Best summer in memory

https://archive.org/details/Reeling_in_the_Years_-_3x07_-_1976 @ 13:45

2018 was mad with the grass turning brown. I've never seen a drought like it. No rain effectively for six weeks in Dublin.

2003 not getting many mentions here but I remember us getting a lot of great weather. A huge number of deaths across Europe that year due to the heat. My clearest memory of that summer is taking the train to Mayo with some friends. It was sunny everywhere in the country for days on end (a bit like now) but as we got to the place we were staying just southwest of Westport, the heavens opened. Rained steadily for most of the weekend despite the sunshine continuing everywhere else in the country! Apparently that part of Galway/Mayo gets 3-4 times as much rain per annum as we do in Dublin and qualifies as a temperate rainforest. It sure lived up to its billing that year.

Last comment on this, but no-one is mentioning spring 2020 (obviously as the topic is called best summer in memory). But given the context of the first Covid lockdown when we couldn't travel more than 2km from home and almost everything was shut, the weather was a god send. Two months of the finest spring weather I've ever seen. I have memories of going out for a walk at 9am in Dublin to blazing sunshine strong enough that you had to wear a hat and spf. If it had been wet those weeks, I don't think we'd have made it through it as a nation!

Nailed it on the first page

/thread

I was 11 in 1995 and have incredibly vivid memories of that summer. My main friends were 10 that year and also do. We knew it wasn’t normal! Defo not too young to be memorable, at least from my experience.

The measure of how much DIY I could do in a summer is most assuredly not the mark of a good summer, that much I know, considering the amount I got done in crappy summers because it’s actually easier to get a lot done in a dryish, cool summer.

This week, I basked in a lake that felt tropical under skies that felt tropical. And there were multiple days I could have chosen to do that. That’s exceptional, not a feckin’ 19°C dry day that lets me paint a wall or whatever. Two years ago, Dublin had severe water shortages - and endless cloud. By your DIY measure, that summer was ideal. But it was actually depressing. Yellowing grass and not even sun to accompany it.

I think you guys might be at crossed wires because April and May last year were fabulous but later in the summer was not great. At least in Dublin, it was quite wet and overcast a lot of the time. Not the worst summer by any means, but not anywhere near the best weather wise.

Spring 2020 was unreal though. Two months of non stop sunshine in Dublin. Shorts and BBQ weather. Right when we needed it during the strictest part of the lockdown.

1995 and 2013.

95 - me and my mates built a raft and lived on the thing for the summer. Great days. If you look at any clips from the big GAA games that summer it's sweltering in all of them.

It was a hosepipe ban accompanied by cloudy gloom for the most part. The absolute worst of all worlds. The actual sunny weather was pretty short-lived. No water, yellowing grass but not even the ingredient to make it worth it. 2018’s sunny spell wasn’t long enough to make it a vintage summer.

Much like I’ve seen August 2003 mentioned a few times. Oh, it was hot all right… and seriously hazy every day in Dublin. I remember the torture because my parents spent most of that month in the UK on their holliers with friends in the south midlands. In the UK, the temperature was being matched by sun every day and temperature records were being neared or broken almost daily in various parts of the UK.

Meanwhile, we were getting high 20s haze. Not like, flithery, high haze that is basically sunny but proper gloom. The most oppressive weather I’ve experienced in Ireland. 2006’s spell ended like that (probably the highest humidity ever at the end of the spell but was at least the weather impressive for a good, solid period.)

When you’ve experienced a long, hot summer like 1995 (or 1976 I understand), those sunny spells are nice but will always fall short. As has been pointed out, 1995 did see some cloudy spells but basically for the month of August and much of June and July, you didn’t pray for good weather, it was an expectation. I think because temperature records weren’t readily broken, people who didn’t experience it dismiss it. But when you’re enjoying your umpteenth day in the normally notoriously baltic open air pool of your hometown (that struggles to stay open pretty much every summer), you know it’s good and you don’t really care that 30°C wasn’t hit. Experientially, that summer is peerless for me. I’ve spent 26 years waiting for a repeat.

The June 2013 sun was great but just not that long a spell. 1996 was a nothing summer.