wrote in message
oups.com...
For the first time in a while, we've had a lot of hot and sunny weather
in both June and July, something which has only happened rarely in
recent years, namely 1989, 1994 and 1995, as well as (though I was not
old enough to remember) 1975/76.

Looking at all these years, the fine conditions persisted into August
in all but 1994, the majority of years being famously hot and sunny
summers.

The very settled summers seem to have a pattern of Azores ridge
following Azores ridge, very weak cold fronts coming through every days
followed by an immediate return to fine weather with no prolonged
breakdowns. Up to the middle of last week, and with the exception of
the changeable spell July 5th-10th, this seemed to be the pattern this
year too. However now the pressure pattern seems to have got itself
into a much less anticyclonic (albeit warm) set up likely to persist
for the rest of the month - there's something of a high early this
coming week but it's not particularly intense.

A non-expert conclusion from this would suggest that the 'hot summer'
pattern has broken and that August is unlikely to be as notable as the
earlier part of the summer but any thoughts?

Nick

My memory goes back a bit farther , Nick, to the warm summers of 1947 and
1949. In both these years hot weather in July was continued in August-
especially in 1947- and in each year there was a lot more warm dry weather
in September and October as well. Summer 1959 was also warm in June and July
which continued in August. In that year also the summer was followed by a
warm autumn.

I can't resist mentioning that in August 1947 I spent a lot of time at
Lord's cricket ground in the school holiday watching Denis Compton making
several hundreds in an apparently effortless way. In that summer he scored
3816 runs ,including 18 hundreds. Sorry to digress !

Peter Clarke
Ewell, Epsom