Where did the Summer Go?

You have to love the British Summer. In fact, it is rather like a real-life lover. You think about it when it isn’t there; you fantasise about how great it can be – beautiful, reliable, better than all the rest. The reality is that, most of the time; it is unreliable, untrustworthy, dull and rather moody.

To stick with the analogy, if summer 2008 was a lover, you would dump it by text message and find yourself a hot and fiery Latin lover. But as in love, so in weather, it is all about our perceptions.

In terms of bald statistics the summer of 2008 was not exceptional. Hard as it might be to believe it was only the 61st worst in the last 133 years – a mediocre league position, but not exactly in danger of relegation.

The summer started fairly quietly. Although it was the coolest June since 2002, it was also fairly dry. The first 16 days yielded just 12 millimetres of rain. We did even enjoy one fine spell between the 8th and 10th and temperatures peaked at 26 degrees Celsius. Wetter conditions became established mid month and that was to set the trend for the rest of the summer.

      Puddles were a feature of this summer's weather

July’s temperatures were around average; the rainfall was anything but. 108 millimetres in Totterdown was more than twice the July average. The rainfall in August was ‘only’ one and a half times the monthly average at 113 millimetres.

Whilst the summer was undoubtedly wet, temperatures were unremarkable. Night time temperatures were significantly above average and this compensated for the lack of high daytime temperatures. So why does this summer appear to be so bad?

The above data omits the most important aspect of our summer weather – sunshine. It was an exceptionally dull summer. Sunshine totals were barely average in June and July. And then along came August…

There were just 84 hours of sunshine in August making it the dullest August since records began in 1912. It shattered the previous dullest August record – 124 hours in 1968.

Regardless of how much rain falls or how warm it is, people’s perceptions of summer weather change when the sun comes out. It can be cool, it can be wet, but as long as there are a few hours of sunshine, all is forgiven. In 2008 we rarely saw the sun; all we had to concentrate on was the cloud and the rain and the interminable westerly wind.

We have unrealistically high expectations of our summer. This may be due to the increasing number of foreign holidays we take. We enjoy a week of unbroken Mediterranean sunshine and then expect the same when we return home.

                                          Oh for those fine summer days on the beach

Perhaps talk of global warming has resulted in us expecting our beach resorts to resemble those of the Spanish Costas. Trust me, global warming is a very real issue but the days of such reliable sunshine are still a long way off.

Like it or loathe it, we will have to learn to love the British summer, no matter how unpredictable it is.