Summer 2021 General Discussion

Bit early for this thread. Most certainly spring for another few weeks.

By September there will be a busy thread up and running discussing the upcoming winter. Why not for the upcoming summer season. I don’t consider that this thread is too early as we are almost into summer.

Yes May looks a write off and it could be hard shift this pattern into June also but we live in hope.

Dont think there will be any 26c this May like last year.

Thelonious Monk wrote: »

Worrying this is that if August does its usual sh*tshow, we're looking at what 8 or 9 weeks where we might get some nice weather?

8 or 9 days spread across 8 or 9 weeks would be more likely.

SNNUS wrote: »

Irish summer's are getting shorter every year.. We have this low system that is not going to shift until at least another week or 2.

Even if it's the full two weeks before it shifts, it'll still be Spring then so at that point the summer is no shorter as it still will not have begun.

Fair enough, if in two weeks from now it looks like a continuation of what we're getting now is expected for another two weeks, then I might get slightly less positive but no point in complaining about summers getting shorter when the stuff you speak about is only about Spring.

But at the end of the day, summer is always June, July and August from a meteorological point of view. That is summer, full stop. You may have unseasonable weather during those months (just like any season), but summer is still three months long.

I see the BBC are referencing 2001 and 2012 in their outlook for the early part of summer. Not a good sign if those two summers are the equivalent of what we're facing into, I remember them both as being rubbish weatherwise.

Summer 2001 I was working outdoors as a labourer and the weather was awful.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/weather/outlook

If we look at May 2021's Northern Hemispheric 500mb height anomaly so far and compare it to that of June 2012 which was the most cyclonic month of that terrible summer, you can see a lot of similarities. Both feature a significant level of blocking in or around the Greenland peninsula with a trough of below average heights from the Atlantic into UK & Ireland and above average heights displaced well southward towards the southeast of Europe and the med.

2011-12 was a moderate La Niña winter and 2020-21 was too. Why I mention this is because whilst the state of the equatorial Pacific tends to go back neutral through the spring and into the summer (not always), there tends to be a lag on atmospheric impacts with the atmosphere still prone to producing patterns that are characteristics of Niña-esque composites historically such as a mid-Atlantic ridge. This can delve into a very complicated discussion so want to make it as straightforward to understand as possible, I'm still trying to learning it all to this day myself.

In the case of 2012, we saw an easterly in the first half of February like 2021 but it had little impact on Ireland. The second half of the month was much milder everywhere across the UK & Ireland, same as 2021. Both months were fairly zonal upstream after that Scandinavian high delivering the European cold waves in first halves of February 2012 and 2021. Late March was very mild to warm both years. We saw a change in April 2012, quite a dramatic one with the jet stream going on a southerly track and blocking areas of high pressure began to form around the Arctic and into Greenland which we hadn't seen much of since the winter of 2010-11. April 2021 seen a similar change after a zonal second half to February and much of March was zonal too but the difference being in 2021, the Greenland block sent a ridge which meant a dry month unlike April 2012. The first half of May 2012 was very cool and often unsettled whilst the second half seen a big improvement with a heatwave in the final week before that exceptional wet and dull June.

Why do I mention 2012 here? The similarities are quite interesting, like ignoring the surface conditions, the resemblance or comparison between the two years with regards to patterns and drivers is something to note. Both Januaries were quite different however with 2012 being more zonal and much milder. You'll never find a year that's like-for-like.



Do I expect a repeat of June or even summer 2012? No, that's not what I'm getting at. But what I will say is I am personally not optimistic for this summer, especially the early part with the trends of late. This Greenland block just doesn't seem to want to recede at the moment and reminds me a lot of what happened in 2012. Greenland blocks are so commonplace in summers since 2007 (except 2013 and 2018) that it's just something I've come to expect.

As for the very personal part of this post, I would love to be so wrong because I don't think I have wanted a good summer as much as I do now, particularly following on from the atrocity that is 2020. I loved April but now getting seriously fed up of the cool conditions and would really like a warm, dry spell or some good storms at least.

dancinpants wrote: »

Cool definitely, but very dry from St Patrick's Day to the end of April in most parts of the country, and remarkably so where I am. We've had a wet start to May, granted. We have short memories when it comes to weather.

East and north wind for a lot of April so it was very harsh on any plants

SNNUS wrote: »

Huge difference to May 20202!!

I don't think you need to worry about May 20202 tbh.

There's more to life than weather though. As much as people complain, our weather is generally alright. I'd love to live somewhere sunnier tho, the regular grey skies we get here can be pretty depressing at times.