AderynCoch

A perfect summer's day for me. Very warm with comfortable humidity. The sun doesn't feel quite as strong now either, but still well strong enough to be pleasant.

Roger Brugge's website: http://www.met.reading.ac.uk/~brugge/CURR.html http://www.met.rdg.ac.uk/~brugge/ From the homepage, click on 'UK weather' then 'The month so far'. It's all up-to-date, though it stops showing some stations if they have missing data.

England & Wales rainfall is at 4mm to the 15th, all of which was on the 2nd. It's very unusual for the rainfall figure to go for so long without increasing, even slightly. The driest July in the series (dating back to 1766) is 1825 with 8mm. Numerous stations stuck under 5mm, with at least four under 1mm (Hereford Credenhill 0.6mm, Pershore 0.6mm, Boscombe Down 0.8mm, Dishforth 0.8mm). Some places not far off 200 hours of sunshine already this month, heading for well over 300 hours if this weather persists to the end of the month: Filton - 184.5 St Athan - 176.8 Lyneham - 174.3 Ronaldsway - 173.4 Valley - 172.5 A far cry from last year.

That's what I do. It's also what they do in Spain. That's why the ground floor windows have bars on them.

For me though, the most uncomfortable aspect of working outside is the strength of the sun rather than the air temperature. That's why it feels so hot in Australia - the sun is stupidly strong there.

I can vouch for this. In March while this country was freezing I was working in a place up north called Kununurra (it's like a Pokemon town in the middle of nowhere). One day I spent hours outside lifting sheet metal and double panes of glass in what felt like an oven (the airport officially reached 39C, and the car read 42C on the way back). There was no breeze at all and the sun was virtually overhead. And the humidity was about 50-60%. I must have got through close to 10 litres of water that day. I've never looked forward to a beer so much in my life! I've walked long distances in this current spell drinking one litre maximum.

This. It's been very nice but there hasn't been much in the way of real heat. It certainly doesn't feel like a heatwave to me - not yet anyway. At least there is still plenty of life left in this warm spell yet. It's nice that we can enjoy this weather without having to worry about an imminent breakdown from the northwest, not to mention the fact that we're not getting screwed by cloud and rain as has happened all too often during "hot spells" in recent summers (a sort of double jeopardy: not only missing out on the heat but getting even worse weather than during normal synoptics). It's looking increasingly likely to be an exceptional July sunshine-wise here, up there with the likes of 1911, 1955 and 2006.

The Express: "Heatwave will last ALL summer" So a washout August it is then.

Bah, it doesn't even feel that warm anymore with the core of the heat just south of me. Bring me some southeasterlies.

Earlier this year I was in Northern Australia during the summer lifting heavy glass and metal, doing construction and toiling away chipping and weeding in a field. This weather doesn't even come close to that. In fact, I've just done a long walk (about eight miles) as I did last weekend and don't feel the slightest bit exhausted. I would sympathise with you, but I remember all the moaning from the coldies during that one warm week we got in May 2012. I reassured you all that the weather will probably turn cool and unsettled again before too long and look what happened. Well never again. I've waited too long for this to not be enjoying it because others don't like it. Let's have autumn weather in autumn this year.

I don't mind the haze at all. You still feel the heat of the sun with it feeling less strong on the skin. It's still another very warm, sunny day - just as long as the cloud doesn't increase! This is one bizarre hot spell: North Sea cloud plaguing the SE but not the NE, Edinburgh 7C warmer than London and Northern Ireland recording the highest temperatures so far. I don't recall seeing this summer temperature pattern before.

Cloudless skies and another warm day. I've seen worse blips before.

It's certainly been an impressive hot spell for Northern Ireland. 29.9C is within a degree of the all time record of 30.8C. Aberdeen Dyce (66.0 hours) and Eskdalemuir (53.4 hours) are about to surpass their July 2012 sunshine totals (69.4 hours and 60.0 hours respectively) A few places in Scotland were still in single figures sunshine-wise at this stage last July. Edinburgh Gogarbank was stuck on a jaw-droppingly low 1.6 hours, compared with 70.1 hours so far this month - that's over 43 times more sunshine.

I'm blaming you if it turns out otherwise. You made a good point on the model thread - terms like "southern areas" and "the North West" are pretty vague, especially for this neck of the woods. This is northern England but also southern Britain. It's on the western side of England but fairly central as far as the UK is concerned. It's on the west coast yet farther east than Edinburgh. It's NW England but also southern NW England, meaning the weather here tends to be more like the North Midlands than Cumbria - when the forecast mentions "W Scotland & NW England" I usually take that not to mean the south of the region. All this means it's often hard to tell what the weather will be like here based on these vague geographic descriptions alone. At least in London for example you're always in the south.

Still sunny for the most part today with a more humid feel. So I'm ticking today off as another winner. I just hope I'm on the right side of that divide next week.

This weather is just right for me. Having done physical work in near-40C heat under an overhead sun, going on long walks in this weather doesn't get exhausting at all (I do carry a water bottle though). Of course physical work is better when it's colder and office work is better when it's warmer. I used to work in an old library, which lost heat in winter and trapped it in summer, and it was a lot easier to cope in summer than it was in winter due to the nature of the job (service-based). December 2010 was unreal: no amount of woolly jumpers and electric heaters could stop that place feeling like the surface of Pluto. The men doing renovation on the building had to work outside, but at least they were doing physical activity.

It's been a very nice day indeed. Strangely though it didn't really feel warmer than yesterday despite the supposedly higher temperatures. Maybe it was more humid yesterday (could be wrong of course).

I think you're exaggerating. The odd day or two of hot weather doesn't equate to a lengthy warm spell, let alone regular lengthy warm spells. You're right in that it's the best spell of summer weather for some of us since 2006, but that's because our summers since 2006 have generally been a steaming pile of cack. This is long overdue for those of use who have been screwed by awful, disproportionate NW-SE splits in recent years.

All three of those years saw widespread heat which didn't favour your location. In fact, the highest temperature of those three years was recorded at Cheltenham in the west (37.1C on 3rd August 1990).

Or the credits to "Crash! Bang! Wallop! What A Video!" by Alan Partridge:

Another ramp. 18.0

"Every Morning" by Sugar Ray was my song of Summer 1999. This much-anticipated summery spell can't arrive soon enough, as today was yet another example of the abject worse-than-normal NW-SE divides which have ruined potential warmth in recent summers. Very August 2009-like, though not as awful as the bête noire of NW-SE divide summer months, July 2010.

A good start and not too bad after but with two or three properly bad days. No proper heat either, but overall not too bad. 7/10

I don't know about 1999 but 3rd July 2000 had a good thunderstorm here.

My tuppence: Central Asia is as far away from the world's oceans as you can get and subsequently not at the mercy of moderating maritime influences. Kazakhstan is hardcore continental - in winter it can be as cold as Siberia. Furthermore, north of Iran/Afghanistan there are no mountain barriers to stop hot air from the deserts moving northwards when the weather patterns permit. This effect is even more pronounced in the Great Plains of North America where there are no mountain barriers from the subtropical Gulf of Mexico right up into Arctic Canada, thus allowing airmasses from either origin to flood north/south (and occasionally interacting, causing severe weather including tornadoes). 49C has been recorded in Steele, North Dakota at latitude 46N - exceeded by only four other states and beating famously hot states like Texas and Utah.