WHY DO we bother having an August Bank Holiday? Today’s day off is cursed with an appalling track record of weather disasters. Though this year’s may turn out to be reasonable for much of the country, it is safer to stay at home and read a book.
In fact, when Sir John Lubbock, the Liberal MP, introduced the August holiday in the Bank Holidays Act, 1871, he intended it to give the poor a chance to have a day off for reading and self-improvement. A laudable idea, but Sir John was sadly disappointed when the lower classes flocked to the seaside instead with hardly a book or self-improvement course in sight.
He did get one thing right, though. His August Bank Holiday fell on the first Monday of the month, when there was usually a reasonable chance of sunny weather. Of course, there were some when it rained a lot, but most were fairly respectable.
Unfortunately, the Augusts of the late 1950s and early 1960s were horribly wet and the Bank Holiday was often a washout — or worse. In 1956 a massive hailstorm deluged southern England, leaving Tunbridge Wells 4ft deep in hailstones, collapsing the roofs of several buildings. A run of six dreadful August Bank Holidays threw the press into apoplexy and spooked the politicians, who decided to shift the holiday to the last Monday of the month (except for sensible Scotland), perhaps in the deluded belief that the chances of decent weather would improve. A big mistake.
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THE first of the late August holidays, in 1965, was a miserable ordeal of chilly, blustery winds and intermittent rain. The following year, a barrage of thunderstorms battered the country, dumping more than an inch of rain over a wide area. In 1967 mist shrouded many resorts in the South East all day. By the evening, fog had reached pea-souper proportions in some places, just when holiday traffic was heading home, and led to some spectacular traffic jams.
And so the sorry saga has carried on ever since, with a selection of gales, thunderstorms, torrential rain, floods, lightning, fireballs, tornados and hailstorms.
Sometimes the curse of the August holiday strikes out of the blue, quite literally. In the summer of 1976, Britain had been scorched to a cinder in a record-breaking heatwave. But the moment everyone packed their bags for the Bank Holiday weekend fantastic thunderstorms erupted and rains crashed down on soils baked as hard as concrete, causing widespread flooding.
Even more awesome was the August holiday in 1992. It was ushered in by a swarm of tornados across Wales and northern England, before one of the most violent storms ever recorded in August ripped through Britain with gusts of wind of up to 80mph and rain falling like a monsoon. The P&O ferry Pride of Winchester got stuck on a mudbank after being blown off course trying to enter Portsmouth Harbour, while another cross-Channel ferry spent 13 terrifying hours being tossed around at sea in Force 9 winds because it was too dangerous to dock at Newhaven in Sussex.
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But why should we be so surprised by lousy weather on this Bank Holiday? The first hint of autumn often arrives in the last week of August, a turning point in the weather marked by the end of St Swithin’s 40-day summer forecast. Now the days are growing noticeably shorter, there is a chill in the air, frequent early morning mists, and bursts of cold air from Iceland and Greenland can stoke up storms in the Atlantic.
Let’s face it, the late Bank Holiday is too unreliable. Even if today turns out fine, in future let’s trust the meteorologists and switch the holiday back to the beginning of August — which is, after all, what Scotland still enjoys.
Paul Simons writes the Weather Eye column for The Times
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