I'm just doing some work on analysing blocking and spells of weather using the Jenkinson Lamb Weather Type [LWT] data that you can download from the Climate Research Unit [CRU] of the University of East Anglia [UEA], and came across what looks like the longest anticyclonic spell of blocking weather across the British Isles in the whole data set that started in 1871. According to the results from my early beta application, the summer was anticyclonic for around 32 days from the 5th of July to the 5th of August, a truly amazing spell of summer weather. The Monthly Weather Reports for the month of July have a headline "Warm and sunny; apart from thunderstorms". According to the report the MSLP anomaly for the month was a massive +9.9 MB at Stornoway and +4.4 MB at Southampton. Sunshine for England and Wales were at record levels of 146% of the 1921-1950 long-term average, in Scotland that figure was 172% and Northern Ireland 184%.

https://xmetman.wordpress.com/2015/0...ummer-of-1955/

On Sun, 12 Jul 2015 06:30:33 -0700 (PDT), Bruce Messer
wrote:

I'm just doing some work on analysing blocking and spells of weather using the
Jenkinson Lamb Weather Type [LWT] data that you can download from the Climate
Research Unit [CRU] of the University of East Anglia [UEA], and came across what
looks like the longest anticyclonic spell of blocking weather across the British Isles
in the whole data set that started in 1871. According to the results from my early
beta application, the summer was anticyclonic for around 32 days from the 5th of
July to the 5th of August, a truly amazing spell of summer weather. The Monthly
Weather Reports for the month of July have a headline "Warm and sunny; apart
from thunderstorms". According to the report the MSLP anomaly for the month
was a massive +9.9 MB at Stornoway and +4.4 MB at Southampton. Sunshine for
England and Wales were at record levels of 146% of the 1921-1950 long-term
average, in Scotland that figure was 172% and Northern Ireland 184%.

https://xmetman.wordpress.com/2015/0...ummer-of-1955/

Thanks for the memory, I remember it from junior school holidays.
Marvellous weather, only beaten in my childhood memory by the
wonderful late and dry summer of 1959... though I think July 1955 was
warmer. Those two summers first aroused my early interest in
meteorology, something that was cemented in late December 1962 by
you-know-what!

--
Dave
Fareham (then of Greater Mancunia)

In message ,
Bruce Messer writes
I'm just doing some work on analysing blocking and spells of weather
using the Jenkinson Lamb Weather Type [LWT] data that you can download
from the Climate Research Unit [CRU] of the University of East Anglia
[UEA], and came across what looks like the longest anticyclonic spell
of blocking weather across the British Isles in the whole data set that
started in 1871. According to the results from my early beta
application, the summer was anticyclonic for around 32 days from the
5th of July to the 5th of August, a truly amazing spell of summer
weather. The Monthly Weather Reports for the month of July have a
headline "Warm and sunny; apart from thunderstorms". According to the
report the MSLP anomaly for the month was a massive +9.9 MB at
Stornoway and +4.4 MB at Southampton. Sunshine for England and Wales
were at record levels of 146% of the 1921-1950 long-term average, in
Scotland that figure was 172% and Northern Ireland 184%.

https://xmetman.wordpress.com/2015/0...ummer-of-1955/

I was a bit too young to remember it, but I've seen books on our climate
that have mentioned it as having been a good summer. I think it's
probably been overshadowed by 1959, which beat it hands down for length
if not for quality while it lasted.
--
I'm not paid to implement the recognition of irony.
(Taken, with the author's permission, from a LiveJournal post)

I well remember 1955.

We were packed off to a seaside cottage for the entire duration
of the school holidays because there was a lot of poliomyelitis
about, and it was before the vaccine was developed against it.
My parents reckoned we would be safer out of the town.

It was the first time we experienced severe sunburn. We spent a
couple of days in a darkened room feeling utterly miserable, and
then several more days itching as the burnt skin peeled off.

Apart from that we spent a fair proportion of the summer falling
off rocks and out of boats and kayaks into the sea. Magic!

I have no particular memories of the weather in 1959, however.
That summer I dislocated my knee falling down a cliff, and I
spent quite a lot of time afterwards just standing in the sea,
because the cold water numbed the pain.

Anne

Anne B wrote:

I well remember 1955.

We were packed off to a seaside cottage for the entire duration of the school
holidays because there was a lot of poliomyelitis about, and it was before
the vaccine was developed against it. My parents reckoned we would be safer
out of the town.

It was the first time we experienced severe sunburn. We spent a couple of
days in a darkened room feeling utterly miserable, and then several more days
itching as the burnt skin peeled off.

Apart from that we spent a fair proportion of the summer falling off rocks
and out of boats and kayaks into the sea. Magic!

I have no particular memories of the weather in 1959, however. That summer I
dislocated my knee falling down a cliff, and I spent quite a lot of time
afterwards just standing in the sea, because the cold water numbed the pain.

Anne


A bit late in responding but I remember summer 1955 very well. I lived in Largs
in North Ayrshire then and that was the only time that I ever saw the peat
moorland above the town burning. It was the dried out peat in the ground that
was burning, not vegetation on the top. A stunningly hot and sunny summer in
that neck of the woods.

--
Norman Lynagh
Tideswell, Derbyshire
303m a.s.l.
http://peakdistrictweather.org

On Sunday, 12 July 2015 14:30:34 UTC+1, xmetman wrote:
I'm just doing some work on analysing blocking and spells of weather using the Jenkinson Lamb Weather Type [LWT] data that you can download from the Climate Research Unit [CRU] of the University of East Anglia [UEA], and came across what looks like the longest anticyclonic spell of blocking weather across the British Isles in the whole data set that started in 1871. According to the results from my early beta application, the summer was anticyclonic for around 32 days from the 5th of July to the 5th of August, a truly amazing spell of summer weather. The Monthly Weather Reports for the month of July have a headline "Warm and sunny; apart from thunderstorms". According to the report the MSLP anomaly for the month was a massive +9.9 MB at Stornoway and +4.4 MB at Southampton. Sunshine for England and Wales were at record levels of 146% of the 1921-1950 long-term average, in Scotland that figure was 172% and Northern Ireland 184%.

https://xmetman.wordpress.com/2015/0...ummer-of-1955/

"The Forgotten Summer"

You've ruined that now.