UK Weather - Summer 2011

[stepr]

Thanks Richard, much appreciated. Winter here will be much more interesting report-wise I suspect, the summer is pretty featureless so far!

[Richard]

Thanks Richard, much appreciated. Winter here will be much more interesting report-wise I suspect, the summer is pretty featureless so far!

I dont know about that,those figures you gave sound rather nice compered to what we have laying on the ground this morning

[Simon Culling]

Welcome to the forum, stepr. It is nice to have some 'competition' reporting on the UK weather.

The weather in the UK this summer has been rather boring I must admit, with large regional differnces. As you have stated, it has been much wetter to the NW of the UK (particularly Scotland) so far this year and much drier to the SE, although so far the EWR is running some way above average for summer. For June and July the EWR is 147mm which is 20mm above average, or 16%.

For August the CET is 17.0*C (+1.0*C) up to the 14th and the EWR is 42mm up to the 13th which is comfortably above the average.

The storm at Dunnington back on the 4th of August has been the subject of a number of site visits and the damage appears to be due to a combination of a tornado and a downdraft. This forum entry from TORRO makes interesting reading for any storm lovers.

http://www.torro.org.uk/forum/forums/th ... 74&start=1

[stepr]

Hi Simon - thanks, don't worry I won't be stealing your thunder (sorry I had to fit in a pun somewhere),

Here to August so far is bang on 17.0C

Mean maximum = 20.1C, Mean Minimum: 13.8C

Precipitation so far this August: 51.2mm (for the year 511.6mm)

Pretty reflective of the overall situation across the CET zone.

[stepr]

Atlantic and tropical storm/depression activity has been none existent so far this summer, what impact this has on our Autumn I'm not sure. However I would ideally like to see some of the tropical depressions we were treated to, pre-2006.

Most of those occurred late summer, I recall one that gave 70mph gusts in a balmy south west wind with heavy rain, temperature stayed around 20C with a dew point of the same order, I just can't seem to work out the year - it was 2005 or 2006.

This summer it has to be said in terms of thunder activity have been low, however it has varied as you would expect. Thunder is as rare as snow here these days! In fact there used to be a time when thunder was more frequent during the winter than snow was, thanks to unstable northwesterlies. It's a shame thunderstorms have decreased, since about 2003. Surprisingly though tornadoes have been a regular visitor in our peninsula with 3 in the last 10 years, if anyone wants to read about them, let me know and I'll sort the article out.

[stepr]

Worth noting last night it went down to 3-4C in parts of Scotland and 5C in parts of Wales, very low temperatures for the time of year but not record breaking.

Here it dropped to 10.1C which is about 3C below av. for time of year.

[Manukau heads obs]

I thought it was bad enough dropping to 3C here in winter, LOL

[Simon Culling]

The lowest temperature recorded on Wednesday (17th) morning was 1.6*C at Katesbridge in N Ireland. Lows of 2.3*C and 2.5*C were recorded at Loch Glascarnoch and Braemar (Highland Scotland) respectively.

Record lows for August (from MetO site) are:

Scotland, -4.3*C at Lagganlia (Inverness-shire) on 21/8/1973
N Ireland, -1.1*C at Loughemore Forest (Co Londonderry) on 21/8/1964
Wales, -1.3*C at Cenarth (Powys) on 1/8/1976
England, -2.0*C at Moorhouse (Cumbria) on 28/8/1977

[stepr]

Something exciting to report, I have been taking records for just over 10 years, and I recorded my lowest ever August minimum last night; 8.5C beating the previous record by 0.7 (9.2C)

Impressive for the coast, there is rarely a night without wind here, but last night with no wind and clear skies it delivered that.

Simon, those figures are quite astonishing, given we are not any particularly cold airmass.

[Simon Culling]

The morning of the 19th (Fridy) was also rather cool, with a low of 1.1*C at Katesbridge, Co Down, N Ireland. This is a small hamlet in a valley on the edge of the Mourne Mountains in th SE of N Ireland and is a rather frost prone hollow. The station has not been open for a long period (approx 10 years I think) and already holds the March record low for N Ireland of -14.8*C set on 2nd March 2001. If it remains open it is likely to break many more monthly records.

Thursday (18th August) was a very wet and cold day over parts of Southern England with significant flash flooding in the southern coastal city of Bouremouth. A smallish area of heavy rain moved NE across central southern England into East Anglia during the day, with the heaviest of the rain to the south of the river Thames, and particularly around the counties of Dorest and Berkshire. It looks likely that this rain came from leftover moisture from Tropical Storm Franklin which was transported across the Atlantic as a baroclinic wave and was engaged by a sharpening upper trough to the west of the UK which released its energy as this rather localised storm. Rainfall totals for the 12 hours 0600-1800GMT:

66mm Stratfield Mortimer (Berks)
61mm Wallisdown, Bournemouth (Dorset)
58mm Southbourne (Bournemouth) and Portland Bill (Dorset)
56mm Wokingham (Berks)

http://www.bournemouthecho.co.uk/news/9 ... ts_Dorset/

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-dorset-14575270

It was also a cold day for the time of year, with maximum temperatures being:

12.0*C Birds Hill, Nettlecome (Somerset)
12.2*C Liscombe (Somerset) and Dunkeswell Airfield (Devon)
12.4*C Lyneham (Wiltshire)
12.7*C Odiham (Hampshire)
12.9*C Newport Pagnell (Bucks) and High Wycome (Bucks).

CET for August is 16.4*C (+0.4*C) up to the 19th and the EWR is 54mm up to the 18th, but will rise to near the average (77mm) with the heavy rain forecast for next monday/tuesday (22nd/23rd).

[stepr]

Nice stats Simon, a pretty interesting spot on an otherwise uninteresting month..

However.. it may be about to get interesting... in a bad way!

The Met-office have alerts of for Southern parts of England for heavy rain for tomorrow and Tuesday.. unfortunately it's for those areas that already have saturated ground.

it seems that southern England are getting alot more rain than northern England this year, reversing the usual trends.

A little interest is the heavy rain front could also have embedded thunderstorms in

[Simon Culling]

The heavy rain predicted for the SE of England did not materialise last tuesday with totals of only10-15mm recorded and not much thunder. It all stayed the other side of the Channel in France and the weather has been distinctly average here, really.

The CET up to the 27th is running at 16.1*C (+0.3*C), but the EWR has moved up to 85mm (+ 8mm) up to the 26th, so it has been a wetter than average summer over England + Wales as a whole although this disguises regional variations.

Despite the hurricane in the USA, wind speeds have been on a par (or greater) in Scotland today (Sunday 28th) as a low that was over the southern North Sea on Friday (at 1002mb) has moved north and deepened to be at 988mb at 1200GMT and situated midway between the NE tip of Scotand and the soutern coast of Norway, giving a tight N gradient on its SE side, which has given a fair gale (and heavy rain) to the NE of Scotland and the Northern Isles.

Peak gusts recorded at MetO sites have been:

68mph at Rosehearty (Aberdeen shire)
67mph at Wick Airport (Caithness, Highland)
63mph at Sule Skerry Lighthouse and Inverbervie (Aberdeenshire)
57mph at Kirkwall (Orkney) and Fair Isle

Wet as well with rainfall totals for the 24 hours to 1200GMT Sunday 28th:

51mm at Wick
47mm at Loch Glascarnoch (Highland) and Kirkwall

A private AWS at Scrabster (just outside Thurso, Highland Scotlnd) has recorded 68mm in the 22 hours up to 1900GMT with gusts to 47mph and an afternoon temperature of just 9*C. Brrrrr.

[stepr]

I'm keeping an eye on a potential tropical system that could impact our shores within the next two weeks, I'm not sure if it's the current TS 'Rosa'? but there are slight indications she could wind herself up, and we would probably get her as an extra tropical storm - this is unknown yet, but could bring something interesting if it did.

Interesting to note in the years when we do have extra-tropical storms/tropical depressions/Hurricane tails affecting our country, we have in most cases, had a mild winter. Time will tell.

[Willoughby]

Hello! I fly into London on Thursday night for 4 days. What weather can I expect? Looks a little uninteresting and mostly cloudy after a quick glance at the GFS.

Thanks

[Simon Culling]

Hello Foggy. We have a weak area of HP over the southwest of England at the moment (1019mb) and it has been cloudy here in the south of the UK both today and yesterday (Tues + Mon) with a flat featureless Sc sheet and no sunshine and cool with a max of 16*C each day in the light NW breeze. It is likely to be the same tomorrow, but the forecasters are fairly confident that the high will shift NE allowing drier air in from the Continent which will break up the Sc from thursday onwards and fri + Sat in the London area should be dry with sunny intervals, but potentially quite a lot of Cu+Sc at times......but warmer at 20-22*C....and a light S to SE breeze. Sunday should be roughly the same. Enjoy your stay.

[stepr]

Met Office expects the summer in England and Wales will be the coolest since 1993.

This surprises me somewhat, but I guess regionally, it has differed quite staggeringly. Certainly here it wasn't the coolest since 1993, no way.. I'd say locally it was warmer than last summer.. I'd also say surely 2007 would be the coolest summer since 1993.. something doesn't add up about it.

[Willoughby]

Well, Friday's weather here was stunning! A few clouds and 26C with light breezes.

Cloudy 8/8 now though but hope it breaks, but there is a cold front located across Ireland.

[Simon Culling]

Yes indeed Foggy. It was sunny and warm in Milton Keynes yesterday (Friday) and also up to 26*C. Its been cloudy here this morning (Saturday) with a low Sc sheet, but it is begining to break up now after lunch and we should see some sunshine and temps up to 23-24*C.

CET for August has been calculated as 15.4*C (-0.4*C), making this the third below average month in a row and confirming that it has been a rather cool summer. This anomolous NW flow has been in place for most of the last 2 years now and is keeping us cool. EWR for August was 89mm (+12mm or 16% above average), the third above average month for rainfall. Overall a cooler and wetter than average summer......no surprises there!

[Simon Culling]

CET average for the three summer months was 14.8*C, -0.5*C below the 1961-1990 average.

EWR for the three summer months was 237mm, compared to the average of 204mm....+16%, although this does disguise regional variations across England + Wales.