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Stormchaser
31 July 2024 18:39:51
Was just thinking this afternoon how well the school summer holidays have begun, for a change. Not that I get to be a part of that these days!

Following a 30.9°C max yesterday, today has just about managed a 2nd in the 30s, at 30.1°C.
Even during the climatological warmest weeks of the year, two in a row isn't exactly common in these rural surrounds.

Recent UKV runs have hinted that tomorrow might even make it three in a row, if sunshine remains plentiful until early afternoon. Low confidence of course given sensitivity to fine detail.

Still looks plenty warm in these parts Fri and through the weekend, so I have a feeling the building isn't going to be cooling off quickly - more testing nights to come.

Speaking of, it was the warmest night of 30th-31st July on record here last night, not dropping below 18.3°C and with the relative humidity peaking in the mid-80s % as a result of some spotty rain from high-based convection in the early hours. One of the most uncomfortable nights I can recall in this country, despite the aid of a fan cooled by (initially...) ice-laden water. It seemed that while it lowered the indoor air temp, the resulting increase in relative humidity meant it didn't really feel any fresher.

Rarely does a summer pass these days without a hot spell lifting the temp into the 30s °C here. Last year's extraordinary September heatwave was a bit of a cheat, mind, relying on the astrological definition of summer to qualify!
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2023's Homeland Extremes:
T-Max: 30.2°C 9th Sep (...!) | T-Min: -7.1°C 22nd & 23rd Jan | Wettest Day: 25.9mm 2nd Nov | Ice Days: 1 (2nd Dec -1.3°C in freezing fog)
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doctormog
31 July 2024 18:45:14
Sadly the first 3 or 4 weeks of the Scottish and N Irish school summer holidays were less impressive!
On the plus side, recent days have been much better but the first half+ of the summer was generally disappointing.
Saint Snow
31 July 2024 19:06:54
https://www.theweatheroutlook.com/twocommunity/Posts/m1583634-Thoughts-and-Discussions-on-Summer-2024 


🤣🤣🤣



Martin
Home: St Helens (26m asl) Work: Manchester (75m asl)
A TWO addict since 14/12/01
"How can wealth persuade poverty to use its political freedom to keep wealth in power? Here lies the whole art of Conservative politics."
Aneurin Bevan
DEW
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31 July 2024 20:13:01

https://www.theweatheroutlook.com/twocommunity/Posts/m1583634-Thoughts-and-Discussions-on-Summer-2024


🤣🤣🤣

Originally Posted by: Saint Snow 


Highest temp on 31st July 2023 at 1200 was Bridlington 21.0C, and that the only station in the MetO list above 20C. Next highest Heathrow et al 19.5C.

https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/research/library-and-archive/publications/daily-weather-summary  
War does not determine who is right, only who is left - Bertrand Russell

Chichester 12m asl
White Meadows
02 August 2024 04:06:09

https://www.theweatheroutlook.com/twocommunity/Posts/m1583634-Thoughts-and-Discussions-on-Summer-2024


🤣🤣🤣

Originally Posted by: Saint Snow 


Roll the dice and pat oneself on the back…. Hilarious 
Brian Gaze
11 August 2024 17:07:35
My perception as an unashamed "heat hound" is this has been a decent summer so far. Perhaps I've been lucky and have been in the right place at the right time (which makes a change). For example, I was in Canada for a large part of June and missed the cool period. I wonder if some of those complaining, especially in the south, have now got unrealistic expectations of the British summer? As a kid in the 80s I would have given an arm and a leg for a summer like this when it would have been possible to be outside so often.
Brian Gaze
Berkhamsted
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Retron
11 August 2024 17:10:03

My perception as an unashamed "heat hound" is this has been a decent summer so far. Perhaps I've been lucky and have been in the right place at the right time (which makes a change). For example, I was in Canada for a large part of June and missed the cool period. I wonder if some of those complaining, especially in the south, have now got unrealistic expectations of the British summer? As a kid in the 80s I would have given an arm and a leg for a summer like this when it would have been possible to be outside so often.

Originally Posted by: Brian Gaze 


As I've said before, people seem to think a Med climate is normal these days! At least heat hounds have it lucky - as we've seen in another thread, the roughly once-a-decade chance of 35C is now an every other year event, having become 5 times more likely.

If only the same could be said about winter! Imagine a foot of level snow in southern England every other year...
Leysdown, north Kent
lanky
11 August 2024 20:39:59

As I've said before, people seem to think a Med climate is normal these days! At least heat hounds have it lucky - as we've seen in another thread, the roughly once-a-decade chance of 35C is now an every other year event, having become 5 times more likely.

If only the same could be said about winter! Imagine a foot of level snow in southern England every other year...

Originally Posted by: Retron 


Had a look at my Kew Gardens daily max records and it seems there were no days that reached 35C between the start of the data in 1881 until August 1990  and since then there have been 14 of them up till 2022
Martin
Richmond, Surrey
Brian Gaze
12 August 2024 05:45:01

As I've said before, people seem to think a Med climate is normal these days! At least heat hounds have it lucky - as we've seen in another thread, the roughly once-a-decade chance of 35C is now an every other year event, having become 5 times more likely.

If only the same could be said about winter! Imagine a foot of level snow in southern England every other year...

Originally Posted by: Retron 


Indeed. I think this is the fourth spell of the summer when temperatures have reached 30C.
Brian Gaze
Berkhamsted
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"I'm not socialist, I know that. I don't believe in sharing my money." - Gary Numan
Hungry Tiger
13 August 2024 18:31:57
This is turning out to be an OK summer if you ask me.    🙂 
Gavin S. FRmetS.
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Contact the TWO team - [email protected]
South Cambridgeshire. 93 metres or 302.25 feet ASL.


Saint Snow
14 August 2024 08:32:36

 This is turning out to be an OK summer if you ask me.    🙂 

Originally Posted by: Hungry Tiger 



This summer has, much more than usual, been skewed in favour of the South East.

A couple of albeit brief nice spells, followed by a general improvement since around mid-July, has lifted the summer here from 'terrible' to 'slightly below average'; it's not in the same ballpark of crap as 07-12, but it's still been a disappointment.

The July map for MBY actually has pretty much average max temps, average sunshine, slightly higher than average rainfall and days of rain.

June was surprisingly a similar picture in terms of anomalies (although with slightly lower than average max temps)

My annoyance is that the places we tend to go for days out - the Lakes and North Wales coast - have both been markedly poor (a fair bit poorer than MBY, with lower temps, less sunshine, more rainfall, more rainfall days), especially in July.




Martin
Home: St Helens (26m asl) Work: Manchester (75m asl)
A TWO addict since 14/12/01
"How can wealth persuade poverty to use its political freedom to keep wealth in power? Here lies the whole art of Conservative politics."
Aneurin Bevan
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14 August 2024 09:03:55

This summer has, much more than usual, been skewed in favour of the South East.



Originally Posted by: Saint Snow 


I'll reply in kind once you start boasting about snow this winter while we in the SE just have cold rain😒
War does not determine who is right, only who is left - Bertrand Russell

Chichester 12m asl
Saint Snow
14 August 2024 11:42:06

I'll reply in kind once you start boasting about snow this winter while we in the SE just have cold rain😒

Originally Posted by: DEW 



We're not that blessed with snow, either! 

We do get a fair few of falls, but in recent years they've all been pretty meagre efforts, laying only a dusting to a couple of cm's. I think March 2013 was the last fall of at least 10cm (which, coming after a period of averaging almost one of these a winter, has been a frustration!)


BTW, my comment about the summer being more skewed than usual toward the SE was just a neutral observation and you shouldn't read anything into into it beyond that. I know that, on average, the SE gets temps 1-2c higher than further north, a bit more sunshine and a bit less rain. In some summers that doesn't seem to matter (the difference between, say 25c and 27c maxes is largely an irrelevance!) and in other summers the difference is smaller than average. But this summer, the SE seems to have had much more dry and sunny days, and a lot more =/>25c days.


Martin
Home: St Helens (26m asl) Work: Manchester (75m asl)
A TWO addict since 14/12/01
"How can wealth persuade poverty to use its political freedom to keep wealth in power? Here lies the whole art of Conservative politics."
Aneurin Bevan
Retron
14 August 2024 13:06:35

We're not that blessed with snow, either! 

We do get a fair few of falls, but in recent years they've all been pretty meagre efforts, laying only a dusting to a couple of cm's. ...
 But this summer, the SE seems to have had much more dry and sunny days, and a lot more =/>25c days.

Originally Posted by: Saint Snow 


See - to us Kent folks, "only a dusting to a couple of cms" is headline news most winters, as it's so unusual - we're the land of feast or famine. Last winter, for example, there were two 5 minute partial dustings - blink and you'll miss it. The one before that? A partial dusting one morning in December. And the one before that? Nothing at all. Yet go back to Feb 2021 and we had 15cm... it *can* still happen, but a 15cm fall wouldn't have been unusual in the 80s or 90s... "lake effect snow" can really produce here.

As for days >=25C, so far there have been 9 in August (today will be the 10th, I suspect), 5 in July and none in June (lots more that would round up to 25, mind you, but I'm being strict!)
Leysdown, north Kent
Hungry Tiger
17 August 2024 20:11:27
Certainly shaping up to be an OK summer. Looking like 23C or more for most of the rest of the month.   🙂 
Gavin S. FRmetS.
TWO Moderator.
Contact the TWO team - [email protected]
South Cambridgeshire. 93 metres or 302.25 feet ASL.


doctormog
17 August 2024 20:14:34
I suspect we may not see 23°C again this year here (having only reached that three times this summer).
DEW
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17 August 2024 21:42:38

Bledur in Model Output wrote
Good job considering the amount of rain we had from October to June, .The only month that has been dry here is June.
Water Table is still relatively high and grass has been growing continuously. Most grass we have had in mid August for years.



Domestically, the lawn is still green - I've mowed it twice this August whereas in previous years I've put the lawnmower away by mid-July.

There's still water in the Lavant winterbourne at West Dean, too - usually it dries up by the start of July.
War does not determine who is right, only who is left - Bertrand Russell

Chichester 12m asl
Retron
18 August 2024 04:37:07

Domestically, the lawn is still green - I've mowed it twice this August whereas in previous years I've put the lawnmower away by mid-July.

There's still water in the Lavant winterbourne at West Dean, too - usually it dries up by the start of July.

Originally Posted by: DEW 


I've only mowed the lawn once since the beginning of July - and TBH there was so little growth I was done in just over half the usual time. I've not mowed it at all this month as the bits that haven't wilted away have just stopped growing.

The main thing I'm noticing now is the leaf fall - the path through my torii gate into the new part of the garden is now covered in hazel leaves, and the cherry tree (which doesn't like heat or drought much) has started dropping leaves too - it looks unhealthy. Even the viburnum out the front now has sections with red leaves, where it's shedding them to save itself.

It's unusual to see this much in August, as the leaves normally don't fall like this until November.
Leysdown, north Kent
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18 August 2024 07:32:51



It's unusual to see this much in August, as the leaves normally don't fall like this until November.

Originally Posted by: Retron 


This early leaf fall has been quite common in the last decade in central S England, but not this year.

I think it's been just as dry here recently as, say, N Kent, but we had so much rain in the winter that the subsoil remains really damp, something for the trees to get their roots into.
War does not determine who is right, only who is left - Bertrand Russell

Chichester 12m asl
Bertwhistle
22 August 2024 20:56:07

This early leaf fall has been quite common in the last decade in central S England, but not this year.

I think it's been just as dry here recently as, say, N Kent, but we had so much rain in the winter that the subsoil remains really damp, something for the trees to get their roots into.

Originally Posted by: DEW 


We've got a lot of leaf shed, locally and in the NF. A few days ago I was shaking my head at the pitter-patter of them in the Anton Valley, and walking on the footpaths in warm weather reminded me of the tropics where in the dry spells there is leaf shed all year round.
Bertie, Itchen Valley.
Retire while you can still press the 'retire now' button.
Hippydave
25 August 2024 20:58:56
Thought I'd pop in with an IMBY comment as it's been interesting reading some of my fellow Kent contributors commenting about how dry everything has been for the past 6 weeks or so. 
Very locally, we've been dry (until yesterday) but not overly so and everything has stayed green.  Including yesterdays rain and not counting where the rain straddled 2 days, we've had 7 days with rain so far and a current total of 50.53mm (3 of those days were trace amounts). Most of the rain has fallen on 2 occasions - 13.46mm from a storm on 1st August and 23.11mm from yesterdays rain, with the other more noticeable rain days having 4.57mm and 5.33mm respectively. 
As with DEWs comment at least part of why it's still green locally is due to the very wet winter and spring, which with a fairly average amount of rain over the summer and no really prolonged hot/dry spells, has kept soil moisture reasonably high compared to recent summers.  Current rainfall for the 3 summer months is running at 30.74mm June, 67.06mm July and as above 50.53 August. 
I suspect the explanation for the variation even within a few miles of me is that most of the rain I've had IMBY this month has been showery - there's been a few days where it's been damp at home and by the time I've got to work (Tonbridge these days) the roads are dry and I did notice the grass was noticeably more yellow/straw like coming along the A26 in to work the other day versus what it's like at home (or some other parts of Kent I've cycled through). 
Summer overall has been okay here, with less prolonged heat than we have suffered with over recent summers (or enjoyed if you like that kind of thing). The last 5-6 weeks have definitely been a lot warmer than the rest of the summer, although happily the really hot stuff has been in short bursts and most days have been between 20-25c, so a touch warmer than I like for a fair bit of the time but not overly so. 
I suspect judging by the current charts September will probably be a generally summery month again down here and probably pretty dry too - seems to be pretty much the case that even if we get some really damp weather in August, high pressure asserts itself for September at least for our part of the UK and rainfall amounts are small. 
Home: Tunbridge Wells
Work: Tonbridge
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01 September 2024 06:17:49
Summer rating 7/10. Mostly pleasant useable weather, if a bit wet to start with, but that did mean that the lawn stayed green throughout rather than turning brown. Only one major thunder and lightning show which was rather disappointing,
War does not determine who is right, only who is left - Bertrand Russell

Chichester 12m asl
Retron
01 September 2024 06:45:01
8/10 up to mid-July, 1/10 since then.

It started off as a wonderful old-school summer - temperatures swinging around the 61-90 average, replicating the summers of my childhood in the 80s. Dewpoints were generally lower than in recent years, there was a mix of sun, cloud, rain and a breeze and it was all very useable weather and everything was lush and green.

Then in mid-July it's as if a switch were flicked, and we went into modern drought/sauna mode, with very little rain, very little cloud and a great deal of humidity, with dewpoints reaching the low 20s on several occasions (something which was unknown until around a decade ago). Things quickly dried, and died, so now the yellowy lawn is scattered with leaves shed by the trees - and the countryside is parched, as per usual. Temperatures shot up and there have only been a handful of days below the 91-20 average high since then.

June: av max: 20.7, av min: 10.7, max, 26.5, min, 5.9
July: av max: 22.9, av min: 13.2, max, 31.4, min, 8.9
August: av max: 24.7, av min: 14.2, max, 33.6, min, 10.4
Leysdown, north Kent
Hungry Tiger
01 September 2024 11:54:17
Moving this to the classics section later today.   🙂 
Gavin S. FRmetS.
TWO Moderator.
Contact the TWO team - [email protected]
South Cambridgeshire. 93 metres or 302.25 feet ASL.


LeedsLad123
01 September 2024 12:17:25
An ok summer imo. Far from great but certainly not terrible either. 
August ended up very dry with only 26mm (average is around 58mm).
Whitkirk, Leeds - 85m ASL.
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