virtualsphere

I remember Autumn 2000 as being very wet, I was learning to drive at the time and had to negotiate standing water on several occasions... interestingly I can see this thread was originally created in 2013 and I believe winter 2013/14 and possibly winter 2015/16 were just as wet if not wetter. Autumn seems to have become drier after 2000 while winter seems to be getting wetter, especially since 2011. Last Autumn was quite wet here, especially October, but nowhere near 2000 or both those winters.

I was interested in @SqueakheartLW's post about weak WQBO last month, here's the 500Mb anomaly for those years which suggests heights over Scandi which interestingly ties in with @jules216's thoughts above re ENSO. And taking the two years which didn't feature cold CET anomalies, 1973/4 and 1992/3 we seem to end up with @jules216's example of the Sceuro block.

September does seem to have been more settled recently - in the last decade our average rainfall in Sept is 140mm compared to 180mm in both August in October. Interestingly September is also the only month apart from April I've recorded no thunder days since I started keeping track in 2012. The Met Office rainfall series shows that Sept has been wetter in the past, we're currently going through a dry September period but not as dry as the early 1900s 1959 appears to have set the benchmark for September sunshine and despite some nice weather in recent years, nothing really comes close. Personally I remember nice weather in Sept 2002 & 2014, a rather wet one last year and a particularly wet period when my son was born in 2008. Also the heat in 2011, but more so for the 1st October when I visited the beach and it was 20C by 10am! Otherwise most recent Septembers here seem rather benign but not dry / warm enough to be memorable.

Well I had high hopes at the start of the month, but despite the impressive heat at the beginning of August we're still above average for rainfall and below average for sunshine here - the hunt for a good August continues... Still we did get a very impressive lightning show at the start of the month and with 'only' 201mm of rain last month here it was drier than last August by 34mm, and slightly drier than June 2020 as well! Wettest summer overall here since 2012.

13.5C and 83mm please

MetO app shows new cells forming to the east of the Gloucester storm and moving east / south east towards S Wales then eventually to the east of Swansea area before moving offshore around 9-10pm. It's not been very accurate today but it has consistently shown something similar.

Storms seem to have cleared and sky now brightening up again. Some interesting cloud formations on the back edge.

Very dark for lunchtime here in SW Wales. Cars now going past with headlights on. Distant rumbling all morning, nothing overhead as yet but had several downpours. Had a video call with a colleague earlier based 15 miles up the road, loud thunder heard in the background!

There definitely seems to be more regional variation in August during recent years - I had to check my stats after reading your post and my memory of last year being fairly poor in the west seems right, we had 235mm rain and only 9 dry days - for comparison in July 2020 we had 158mm and 13 dry days (and in May 2020 for example, 32mm and 25 dry days). The Met Office anomaly maps back this up - the last 12 Augusts (bar 2011) all show a similar pattern (source https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/research/climate/maps-and-data/uk-actual-and-anomaly-maps) The sunshine maps are more telling: we have to go back to 2005 to see the yellows over our part of the UK in west Wales in August. For every other month between April and October we only have to go back to 2018 to see the yellows... so a dry sunny August has definitely been a rarity here and hopefully this will be the one that bucks the trend!

Could this be due to reduced air traffic in recent months leading to less high level cloud - clearer night skies giving lower minima?

17.9C and 53mm please - going for the long awaited sunny and fairly dry August this year

At 202mm this has been the wettest June here since 2012, we'd need another 30mm to equal 2012 which isn't looking too likely. We have had 7 dry days so far this June though, which is one more than in 2012.

15.3C and 91mm please

Nice to see 1893 hanging on in there - that one must have felt really warm at the time!

14.7C and 72mm please.

Nice photos, think I've been under one of these!

Decent storm here in SW Wales this afternoon, first of the year. Lost count of the rumbles, flashes and several louder booms followed by heavy rain. Seems to have eased now. Hopefully helped get the pollen count down a bit!

Annual (rather than rolling) CET must be close to the top at this stage? Could be a record breaking year if the rest of 2020 returns moderately above average, given we seem less likely in recent times to return significantly below average periods in summer / autumn than in winter / spring?

My two standout May weather memories: May 1992, stopped playing a snooker game to look outside at a torrential thunderstorm (in the half term holiday at the end of the month) & May 2012, watching the Olympic torch relay go past in beautiful blazing sunshine. Last two weeks or so were excellent, the only decent summery spell of the year here. I remember May 2010 being quite nice here but looking at the Met Office sunshine anomaly maps I think we had a better month than those further East - it was also a dry month here. The last few Mays have been sunnier than average here so we're probably overdue a bad one, May 2019 was also very dry here with only 32mm. Conversely, we've also not had a standout May to rival April 2007, 2011 or 2020, so it could go either way!

12.7C and 48mm please

If you take all 3 months of meteorological summer then 2010 wasn't that bad here. June was fantastic, probably one of the best Junes in recent memory along with 2018. Unfortunately the weather went downhill in July and August but there was at least a decent fine summer month unlike the other years you mention.

8.1C and 32mm please

Interesting stuff, personally I'm sceptical the weather would have much impact as the majority of people now spend most of their time indoors in a temperature controlled environment at 16 - 22C. e.g. Someone catches the virus at an airport from an overseas traveller, then goes home and passes it on to their family or to colleagues in the office, which would allow international spread without the virus leaving an indoor environment. I guess if we had a warm dry period it would encourage people outdoors, which might help, as long as any restrictions on movement don't prevent this and end up being counterproductive. In less developed countries people probably spend a greater proportion of time outside which might mean the weather is more of a factor in transmission rates?

Yes, it was definitely better than 13/14 and also 15/16 here. Although we had record February rainfall this winter, Jan 2014, Nov 2015, Dec 2015 and Jan 2016 were actually all wetter here than Feb 2020. The rain this year has been relentless over a longer period though since last August. At least we had a few drier days over the Christmas holiday this year compared to the horrible winters in 13/14 and 15/16 but otherwise it's been a very poor winter. Ironically we had our first flake of snow here on February 29th which wouldn't have been winter if it wasn't a leap year! I remember thinking back in autumn 2012 or autumn 2013 that we were well overdue a prolonged cyclonic zonal winter. We've certainly paid for it since then! I'm definitely starting to fondly remember the dry anticyclonic 'faux cold' we took for granted before the colder period kicked in around 2009.

I don't think anyone answered your question so I'll have a punt: looks like 6.77C for 1868-69 according to this: https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/hadobs/hadcet/ssn_HadCET_mean_sort.txt with 2015-16 in second place.