Is this the worst (britishes) summer ever?

the bbc has a 10 day forecast now

http://www.bbc.co.uk/weather/2643743

it looks like much the same as recently, but warmer

hot and wet but not in a good way

oh, i like that average-weather chart down the bottom, that's a neat corrective to fantasy summers past.

oh, i like that average-weather chart down the bottom, that's a neat corrective to fantasy summers past.

Not really - it just proves that this is much worse than actual summers past. That chart says the average rain for June is 45mm. We had well over double that last month. The met office report for June:

The weather was dominated by low pressure over or close to the UK, with associated weather fronts. These brought rather cool days, some very large rainfall totals and also some strong winds early in the month. There was an almost complete absence of warm, settled spells.

The UK mean temperature was 0.3 °C below the 1971-2000 average and it was the coolest June since 1991. Daily maximum temperatures were well below normal, particularly in many central and eastern areas, with few warm days. Almost all areas were much wetter than normal, especially across much of England and Wales, southern and eastern Scotland and Northern Ireland. It was the wettest June across the UK in the series from 1910 (wetter than June 2007), and the equal-wettest June in the England and Wales series from 1766 (shared with June 1860). Only the far north-west of Scotland was drier than normal. Almost all areas were duller than usual, and it was provisionally the second dullest June in the series from 1929.

xp Oh, that must be a London-only thing. The Met office has some nice graphs compared to past averages too:
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/climate/uk/anomalygraphs/

I find this thread funny because my personal idea of how summer is different now than during the 80s is p. much the opposite of everyone else's. It may be wet this year but it's still not cold. I find summer too hot these days and don't remember doing so as a kid (admittedly probably because I wasn't quite so fat as a kid).

If we were at primary school now we wouldn't even be considering this the summer - that was basically the six weeks off school, which hasn't even begun yet. Worth bearing in mind next time someone at work starts off on rose tinted reminiscing.

time was we used to learn our timetables in class and not worry about what the temperature was, now its all concept games to learn the real values of integers and how they relate to the physical world around us, just last week the little woman's son from her first marriage was left alone on the beach at rhyl to learn the true meaning of sunburn, wouldn't have happened when i was locked underground by my abusive old dad

I have a really vivid ie possibly inaccurate memory of it raining every single day in June 1990 and being utterly enraged wondering what kind of god would allow this

otoh there were World Cup games every evening so it wasn't a big deal, it was just the PRINCIPLE

IIRC 1990 was a scorching summer but then I was in London/Oxford.

Matt DC - Scottish schools used to break up at the beginning of June and not reconvene until mid-August. No idea whether they still do but they were bumper summers for sure.

that's a neat corrective to fantasy summers past.

Not really - it just proves that this is much worse than actual summers past

um. my point was that it gives us actual summers past to compare to, not whatever imaginary version we hold to (which could be positive or negative).

and that having it right on the page with the forecast means idle curiosity might lead people who, like me, think "well 21 degrees is cold for july" to discover that actually it's not far off the average.

in other news, the Heath was utterly gorgeous yesterday afternoon, and surprisingly uncrowded.

IIRC 1990 was a scorching summer

I remember July/August post-end of term as being really, really hot and sunny and I was filled with resentment because I spent most of the time working in Fads (decorating shop) or having driving lessons.

last evenings london forecast = rain clearing away early in the morning, dry with sunny spells and abt 22c

today irl = like being inside a greenhouse in december

August 1990 saw several places in Scotland have their hottest day on record. I certainly remember Dundee being almost Mediterranean like.

http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/climate/uk/interesting/aug1990/ 37.1C at Cheltenham.

tomorrow according to the Met Office it will be wet and 19c tops.

Fucking tipping it down in Manchester, on and off, for the whole day, mostly when I step out of the office. Going to housewarming BBQ tomorrow, oh daer.

Beautiful sunshine in London at the moment after being pretty grey and drizzly for most of the day. I think we've missed the worst of it so far this year.

http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/climate/uk/interesting/aug1990/ 37.1C at Cheltenham.

Oh, I remember that now. I thought it was '87 or '88 though but I often find out my childhood memories happened 2 years after I thought they did.

I spent all day whining about it being too hot to my parents, who were trying to have a barbecue and were distinctly unsympathetic, and then when it was declared the hottest day evar on telly I felt vindicated. We didn't live in Cheltenham but it was not very far away and my Nan lived there so it was clearly incontrovertible proof that it had been too hot in our back garden for a barbecue

yeah it's looking nice in london now

The entire stock of a Liverpool chocolate factory melted and at Stansted Mountfichet Castle, Essex a waxwork knight melted into a puddle.

it's had a nice habit of raining while you're at work then clearing up come the evening

in london that is, if you live in manc i don't know how roo feel

I'll take that for now.

Raining so hard here now...not sure I'm going anywhere today.

the forecast for the next month is pretty bad

http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/weather/uk/uk_forecast_weather.html

Met Office, uhhhh, Schmet Office

the forecast for the next month is pretty bad

Yeah, I think once the jet stream shifts downwards (as it has done this year) then that's it - you basically get 'unsettled' weather for the whole summer. It's just a question of making the most of any brief dry/sunny spells.

The forecast for today showed very heavy rain showers coming in from about 11 or 12 onwards. I set off at 9.30 on a bike ride, hoping to get a couple of hours in before the rain came. At 10.15 near Theydon Bois I was nearly drowned by a 15-minute cloudburst - it was like someone emptied a bath over my head. The road was an inch or two under water and I could barely see anything - I only knew when cars were coming towards me because they had their headlights on full.

the met office rainfall radar is neat

http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/weather/uk/se/se_latest_radar.html

tho obviously it is better for following southwesterly rainfall bands where you can estimate their arrival quite accurately wrt the wind speed, rather than the sort of chaotic squally showers of recent times

This is exasperating. If there was any light at the end of the tunnel it wouldn't be so bad - if they said "you've got two more weeks of this shit and then the sun will officially put his hat on" I could live with that.

It's warm and sunny in Cardiff right now, not expecting it to last though.

some tropical monsoon shit going on over lewisham right now

the sky has actually broken

If it was 3pm and I was watching Carry on Abroad or something this'd be perfect Sunday weather. As it is I'm lying in bed with a horrible hangover ruing agreeing to DJ at some shitty venue on Brick Lane where I got shouted at for 'playing old fucking shit' by the bar owner despite it being a disco/funk/surf/shoegaze night, rather than going to rhythm factory and seeing FlyLo (hanging out with Venus Williams) or Actress in Peckham, so FUCK THIS RAIN.

Venus Williams went to XOYO?!?@?!?!>!

actress is good music for when you're having coffee on a grey damp shit fucking sunday morning in london

i just hope people recognise that this is all the ConDem's fault when we get to the next election

Taking you up on that, nakhchivan. Ran a few errands, and am now sitting here damply, like a dog. Still something about the regular swish of traffic outside that isn't entirely unappealing, but it's near as high summer ffs!

not that we don't moan phatically about the weather in lieu of whatever more purposeful discourse happens in other countries....but months of this is actually very dispiriting

i don't think i have seen a shadow for weeks now...everything is murky, half-lit

It is relentless.

Leaving for work this morning at 1am I opened the front door and the rain must have been chucking it down so rapidly that it was faster than the human eye. I could see a torrent coming from the top of our front porch and 'cos I couldn't actually see the rain I thought a pipe had burst or some such. Took one step outside and still couldn't see the rain clearly, but judging from the fact that I was soaked to the skin within 5 seconds I trust that it was in fact raining.

It was crazy then, got a taxi home for what would normally be a leisurely 10-minute walk. It was so wet I had to stop for cans on the way and invite 30 friends over.

my brain has actually broken

About half eleven the rain had eased off to just a light splattering, so I thought I'd take a chance and try and squeeze in another bike ride. I got absolutely drenched again. The country lanes basically had streams running down either side of them and one point I had to ride through a giant puddle that was more than a foot deep (totally submerging my feet and bottom bracket). I'd had enough of this, so thought I'd head home on a main road instead, only to find this:
http://youtu.be/WXH9R0E-1v8
I tried walking down the grass verge for a couple of hundred yards but it ended up with a stream that had burst its banks and there was no way through. I had to go on a massive detour and ignore a load of 'road closed' signs to get home. My saturated cycling shoes are smeered with something indescribable which might be bits of dead slug.

for all the doom and gloom, i have just managed to cut the grass in lovely sunshine.

that said, yesterday was truly dreadful, and no doubt it will go off in the next hour or 2, but still ..

that monsoon's turned up in lewisham again.

OK, I take back what I was saying earlier about British summers always being this rainy.

This weekend has seriously got past the "just a British summer" territory into "holy shit will the rains ever cease this is the end times!"

How can there be that much water in the sky? For so long? Doesn't it ever run out?

y'know that large watery thing just to the left of Ireland?