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The summers of 1933 and 1934 get brought up a lot in the history book of fine summers but 1935 wasn't without its moments. July 1935 was a warm month with a C.E.T. of 17.1C and it was very dry with an EWP of 27.2mm as well as being very sunny. It came after an exceptionally thundery June. The first half of June 1935 was cool and unusually cyclonic but flipped to very hot, humid and thundery from the 19th onward with some tropical nights. Very similar month June 2019. Some facts about July 1935. "The weather of the month was distinguished by an almost universal excess of sunshine, a large deficiency of rainfall except at some stations in the west and north of Scotland and an unusual number of warm days, particularly in south and east England. Mean temperature exceeded the average in all districts, the excess varying from 0-5°F. in Scotland, W. to 3.0°F. in England, S.E., and 3-1°F. in the Midlands. The warmest period occurred generally from the 9th to 16th, with its peak around the 13th, but it was also warm from the 22nd or 23rd to the 28th. Temperature, on the 13th, rose to 92°F. at Attenborough, 91°F. at Worcester and 90°F. at Wakefield and Huddersfield. The number of warm days was unusual at some places in south-east and east England; for example, 80°F. was reached or exceeded on 13 days both at Rickmansworth and South Farnborough. The coolest spell was from the 17th to 21st, though the first week was rather cool in some parts, particularly in the west and north. Some low minimum temperatures were recorded on the 30th and 31st: at Rickmansworth, the reading 32°F. on the 31st. is the lowest temperature recorded there in July since records began in 1929. The extreme range for the month in England and Wales, 60°F., is noteworthy. The extremes for the month were: (England and Wales) 92°F. at Attenborough on the 13th, 32°F. at Rickmansworth on the 31st; (Scotland) 84°F. at Liberton on the 13th, 34°F. at Dalwhinnie on the 30th; (Ireland) 81°F. at Newcastle, County Wicklow, on the 13th and 37°F. at Markree Castle on the 11th. The general precipitation of the British Isles expressed as a percentage of the normal for the period 1881-1915 was 41, the values for the constituent countries being England and Wales 30, Scotland 75 and Ireland 36. In Scotland, rainfall exceeded the average in the Orkney and Shetland Islands, at a few places in the West Highlands and also around Aberdeen: elsewhere there was a deficiency, which was usually greatest in eastern and central districts. Less than 20 per cent of the average was registered locally in County Cork and at a large number of stations scattered over England and Wales, while less than 10 per cent was received at some places in England. It was the driest July at numerous stations since records are available (e.g., at Eastbourne since 1887, at Teignmouth since 1871, at Newquay since 1893 and at Holyhead since 1871). In marked contrast was the excess in the Shetland Islands, where Baltasound recorded about 300 per cent of the average. Local thunderstorms were reported at times, notably on the night of the 1st to 2nd, on the 11th, 14th, 18th and 20th. Among the heaviest falls in 24 hours or less may be mentioned: 1st. 83 mm. at Exbury, Hants., 57 mm. at Winchester (nearly all of which fell in 2 hours) and 53 mm. at Southampton, during thunderstorms. 11th. 39 mm. in about 14 hours during a thunderstorm at Long Ashton. 17th. 34 mm. at Bidston, Liverpool, mainly during a thunder- storm early on the 18th. 19th. 44 mm. at Borrowdale. 20th. 109 mm. at Baltasound, 86 mm. at Lerwick and 49 mm. at Deerness. One of the most striking features of the weather of the month was the excessive duration of bright sunshine. For districts 1-10 the percentage of the average amounted to 132. The greatest excess was enjoyed in the eastern and Midland districts of England and southern Scotland. (See Table I). On the south-east and east coasts of England from Eastbourne to Lowestoft, nearly every station registered a daily average of more than 10 hours, while Dover had an average of 10-52 hours. At numerous places in Great Britain, it was the sunniest July since records began, and at Yarmouth it was the sunniest month of any name since records were started in 1908. At many English stations there was not a single sunless day." A month of frequent usuable warmth and buckets of sunshine and some decent heat (33C on the 13th) and very few rain days. I think many would happily take a repeat for July 2024. August 1935 was also decent with the month being mostly warm, dry and sunny up until the 22nd though it did turn very unsettled to end the summer. The first week continues the endless summer sun of July with temperatures peaking at 31C on the 7th, then more unsettled for a time before another heatwave with 32C on the 22nd. Autumnal thereafter. A decent summer with something for everyone. The third one in a row. June 1935 (+0.8C / 144%) / July 1935 (+1.0C / 34%) / August 1935 (+0.9C / 78%)

There was an unusual run of notably dry Februaries in this time period. February 1929 was a notably dry month with an EWP average of only 31.5mm. It was also a very cold month, part of one of the few genuinely cold winters between 1895 and 1940. It had a C.E.T. of 0.4C. The first eleven days saw high pressure to our east gain a foothold while an increasingly severe cold pool grew over the continent. It wasn't until the 12th when winds veered east and the coldest period of the month began. While we escaped the worst of it, uppers of below -15C were marching in from the east. Your eyes don't decieve you, that is the -25C line to our east! Unsurprisingly for a dry month, the Atlantic never takes hold and we end up with battleground synoptics for the rest of the month, but mostly dry. The Met Office report for February 1929 with all figures and notable weather events (I will be posting these to save time writing): February 1930 would be even dryer with a EWP average of 26.1mm. It was also rather cold with a C.E.T. of 2.5. Unlike the previous year, it came off the back of an extremely wet period. October 1929 through January 1930 was exceptionally wet with November and December in particular being amongst the wettest ever recorded. The winter had also been very mild up to this point (5.8, 5.6), so things changed drastically. A very unsettled start but high pressure built in by the 6th and remained in situ for the rest of the month. Unlike 1929 there were no great cold pools, just one big frosty high. The Met Office report for February 1930: February 1931 would prove to be rather wet but the next one was the driest of the run and is one of the driest months ever recorded. February 1932 has an EWP average of a meagre 8.9mm. To put that into context, that's slightly drier than August 1995 (9.1mm). The winter of 1931/1932 was bizarre in that it had been very mild up until now (5.3, 6.3) but turned colder in February with a C.E.T. of 2.9. It was a very bizarre year overall with March almost 2C colder than January, a cold spring and an indifferent summer with an extreme heat-spike in August reaching 36C (1932 sounds like the long lost cousin of our current era climate!). It was also a year without a winter across NA. The month begins as it means to go on: with high pressure dominating. It's in a mild position at first but then builds into Scandinavia and we get a particularly bitter easterly spell into the 10th. After that, high pressure meanders around the country aimlessly before a second bite of the cherry at months end and while this was also very cold it was more tame than the initial easterly. The Met Office monthly report for February 1932: February 1933 would end up being very wet but the following year would see yet another bone dry February. February 1934 remarkably has an EWP of 11.9mm, just fractionally "wetter" than February 1932. The winter of 1933/1934 was exceptionally dry and came after an extremely dry year (1933 annually only has a EWP of 717.7mm) which also had a very hot summer. 1934 would also go on to be a very dry year with a hot summer of its own, a very intense drought period for the UK. The month starts with a near-miss of a cold spell in which we escape the brunt of the easterlies but still manage -10C uppers. There were some blink-and-you-miss-it-lows at times but most of the time high pressure was bloated over the continent. The month wasn't especially mild (3.8C) due to the north/south divide in temperature. It was exceptionally mild in Scotland but in the south it was rather cold due to cold nights despite mild days. Not too dissimilar to January 2022. The month ended how it began, with a cold spell, though it was a rather weak affair. Lack of cold uppers happened then too, more often that you think! The Met Office monthly report for February 1934: In contrast, the next three Februaries were all wet with February 1937 one of the wettest on record and not too far off February 2024's total.

125 years ago, Britain was suffering through one of the most unpleasant looking autumns I can find in the record books. An exceptionally wet September, the fifth coldest October on record & a very cold November. To set the scene, the first half of 1896 had been remarkably dry. The previous winter had been bone dry & apart from a wet March, the spring proved to be even drier. Then summer only provided average rainfall. To top it off, it had also been a mild winter & spring and June was exceptionally warm. We hadn't had a notably wetter than average month since Jul. 1895; drought! First signs of change came in August, which while not wet, was cold with a C.E.T of 14.3. The first signs of change came on the 25th/26th with a divebombing low pressure system introducing rain and cold northerly winds. This would set the scene for the next couple of months. Let's start with... September, 1896 Extremely wet with frequent gales and rather cool temperatures. It was the wettest of any month since Oct. 1891. Sunshine was in very short supply too, with large swathes recording 60-70% of their average. Even the sunniest (to average) places, such as Stornoway, recieved 85% of their average. The C.E.T stands at 13.1. This, to me, looks like a classic case of mild nights but very cool days, backed up by how dull it was. Early September generally featured weak pressure over and to the south of the country with rather cool weather, showers and thunderstorms. A more sustained push from the Atlantic came on the 9th. This was the warmest part of the month, though few places exceeded 21degC. It became cooler on the 13th when the SW flow got cut off. The second half of the month became very cold with weather more akin to November with deep areas of low pressure, unusually so for September, crossing the UK in succesion. The chart for the 25th looks exceptionally wet. A real soaker! The final day of the month saw pressure rise, perhaps giving false hope for a fine October, but it was not to be... October, 1896 Spectacularly cold, with a C.E.T. of 6.9; the fifth coldest October. A very changeable month with many gales and an unusual excess of lightning and thunder. Sunshine was once again in short supply, the strange exception being the southwest and southern coasts. Brighton recorded 141% of their average sunshine. Despite this, the first week of the month was actually quite mild, showing how exceptionally cold the second-half was. Winds generally came from the Atlantic and were strong to gale force. Cold air flood south during the 9th/10th, introducing much colder -5 upper air temperatures across all of Scotland and into N England. The 10th and 11th saw widespread falls of snow, particularly in the north. Crazy by modern standards! It then goes into a very blocked pattern mid-month. I imagine this must have been very dull, chilly, raw and wet. Northerly winds persisted for the entire rest of the month, with many falls of snow, particularly in the north, a regular occurence. On the night of the 24th/25th the temperature dipped tp 17degF/-8degC. Severe penetrating frosts for the time of year were common everywhere Winds veered NE for months end. That takes us into the final month... November, 1896 Another very cold month, though a flick through the archives doesn't look spectacular, one has to remember that it was a lot easier to get cold weather under high pressure. The C.E.T. stands at 4.3. Speaking of high pressure, the dry theme of 1896 came back! A very dry month with one fourth of the average rainfall across the south and west, though some big thunderstorms occured on the 1st and the 19th. Sunshine was in excess, being a very sunny November. An unstable and quite cold flow from the northeast to start the month, continuing the sharp frosts from late October, then briefly dry and fine under high pressure before a cold NE flow bringing snow on the 7th/8th. The 9th to the 14th was somewhat milder with winds reverting to a west direction, but not overly unsettled as pressure remained high. The 14/15th was the only truly unsettled period of the month, though not a normal Atlantic driven set up, the flow is NW/SE. Another quite mild period came, but high pressure came back to rule the roost by the 21st. This was quite mild in the north with temperatures reaching the mid-teens celsius. It turned much colder at months end with easterly winds. This is when the coldest temperatures of the month were recorded, the coldest being 18F at Braemar (not as cold as Octobers minimum!). Quite random, but that chart for the 30th of November reminds me a lot of New Year's Day 2002. Overall... Sept. 1896 is currently the 6th wettest September on record, while Nov. 1896 is the 10th driest on record! Oct. 1896 is the 5th coldest on record. Autumn, 1896 is the 10th coldest on record. Only 1919 and 1952 have been colder since. After such a cold autumn, the following winter wasn't much to write home about, but not complete interest. The winter of 1896/1897 was changeable. December was mostly very mild but with a very cold snap in the run-up to Christmas. Jan. 1897 was cold, especially in the second half, but Feb. 1897 was very mild everywhere.

This warm September is good cause to make a thread regarding this unusual pair of months, and why those wanting a cold October need not despair! After an indifferent summer, Sept. 1895 was a very warm month with a C.E.T. of 15.4. It was warmer than July! Nights were close to normal but by day, Sept. 1895 ranks 2nd hottest, only beaten by 2006. It was also a very dry month with an average rainfall of 23.3mm. Much of the south of England had barely any rainfall and most fell during thunderstorms on the 6th/7th. Unsurprisingly, it was also a very sunny month. Many stations recorded their sunniest September on record at the time. Hastings recorded 171% average sunshine. A warm pattern is established very early on with a hot push of southerly winds on the 2nd. The very few traces of rain fell courtesy of weak pressure associated with hot southeasterly winds on the 6th. This feature was so weak that by the following evening, pressure had already rose, thereby killing off any thunderstorms. I can't find any reports on any individual storms but apparently they were juicy! A briefly more unsettled period followed but high pressure was never far away from the southeast. High pressure was dominant again by the 15th and was going nowhere fast. Upper air temperatures fluctuated during this period but days stayed warm. A brief spell of colder weather, albiet still dry, came on the 20th. This was the coldest part of the month with frosts in the Scottish mountains. The coldest weather was very shortly followed by the warmest. September from this point was entirely HP dominated with very warm southerly winds. There were some unusually hot temperatures recorded, record breaking for the time, with temperatures in excess of 27C recorded in many places. In some areas, the month was over 3 degrees above the then-average. The comes October... October, 1895 was an exceptionally cold October, being one of the coldest on record with a CET of 7.1. Rainfall was unremarkable at 113.3mm. The month was mostly just very cold, with no remarkable falls of rain or gales reported. Despite the cold, sunshine was once again above average, notably so in places. However, the month began very warm with the remnants of Septembers heat. 25C was recorded at Hillington on the 1st. An active cold front swept in on the 2nd, probably accompanied by heavy rain, gales and thunder. This would have felt very shocking after a month of fine weather. It then stayed generally very unsettled. It wasn't until the 16th that the true nature of the month came to be, as cold air swept south, albeit within high pressure. By the 22nd, strong northern blocking and low pressure in the Azores let very cold air in from the Artic region. From the 22nd to the 29th, snowfall was widespread, particularly in the north and west. Temperatures were very cold, particularly at night, and on the 23rd/24th and the 28th-30th temperatures got down as low as -8C at Llandovery, -7C at Blackpool and Carlisle. Amazingly, the following October would be colder, but that autumn deserves its own thread which I may do next. While November, 1895 wasn't a particularly interesting month, it's notable for being warmer than the preceding October. It's generally a mild and wet month with lots of low pressure and SW winds, but it has a very short but fairly intense cold snap on the 24th with a great deal of snow. It has a CET of 7.5 and an average of 122.2mm The following winter of 1895/1896 turned out to be a mild but exceptionally dry winter.

Anybody else experiencing a very dry summer in the midlands or anywhere else? River levels are very low in parts and the countryside looks distressed in parts with the usually green lush warwickshire countryside looking brown and parched in parts, the ground is rock hard with cracks seen in fields of crops, gardeners have commented they really want some rain for their flowers/plants, hopefully some much needed rainfall for tomorrow for us and on sunday/monday though it wont really make it for the lack of rain this summer in the midlands.

As time goes on I am fearing that the Model Output Discussion is going to degenerate into the usual summer fare, where the UK's weather is over-simplistically divided into two types: "settled" aka "good", and "unsettled" aka "bad". The main problem is that the desire for "settled" weather, for most people, is tied in with images of clear blue skies, warm sunshine by day, and evenings spent in the garden with the barbeque going. Of course, high pressure can bring such weather, and many of us will have memories of that phenomenal spell at the back end of March this year. [url="http://www.wetterzentrale.de/pics/archive/ra/2012/Rrea00120120326.gif"]http://www.wetterzen...00120120326.gif[/url] But in fact we only need to think back to the last third of July 2011 for an illustration of how we can be "bitten" by being too simplistic about this association. The forecast models showed a fairly sustained settled period with high pressure close by to the west, and the model output thread was buzzing with posts insisting that we were in for a lot of barbeque-type weather. In reality, though, for many of us the spell turned out dry and cloudy with a chilly northerly wind which left those BBQs gathering dust indoors. The problem is that for high pressure to bring us "BBQ weather", it really has to be in the right place. Here's one synoptic chart: [url="http://www.wetterzentrale.de/pics/archive/ra/1991/Rrea00119910515.gif"]http://www.wetterzen...00119910515.gif[/url] Let's be brutally honest, how many people would look at a chart like that and not think, "sustained settled spell- barbeque here we come"? In fact May 1991 was one of the dullest Mays on record as well as one of the driest and most settled. Another stark counterexample occurred during June 1988. This was an often-forgotten warm sunny month across much of Scotland (leading into that infamous washout July) but also an often-forgotten dry cloudy one across most parts of England, characterised by high pressure in the wrong place: [url="http://www.wetterzentrale.de/pics/archive/ra/1988/Rrea00119880610.gif"]http://www.wetterzen...00119880610.gif[/url] [url="http://www.wetterzentrale.de/pics/archive/ra/1988/Rrea00119880625.gif"]http://www.wetterzen...00119880625.gif[/url] Also, you don't actually need a sustained strong area of high pressure to bring this sort of "barbeque weather". The last week of June 2010, for instance, had a lot of this type of weather, but was only weakly anticyclonic: [url="http://www.wetterzentrale.de/pics/archive/ra/2010/Rrea00120100623.gif"]http://www.wetterzen...00120100623.gif[/url] And on relatively rare occasions, you don't even need any high pressure at all. I remember that in Tyneside (where in some summers, like last year's, we struggle to justify getting the BBQ out at all) I had a nice BBQ on the evening of the 4th July 1999: [url="http://www.wetterzentrale.de/pics/archive/ra/1999/Rrea00119990704.gif"]http://www.wetterzen...00119990704.gif[/url] ...and how many people would see a chart like that and think, "oh dear, dull wet unsettled dross"? That spell in early July 1999 turned out generally warm and sunny but with sharp thundery downpours, so as long as you timed your BBQ well you were okay. In fact it isn't all that unusual for the most "settled" spell of a month to end up being the cloudiest, if the unsettled weather is mainly bright and showery and the settled weather has high pressure in the wrong place. The dullest spell of this April so far was the relatively quiet one over Easter when high pressure (in the wrong place) ridged across from the west. It can even happen, more rarely, during a generally dull unsettled month (the dullest spell of August 2008, for many of us, was actually the relatively warm settled one near the end). Some of it probably stems from how we were brought up. I know that when I was at school, we were taught, "high pressure is settled (good) weather, low pressure is unsettled (bad) weather". I realise that, as a big fan of convective type weather, I am always going to be less enthusiastic than most others about sustained spells of high pressure (which have a habit of being convection-free). However, that consideration shouldn't affect the above analysis- I've deliberately looked at it from a "hoping for warm dry sunny BBQ weather" perspective, and shown how flawed/over-simplistic it is even from that perspective.