Summer 2018 - General Discussion

Was a lovely morning (early ) in east Galway
Cloudy in Dublin
Hopefully improves

I've been slacking on the analogues for Autumn 2018 recently - have not posted one on here in the past two weeks. I need to stop slacking because clocks are ticking on the day of the Autumn 2018 forecast which as a reminder will be Tuesday, August 28th.

We have previously looked at the Autumns that followed on from warm Junes and hot Summers overall. Today, we're going to be looking at the Autumns that followed on from hot Julys for the sixth analogue of Autumn 2018. Like the hot Summers analogue, we're not only going to be looking at a reanalysis of the Autumns overall, we're also looking at the individual months themselves that followed on from the hot Julys.

The 500mb height anomaly reanalysis for the Autumns overall shows below average heights over the Bay of Biscay into the south of Ireland and the UK. High pressure is in the middle of the North Atlantic but it ridges back into another high over to the east of Europe. This forces the wind direction to come from a southeasterly. It looks very mild and unsettled, akin to October 2005 which had a similar pattern to what this reanalysis shows.



The Septembers of these Autumns look to be on a knife edge between cool and very warm but what's more clear is the unsettled signal. This 500mb height anomaly reanalysis shows low pressure to the southwest of the UK and over much of both countries.



The Octobers of these Autumns look anticyclonic but maybe on the cool side with the wind from a northerly to northeasterly direction. I am surprised to see such a reanalysis given the Octobers in the analogue. For instance, October 2006, 2013 and 1995 were very warm Octobers.



The Novembers of these Autumns show a blocking area of high pressure over Iceland and the east of Europe with below average heights just to the south of both countries forcing the wind to come in from an easterly direction. The source of the air isn't very cold as it originates from southeastern Europe due to the alignment of the high pressure but it wouldn't be particularly mild either. If that high to the east of Europe retreated northwards through November, it would open the floodgates to cold and snowy easterlies.



You can now see why I decided to do a month by month breakdown for this analogue, each month tends to be quite different in these Autumns. The analogue shows an unsettled September with mixed signals for temperature, an anticyclonic but chilly October and a relatively cool, unsettled November. Would make for an interesting Autumn if it verified this way. More analogues to go!

It's been hot hot here in Lisbon with Friday temp 42.8℃

Well it seems that after tuesday, the weather will take a nose dive, rain most days and feeling like autumn.

oh how i miss those hot sunny cloudless days

Beechwoodspark wrote: »

Must say I’m delighted we will get a respite from warm and humid weather.

You will enjoy the next 10 months so

It’s depressing to think our summer could be over. The nights are getting shorter already.
I don’t mind the winter so much but definitely autumn is my least favourite season.

Well it has rained for the last three hours here in Leitrim. Dark miserable muck. Typical Public Holiday weather.
The last few weeks have been poor.

Rotten day so far in west cork. Cold and a light mist which isn’t wetting anything.

harr wrote: »

I have friends who live in southeast England and generally they get very good summers. I have rarely visited them in summer months where the temps have been lower than 23c .. They get very good summers most years.

I spent a few summers in London and I think this summer has been exceptional. They do tend to get nicer summer than us in Ireland but the summers there tends to be exaggerated. From my experience there, it gets warm but usually is in the low to mid 20s. Even look at Wimbledon every year, this year was an exception but most years they are plagued with rain delays and that is why they had to put a roof over the centre court, it was so disruptive for players and the public going to the matches.
To summarise I think the south east of England does get quite nice summers but it can be greatly exaggerated. I think statistically they get 3-4 days per year that hit 30 degrees or more. Again this summer very much an exception but this summer has been an exception everywhere including Ireland.
Really you have to go to continental Europe to get consistently proper summers. If you cross the british channel, the likes of Paris, Lyon, Toulouse, Marseille and pretty much all the major cities are far hotter and sunnier than the south east of England. I think the likes of London are just made to look better when comparing vs the emerald isle.
You could almost argue that Dublin has a different climate to most of Ireland in that it is so much drier on an annual basis. It is so interesting to look at annual weather data for Ireland and how dry Dublin is compared to other parts each and every year. Hard to know exactly why other than it is further from the west coast and less impacted by the Atlantic. I suppose the same is true of south east England and hence drier