As forecast, it's rained here steadily all day, and looks like it will continue to rain here into the evening.   Whereas rain is hardly unusual in the UK, for it to rain relentlessly without any respite throughout waking hours is quite rare in summer.... and has made for an utterly miserable bank holiday.   I can only think of one that compares... the late spring bank holiday May 2007.   Can anyone think of a worse bank holiday weatherwise?  Could it get feasibly any worse in August?  Widespread gales to add to the misery perhaps?

Andrew

PS I realise this is a bit of a IMBY post as many in the north have been much drier...

Whitsun 2007 and August Bank Holiday 1986 (Hurricane Charley) are the worst of my life-time.

Worst ever this year. Not too good at remembering weather.. Only 62/63.....

I remember August bh 1986,an absolute dire day!

Also Easter last year 2013,snow ice and freezing temperatures was the coldest period of the 2012/2013 winter

I think ex-Charley in 1986 probably gave us the worst late August bank holiday

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane_Charley_%281986%29#European_impact

But must say, there havent been many where I have simply sat indoors all day drinking wine whilst it rained and rained and rained ......

^^^^^^

August bank holiday has a bad reputation, but to be honest most years are pretty good, which is why 1986 stands out so much, I think.

Easter is often cold, snowy, raining, etc... So it kind of goes with the territory for that holiday (more chance of a White Easter than a White Christmas, etc..)

The two May bank holidays are often mixed (though late May 2007 was at the extreme end) but August is normally pretty good, so the bad one's stick in the memory.

As a Bank Holiday weekend goes two decent days , two out of three aint bad

Well quite a few  people i met today commented that this was a useful bit of rain 

It's been raining here all day too but we've had very little rain here this summer, so it's Sod's law that it's rained non-stop on a Bank Holiday Monday.

beautiful day here today. cloudy dull non stop rain all day, still mild, been a cracking day,, a repeat tomorrow they forecast to. luv-vly jubbly   

August 1986 bank hol was clearly one to surpass today.... although being 11 back then, I don't personally have any particular "bad bank holiday" memories.

There must have been a number of appalling Christmas/New Year washouts over the years but as we're not expecting 'useful outdoors' weather, these don't linger in the memory...

Today has been foul quite frankly.

But to be quite frank - the August Bank Holiday is either iffy, poor , bad or awful quite often really.

Even in the legendary summer of 1976 - that amazing summer ended on the August Bank Holiday.

The August Bank Holiday of 1976 was poor.

None of these is a patch on August Bank Holiday 1956, even if today's rain was more widespread.

http://www.courier.co.uk/hail-vagaries-British-summer/story-18745964-detail/story.html

The link has an excellent picture of a bus stuck (for 3 hours, as it turned out) in a drift of hailstones in Tunbridge Wells. Faversham also caught the storm with 81mm of rain.

remember the 1986one well when 2 inches of rain was widespread and windy too but todays 35mm is the wettest since then, totally relentless rain for some 14 hours here, southern coastal areas seem to have had the heaviest totals . yes the BH 1956 is well remembered by my parents and was during a ruly awful summer as many were in the 50s and indeed 60s so its nothing new. Only difference was the Aug BH was the first weekend in Aug then and later moved to the last because of the weather!

Certainly was one of those days when being a hermit cartoonist does come into its own. It started raining at 9 am and it has been mostly light to moderate stuff all the way until after sundown at 9 pm. It came to 18 mm but I think it may be a little bit more as the fresh to strong southerly wind blew the rain over my gauge!
  Yes, the rainy stuff did make it a bit on the grim side, but what was more depressing was how I have had indoors lights on for most of the day in order to see what I was doing.
  However, to be fair, it hadn't been a surprise from the start as the whole thing has been modelled spot on from days away.

Not just a bad bank holiday, it was interested reading about  the rest of that summer 

However 1956 is still remembered as one of the stormiest summers of the 20th century. June had been cool and wet, and by July parts of Kent were flooded. The beginning of the school holidays brought fierce gales, blowing down trees, wrecking campsites and leaving 11 people dead. By August, widespread ground frost had made this the only August of the century to be cooler than September.

 added another link on 1956!

http://www.ukweatherworld.co.uk/forum/index.php?/topic/46659-august-1956-very-cool-and-wet/ 

Summer 1956 is apparently the third worst summer on record after 1922 and 1725.

The summer of 1922 had all 3 summer months with a CET below 14C and you think that was cold. The summer of 1725 had one month with a CET below 13C.

The July and August had CETs of 13.8C and 13.3C respectively.

That's what you call a really bad summer.

Quite pleasant and dry where I was.

The further north, the better!

We've just got back this afternoon from a long weekend in Langdale in the Lakes. Had been watching the model output with trepidation in the lead-up, and expected Monday at least to be a wash-out.

Never had one spot of rain throughout. Amazing. Sat & Sun were largely sunny, with only patchy cloud (Sun was especially good). Monday was cloudy, but we'd already planned a day where we didn't need to be outside anyway. Today, beautiful (21c in Grasmere according to my car).

Last Aug Bank Holiday (2013), were were at the same place, same weather. Except the BH Monday was a scorcher (we met up with some friends on the south coast of Cumbria and our kids were in the sea!!)