (including that St Burns Day storm) and that did lead to a impressive summer with 25 C and above recorded somewhere over the UK for weeks at a time - including a 36 C at the start of August.

But at the end of the day, to be honest, no two years are exactly alike as far as our UK climate is concerned. It'll continue to astound, disappoint, please and sometimes terrify us no matter how we analyze it.

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Bring it on 100f will suffice

 

I would love to agree with you - but the weather can be a bit fickle.

we may end up with a very dry and cold Autumn.  Or a dry and cold winter... or indeed a dry and cold Summer.  there are lots of patterns that could end up balancing out the wet weather weve had.  But usually that balancing out tends to be over a long period of time. 

Infact what weve seen this year may be the balancing out over previous weather weve had.  Ie we have seen lower than average winter storms these past few years.  perhaps this was catchup in some way.

 

I do believe all weather types play a part in the environment we live in - whether we love them or hate them  they all have a purpose or important impact.

 

ie the flood waters allow seeds to travel to new places, allow certain flora and fauna to be controlled either by helping or discouraging growth.

Frosts help break up the soil

Wind encourages seed distribution, clears out unhealthy trees/branches

 

 

Hopefully the floods and high water table will start to receed soon as trees begin to wake up from their winter slumber.  That should suck up alot of the excess water as we enter March/April.

  

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But why should the terms of this mythical equilibrium dictate that the reverse of the wet wweather we've had will occur in summer?

We could have a 12 month wet period, taking us through to December 2014, followed by 12 months of drought.

So nerr.

 

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I'm afraid Mother Nature is not an auditor. There is no one up there with a balance sheet. The weather will do what it will do. I've said this many a time but what balances what out?

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No idea about this summer and given recent extremes I don't think anyone has a handle on it

Hopefully it'll be a nice cool summer - with plenty of cloud around to stop things heating up too much.

I wouldn't be surprised to see a somewhat colder than usual summer simply due to all that moisture around; assuming we get a normal spring rain-wise there will still be plenty of surface moisture even into June. And that'll take energy to evaporate, energy which would otherwise be heating the ground (and hence the air, by radiation).

Of course, nobody can tell what summer will bring at this stage... could be anything!

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IF our weather then does settle down by April and May, imagine all the low lying mistiness photography opportunities what with all that ground moisture.

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Isn't one of the conditions for recording high temperatures in the UK is soil moisture?

Given how high the water table is now, soil moisture is saturated now. It is going to take a dry spring for soil moisture to dry out otherwise we are not going to see the dizzy heights of July 2006, August 2003, August 1990, maxima temperature wise, I would have thought.

If you note those hot spells were preceded by dry springs and or dry winters. 1989-90 was a very wet winter but the spring was exceptionally dry. 2003 was a dry spring.

2006 was a dry winter following a dryish year overall of 2005 and the previous winter was dry.

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If temps ever get high it will be steaming and humid just as you like it not

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Actually revisiting this thread I will agree with ....wait for it Retron (Darren) too old for too much heat so let's say sunny and 24 degrees for 12 weeks
And dewpoints around 13 degrees

Ladies & Gentlemen, it may be that we are entering unknown territory, in terms of weather systems, both global and local, what with global warming and it's myriad of effects on an already exceptionally complex world of weather.

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I think the idea that a wet winter will be balanced out by a dry summer sounds dangerously close to believing in the "law of averages".

The global weather systems clearly do have negative feedbacks which "balance out". Otherwise certain areas of the planet would at some stage have become permanently icebound, for instance. But there are so many factors influencing the weather, via so many complex interactions, that some of these negative feedbacks can take millions of years to "balance out", never mind 12 months (e.g. look at how many interglacials our current ice age has experienced over millions of years, yet we are still stuck in it, with ice covering both Poles).

To demonstrate the fallacy of the law of averages, toss a coin half a dozen times. If you got a sequence of heads tails heads tails heads tails, that would feel perfectly normal, while a sequence of 6 heads or 6 tails in a row would give rise to suspicions of the coin having been rigged. Yet the chance of HTHTHT is exactly the same as HHHHHH or TTTTTT. You need a lot more evidence before you could start believing there might be a problem with the coin.

And I think this is relevant when considering our current winter.  Suddenly getting three wet months in a row in one UK winter doesn't suggest to me that our climate has changed. If the same thing happened every year for the next decade, I'd be interested, but until then it's just weather as far as I can see.

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If I could choose, I would take that.

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I have a hunch that whether the summer is hot or pi$$poor climate change will be invoked.

Hopefully Winter will start for proper in October and go through until April

As severe as it can possibly be

 

Just a hunch

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The only thing that balances things out is time, and we are talking long periods, not a few weeks/months.

I think we'll see a lot more of those quasimodo-stationary type fronts, complete with bent back occlusions.....just a hunch.

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Wouldn't surprise me in the least if it's another washout summer.

The two wettest January/February combinations on record here were 1994 and 1883. Summer 1994 was very dry and summer 1883 very wet.

Hopefully it will turn out more like 1994 when there was 270mm of rain during January and February then only 265mm between March and September

 

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This pretty much what we are going through in Australia now.

We had an exceptionally wet La Nina period with some record rainfall totals around a wide area of Australia, rivers flooding that hadn't done for years and some dam gates opening for the first time since they were built!

Now we have had a combination of one of the driest spring / summers on record and everything has dried out. The rivers that were in flood have stopped flowing in some areas. The dams are still healthy enough though.

So we have gone from floods to dry in quick time here, but that is the nature of Australia, it usually is droughts or flooding rains.

We hear a lot about extremes becoming more common, and while the last five years have given us lots of extreme wet, extreme cold and extreme wind, we haven't had much extreme heat (since 2003 and 2006, in fact).

Come on climate change, give us the one extreme I really want... 40C!

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-40°c, now that would be an event.

 

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-4°c would be headline news this winter!

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A nice warm summer with some Davey type storms with a touch of Duanesque for severity and we're in business thats my hunch.

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