In most summer months, the east coast of Tyne & Wear is mostly thunderstorm and "sunshine and showers"-free, relative to much of the rest of the country. Not so in August 2005- this time Tyneside had quite a convective month while many other areas had a very benign month.

The first week of the month was dominated mostly by sunny intervals and showers, with a couple of dull days thrown in there. Some quite dramatic convective storms too.

The second week was also predominantly showery, and two days particularly stuck out: the 10th for its warmth and high humidity together with some torrential rainstorms, and the 13th for a thunderstorm, which passed just to the north of where I lived and brought some spectacular cloud formations.

The third week contained a mix of dry sunny days and dull dry days, then the fourth week went back to being on the showery side, with the 25th sticking out as quite a convective day.

My main memory of the month will be the Leeds thunderstorm on the 31st. A very hot sunny day was followed by some of the darkest clouds I have ever seen, lightning flashes at a rate of about five per minute at one time, and torrential rain- there was a fair amount of flooding. Interestingly, the Tyne & Wear region was reported to have been hit by a similar-intensity storm too, but for once, the fact that I wasn't there didn't matter.

August 2005 scored 60% on my ranking system, a fairly solid score, and left Summer 2005 at an average of 59%- not a classic summer, but certainly one of the higher scoring summers of recent years.