40 years ago today, severe thunderstorms broke out across quite widely across the UK, signalling the end of the very hot summer of 1976. It occurred rather famously just days after Denis Howell was given the position of "Minister of Drought". This then laid the groundwork for the notably wet autumn of 1976.

By the 29th, Teignmouth had seen over 45 consecutive days without rainfall before it broke on this day. On the 30th, there was 76mm of rain during a thunderstorm at Spalding. Flash floods also broke out due to heavy rain falling on parched ground in parts of East Anglia.

 

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I remember that. The classic summer of 1976 collapsed in the August Bank Holiday. Amazing to think that was 40 years ago now.

The summer of 1976 was the most amazing weather event I remember closely followed by the classic cold spell of November/December 2010.

 

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Out of curiousity what constitutes as a drought in the UK??

For example down my way we have seen only 35mm in the last 60 days. Now some of this rain came in downpours that were hit & miss meaning some large areas down here have seen even less rain.

Now I'm not saying this is a drought as dry summers are not that unusual for us.... Even summers with above average rainfall tend to be dry as most of the rain will fall in short lived scattered (day or 2) spells of downpours. Wet summers with frequent days of rain such as 2008 are thankfully not that common.

I remember it was about 10 years ago they were talking about the southeast was heading for a drought.

But again back to the original question - what constitutes as a drought or drought conditions for the UK?

 Well i think an Agricultural drought occurs when an area has had no rain for 14 days so these occur quite often in one location or another. A meteorological drought is a dry 30 days. In terms of water supply most problems are caused by a dry winter rather than one hot dry summer. 

 !976 was a once in a 1000 year drought which combined a dry previous year, a dry winter and a hot dry summer

 . Locally at the moment although it has been a dry June and August the subsoil , mainly clay is quite wet due to the fact that prior to July most months have seen above average rainfall since last July. I do a fair bit of fencing and i have seen the ground far drier at depths of 2-3 feet.

My earliest significant weather memory occurred this particular weekend 40 years ago.

The late afternoon of Sunday 29th August turned dark..very dark. Around 7pm a thunderstorm of intense ferocity broke out. I still think its the one and only occasion in my life whereby I've witnessed strobe-like pink lightning. It persisted for many hours.

I'm guessing it was a major MCS ?

 

 

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I don't know but I too recall going to the stand-pipe in the street where I lived and getting soaked that day.  The next morning I made a bumper harvest of conkers which had been knocked off in the storm.

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My overriding memory of the summer of '76 is being hunched over a typewriter in a subterranean bedsit writing up my thesis. On the day I submitted, I was so excited by the sunshine outside I went straight down to the Uni tennis courts and played a long three set match without wearing a shirt. As a result I got horribly sunburnt - and spent the next week back in the darkened bedsit recovering. 

I've never liked hot weather since then.

My Mum had a favourite saying which she uttered whenever people were wishing for rain in long hot dry spells: "When it starts, it won't know when to stop". In the case of the '76 heatwave it was truly prophetic.

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The UK Met Office analysis chart does not show any major fronts embedded in that thundery low that encroached the south of the UK on that particular evening.

My parents lived in the UK during summer '76 and once told me that people were out in the streets dancing in the rain when it eventually came. Not sure if this was from the same event though as the one in this topic.

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Another good exanmple of that saying was in 2012. By the end of March 2012 we had seen such a prolonged period of dry weather that many were getting quite concerned about the lack of rain. Everyone started wishing for it and then look what happened right after it - the wettest April and the wettest June on record.

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My God guys all I can contribute to this thread is you're all showing your age.....I can't remember it as I was born in the winter of 1975. Sounds like I missed a decent summer then too!! 😂😂😂  I have seen a pic of me lying under a huge umbrella on the beach at Burton Bradstock but as I was only 6 months old I don't think I can quite remember that particular summer.

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The characteristics of it sounded like some form of MCS. Incidentally there was a local nasty thunderstorm during the Saturday morning (28th). This cleared to a warm and sunny afternoon but was surely the forerunner for the eventual breakdown that was to follow the next day.

Its funny the things you remember. I recall that whole evening so clearly, despite only being 6 at the time, it was about 6.30pm in the evening, sitting in the bath, the sky turning as dark as night, thunder rumbling in from the distance and my Dad recording Dancing Queen by Abba from the charts onto a tape ! lol 

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Abba, great band!

 

Reanalysis chart (from Vedur.is) for the evening of the August 29th 1976. Those storms defo of continental origin, and doubtlessly enhanced by local convergence zones etc.

 

 

Looking at the stats for here locally, only 3.4mm fell in nearby Galway City during August '76 and an even more impressive 2.8mm in Ballinrobe, just to my west. There was thunder reported along the south coast of Ireland on the 29th too but this was probably an isolated offshoot from the main system over N France and SE England.

 

 

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Absolutely it's the funny things you remember.

I was 4 and a half years old, and the only two memories of that summer I have were:

1) Our family holiday to Devon (two lots of family friends lived down there). I remember it being hot and sunny every day and always going to the beach. The friends we were staying with had two tortoises and, at a big get-together at their house one evening, we all sat in a circle clutching a lettuce leaf, tortoises in the middle of the circle, trying to tempt one of the tortoises by waving it. If it ate your leaf, you won! Secondly, we went fishing to a reservoir (Squabmoor, if anyone knows the area) and it being really, really low. I couldn't appreciate this - until we went back a couple of years later, and it looked totally different: it was full. Sadly, my dad's mate whose house it was, drowned 2 years later after a speedboat accident at Exmouth.

2) There was a stand pipe at the end of our road, and I remember me and my best mate getting bollocked off the cranky bloke outside whose house it was, for mucking about with it (ie, wasting precious water!)

Don't remember the breakdown, though.

I'd love to experience another 1976 (or 1995/2003/2006!) summer.

 

 

 

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We'll get one again.. eventually. There was a time when nobody thought we'd ever get a sub-3C month again, and hey presto we got quite a few in a short time period.

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I was born nine months after June 1976, so make of that what you will 

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I was born 11 years after 1976. 

My mother was 10 at the time, and she remembers it clearly. 

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Hi Bledur

These were the meteorological definitions of drought published in Ingrid Holford's book:

Absolute drought: 15 consecutive days without rainfall of more than 0.2mm

Partial drought: 29 consecutive days with mean rainfall of 0.2mm or less.

Dry spell: 15 consecutive days, none of which has more than 1.0mm rainfall.

However, a hydrological drought is defined as an insufficiency of water supply to meet demand.

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