Summers long ago are often remembered as halcyon days of blissful sunshine and calm weather. However, is this simply our minds playing tricks?
A good example might be the summer 60 years ago. The 1950s were a fairly bleak decade for summers, but 1957 was different. June was warm, sunny and dry, and was made even more memorable because the first Premium Bond draw was made and Elvis Presley’s All Shook Up reached the top of the UK charts.
The heat did, however, erupt into some horrendous thunderstorms in the West Country. Camelford in Cornwall was devastated by a flash flood (Weather Eye, July 20), followed a week later by flooding in Teignmouth, Devon.
For most of this period the sun beat down almost relentlessly from blue skies and that June broke the monthly record for sunshine, averaging 284.3 hours in England and Wales. Temperatures rose steadily and Kew Gardens in London hit 27C on ten days. By the end of the month many places were scorching in an exceptional heatwave that reached 32C over three consecutive days. The climax came on June 29, when Camden Square in London soared to 35.6C, a record for June equalled only in 1976. Temperatures as high as that were reached eight times in the UK in the 20th century.
The heat continued into early July, but suddenly went downhill on July 7. It turned dull, wet, cool and thundery for the remainder of that month and made for a miserable start to the school holidays.
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Although August began fine and warm, it too turned miserable. August bank holiday, August 5, was a washout in thunderstorms that brought deluges of rain — 10cm fell in 90 minutes in Hereford, with hailstones and strong winds. Mid-August was worse, with rainfalls so heavy that they set off landslides in north Wales and flooding in London on August 12-13. September was no better, carrying on cold, wet and gloomy.
