UK Weather - Summer 2012

[NZ Thunderstorm Soc]

(They) havent really had a summer,a couple of 28c days,some lesser sunny days over the olympics and remember some summer like days at the end of march?

....a bit like the summer we had here in NZ last year

[NZ Thunderstorm Soc]

A lovely mild WNW wind here to start the day off,should help dry things out a bit

sorry, Richard, are you in the right topic here??

[Simon Culling]

Michael + John, admittedly the summer in the UK has not been good, but we have had a few hot days recently. On the 18th August, the maximum temperatures were:

32.4*C at Cavendish (Suffolk)
31.7*C at Cambridge NAIB
31.6*C at Charsfield + Santon Downham (both Suffolk)
30.8*C at St James Park (London)

The following day saw the mercury reach 31.1*C again at Cambridge NAIB and 30.5*C at London Heathrow.

I spent a week in Crete in July where it was sunny all and every day (we only saw a couple of small cumuli) with max temperatures of 33-38*C.......and I longed for some cool rain!

Wet here for the next few days, but the change of the month at the end of the week should see a strong ridge of high pressure and a few days of warm sunny weather here in the south. Autumn is the best time of the year for this sort of weather.

[stepr]

Today was quite interesting in the northern parts of the UK. A line of fairly strong thunderstorms moved through parts of N Wales into Northwest England today. I was actually lucky enough to be in the vicinity of the first clap of thunder from a developing storm which rumbled its way towards Manchester and West Yorkshire.

The storms were stronger towards Manchester were reports of significant hail was reported, with some scenes more like that of winter. According to one report, following the hail storm, a car thermometer read 7.5C (I guess road temperatures after hail).

Interesting day.

Next week a short warm spell looks likely in the south, however it does look shortlived, and may not even affect the northern half, as it stands.

On another topic, with the Meteorological summer ending imminently, the highest temperature here has been 26.8C this summer so not a particularly high value. It is possible that Autumn could deliver a higher temperature, like last year.

[Simon Culling]

The hailstorm was on the 28th June with the main swathe extending from Coventry through Nuneaton, the outskirts of Leicester + onto Melton Mowbray.....a total distance of some 50-60km. Many places received golf ball sized hail (40-45mm), but there are many pictures of spherical stones to about 50-60mm and irregular ones up to 90-100m across in total (spike to spike, so to speak). Thousands of cars were written off because of the dents and also many roofs and conservatories were badly damaged. There are numerous YouTube videos, but the two below give an idea of the worst of it. The large stones are at the end of the second one. Silly commentry on both!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=pl ... xSZTyAt62Q

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o97IKCJJ ... e=youtu.be

Daily Mail article has some good pictures (even manages to get Andy Murray into it!)

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... lands.html

Two tornadoes were also witnessed as this supercell moved further NE, but the hail did the real damage.

[Orion]

Very interesting links, thankyou.
What a mess in Newcastle and Whitley Bay.
I presume the Lake District coped reasonably well? - it's very much a water-worn landscape there, isn't it, with its becks and waterfalls and steep slopes.

[Simon Culling]

Hello Orion, This storm did not effect the Lake District as it moved north east from the English Midlands to exit into the North Sea near Newcastle. Cumbria is in NW England and is the county in which the Lakes are situated and it is one of the wettest parts of the UK, especially on the high ground. It faces into the Irish Sea with only the island of Eire between it and the Atlantic, so it gets most of its rain from frontal systems, enhanced orographically by the mountains. The Wikipedia page isnt bad for the Lake District.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_District

Average annual rainfall statistics are (approx):

Carlisle 815mm
Keswick 1475mm
Windemere 1745mm
Seathwaite, Borrowdale 3350mm

This compares with 600mm for London, 660mm for Oxford and 830mm for Manchester.

[Simon Culling]

We had an early taste of autumn at the end of August following a southward moving front on the 30th (Thursday) which gave us an afternoon temperature of just 13/14*C here in Milton Keynes, which is decideedly chilly for the time of year. It was followed by a clear and cold night, with frost recorded in northern areas and some stations breaking their record lows for August. Minimums were:

-2.4*C at Braemar
-1.8*C at Aviemore and Tulloch Bridge......these 3 are in the Scottish Highlands, so not that unusual
-0.7*C at Redesdale Camp (Northumberland)
0.4*C at Ravensworth (N Yorks)
1.2*C at RAF Leeming (N Yorks)
2.1*C at RAF Benson (Oxfordshire)

Local stations near to me got as low as 4-5*C and it was a cool cycle to work!

The UK record low for August is -4.5*C at Lagganlia (Inverness-shire) on 21st August 1973.

[03Stormchaser]

CCTV has been captured of the moment a UK man narrowly escaped death when lightning ripped a tree into flying shards of wood seconds after he walked past it.

Bernard Williams, a 55-year-old from West Yorkshire in northern England, had just left his car and was running to his house during a thunderstorm on August 28.

Footage shows Mr Williams grab his gym bag from the boot of his car before dashing away.

Barely three seconds after he leaves, a lightning bolt hits a willow tree behind his car, sending a 3m-long piece of wood flying across the road to the spot where he was standing.

More jagged pieces of wood can be seen flying across the road, hitting his car and neighbouring houses.

Mr Williams' wife Alison, 43, had driven home behind her husband and watched the scene unfold.

"Just seconds after Bernard had parked up and grabbed his gym bag, the tree across suddenly lit up," Mrs Williams told The Daily Mail.

"If he had been stood at the car seconds later he would almost certainly have been killed or maimed," she said.

Debris from the tree smashed a neighbour's window and tore off tiles on another house.

But Mr Williams said he did not even realise the blast was caused by lightning at the time.

"For some reason I thought it was a sonic boom that had shattered the back window of the car," he said.

Mr Williams only found out what happened after his wife rang him from her car to see if he was okay

[Orion]

Oh my goodness. Narrow escape indeed.

[Simon Culling]

That bloke certainly had a narrow escape!

Final CET for August was 16.5*C (+0.9*C) and the EWR was 94mm (+122%), making it the warmest and driest of the three summer months.

[Simon Culling]

Met Office summary confirms how wet this summer was...it was the wettest since 1912, although that year was somewhat skewed by a very wet day in August when up to 8" (200m) fell in East Anglia.

http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/news/releas ... est-summer

Describing a summer as good or bad is somewhat subjective......it rather depends on your expectations. We here in Britain should perhaps be a little more realistic in our hpoes for summer as it will more than often dissappoint us if we want endless hot sunny days. I prefer the cooler weather, so am rather glad autumn is here.