WE SO sweltered in July that we complained about the heat, then we moaned again as a wet August brought us back down to earth and we felt like we were drowning.
But despite the gloom, August was warmer than average, and the summer as a whole was the second hottest on record, according to provisional figures from the Met Office.
You could not have found two more different summer months than this July and August. After the hottest July on record — also the hottest month of all time — the heat appeared simply to vanish in August.
It was a huge shock to crash from a sweltering average 17.8C (64F) in July to 16.1C (61.0F) in August, the greatest slump in temperature recorded in central England between the two months, equalled only by the summer of 1737, when George II spent his last holiday in Hampton Court Palace in a thoroughly cold August, after which no monarch ever returned to live there again.
This August was also amazingly gloomy. While July was the sunniest month on record, with an average 297.5 hours sunshine in England and Wales, August was so dull it only scored 154.1 hours of sun, 85 per cent of normal.
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This is the greatest slump in sunshine recorded between the two months.
Along with the cloud came higher than normal rains for England and Wales, with 89.6mm (3.5in) falling in England and Wales, according to the provisional Met Office figures. The bad news, in case you want any more, is that despite all the wet weather, the drought in southern England and East Anglia continues. The soil was baked so dry in June and July that it will take a lot more rain for the water to soak the ground enough for rainwater to trickle down into underground aquifers.
With such a warm summer overall, is this another sign of global warming? No single summer proves that our climate is changing — much more significant is how many summer months have broken high temperature records: four of the six hottest Julys and four of the five hottest Augusts have been recorded in the past three decades.
And the four hottest months on record have occurred in the past 23 years. This picture fits the predictions for climate change in Britain. Scientists forecast heatwaves reaching more than 43C (109F) by the end of the century.
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SUNNY DELIGHTS