On 21/05/10 21:39, Phil Layton wrote:
What date in June does this arrive ?


June 1st!

I first came across this in the Spring of 1964 when I read /The English
Climate/ by CEP Brooks. In it he says, "This [the European Monsoon] also
arrives with something approaching a 'burst', the date in this country
varying from May 24 to June 11, but averaging June 1, which was the
hottest day in London only once in 109 years, whereas it was the coldest
June night in 17 out of 109 years."

I was a bit concerned when I read this as I'd got a week's holiday at
Skegness covering the first week of June. As it turned out, the week
before my holiday got hotter and hotter, peaking on the first day of my
holiday. Unfortunately, this didn't hold true for Skegness, which was
dull and cold. The whole holiday was cold and wet on most days. Check
the analyses at http://www.wetterzentrale.de/topkarten/fsreaeur.html
My holiday started Saturday 30th May and ended the following Saturday,
though we were considering coming home by Tuesday. The charts don't do
the weather full justice as I recall it for the end of the week. When we
we leaving on Saturday morning, the forecast was for heavy showers
falling as snow on high ground in the north.

Brooks also says that, in some year, there is a regular pulsation with a
week of cool and rainy weather alternating with a week of fine warm
weather. This also happened in June '64.

Although May/June '64 was typical of a European Monsoon as regards
development, temperature and rainfall, it varied in that the cold
weather came in from the north or northeast instead of the west. The
warm, dry spells tended to come from the west.

My memory of the '64 Summer after June was that it was a changeable
westerly but that fronts disappeared before they reached the east of the
country and so it was fairly warm and dry - quite pleasant as I recall.



--
Graham P Davis, Bracknell, Berks., UK.
E-mail: newsman AT scarlet HYPHEN jade DOT com