Summer 2023 - General Discussion

All the leaves are falling off the trees from the wind and now the cold...we usually have to wait until august for it to feel like autumn now it happens in july

I think one thing that adds to that autumnal perception in July is the slight drop in evening daylight. It's definitely noticeable now when the sky is not clear. For me that is the one thing I start to dislike from mid July onwards. Granted it's been windy and plenty of rain about too, but some good sunny spells here in the north from time to time.

I'm also one of those people that really hopes for 20c+ daytime maxes throughout July. For me, it's the peak of the summer and when I don't get low twenties at least, then I feel a little cheated out of a summer. I appreciated the June weather which I also consider summer, but I don't like it to be followed by an unsettled July and August. Especially August when it can actually become quite dark on a bad day. Feels like a long time since August was a good summer month. 2003 stays in my mind even though it was only truely good for us in the first week or so of the month.

For the last few years now, we have booked our summer holiday in August as a result. Something to look forward to if it doesn't deliver at home.

"I think one thing that adds to that autumnal perception in July is the slight drop in evening daylight. It's definitely noticeable now when the sky is not clear." 

We've lost a grand total of 6 minutes of light in the evening since the solstice. 6 minutes.

Some of the comments on this forum just get crazier and crazier. And gloomier and gloomier.

So we've had 'a bad June' and now we have 'dark evenings' in July. And seemingly the record breaking temps last August didn't happen.

Some of us have very different outlooks on things I guess...

Anyway today was quite nice in SCD. Got up to 20º. Bit of sun. Bit of rain. Felt mild enough at times. Typical Irish summer's day really. Could be better. Could be worse.

Tentative signs of slightly warmer and more settled conditions in around a week's time on tonight's ECM run. So fingers crossed. We're not even half way through summer anyway. Lots of time for a bit more nice weather.

Was a beautiful day in Dublin today after an awful one yesterday. The weekend was lovely in Dublin to be fair too

Glightning you must have been gone away last August? It was the best August in years and the August temperature record was broken for 2 days running

There is no sign of any improvement this month. The outlook for the remainder of July is diabolical in general apart from the odd pet day here and there.M.T. forecast this morning giving highs of roughly 13 to 16 towards the end of the month. It’s up to August to save the Summer and with only one good August in the last 20 years the odds are poor

OVERVIEW: Very unsettled for Friday and Saturday, with heavy rain or showers and strong winds at times. Showery on Sunday and into early next week.

Yeah, I got last August wrong lol! I can't even understand why I don't remember it so well! :-)

I definitely don't view the weather from a pessimistic point of view. I've never said June was bad, it was fab. July has been mixed, but we've still had some warm enough sunshine through the month with temps still reaching 18c to 22c. Hadn't seen any thunder until June, but since then have had 3 or 4 storms from late June and through this month, plus one down in Kildare. So doing pretty decent thunder wise this summer too.

If August delivers something more settled then it will have been a decent summer overall. Would probably balance out to average with slightly above average temps due to a week of mid twenties in June (Here in the north east that is. I appreciate the west and south west will have had more mid twenties days).

As you said here "Anyway today was quite nice in SCD. Got up to 20º. Bit of sun. Bit of rain. Felt mild enough at times. Typical Irish summer's day really. Could be better. Could be worse."

About average then.

Fingers crossed for HP re-establishing itself by the end of the month.

This is going to come as a shock (not), I tend to bring up past events in conversation to people. The amount of them that don't remember something as historic as 2010 mind blows me but I need to remember (ha) I'm a freak when it comes to this stuff! Here's a summary of recent Augusts to refresh the memory banks.

2022: Very warm, sunny and dry. Record-breaking heatwave in second week sets a new national August temperature record.

2021: Mostly dry away from the northwest and midlands, cloudy and mild. Some very wet days at times with a fine spell of sunny days after foggy mornings from 22nd-28th before a cloudy, cool and dry end.

2020: Very wet, stormy and cloudy. Changeable, fairly mild first half with a notably cool, wet and windy second half including two named storms and wind/low pressure national records set for August during Storm Ellen.

2019: Exceptionally wet in places but mild and sunny.

2018: Unsettled, wet in the north and dry in the south/east. Cloudy and mild, becoming cooler.

2017: Changeable, devoid of warmth and unsettled. Deluge in the north on the 22nd.

2016: Mostly dry and warm but rather cloudy.

It was the comment around dark July evenings and the nights closing in already...

Anyway, the tentative signs of improvement seem to have gone from this morning's charts unfortunately.

One thing I am a big believer in is weather patterns. The longer the wet and unsettled July goes on the better some chances of some fine weather in August I feel. Even though August doesn't usually deliver our best summer weather. As eventually the pattern will change.

We got 6 weeks of great weather in late May and June. Which is almost unheard of for Ireland. Places went weeks without a drop of rain. So in some ways it's no surprise that it's been followed up with several weeks of unsettled weather.

But to me this pattern will also break eventually. It has to, like all wether patterns. So I'm definitely not writing off August for now. As I really can't see us having 8 weeks of bad weather in summer (as that too is almost unheard of, even for Ireland).

It doesn't help that the media is so bad at reporting things nowadays.

I don't know how many stories I read about a 'cold' spring this year when in reality temps were well above normal.

So we seem to have had Summer in late May and June. Isn't that normal so the lowest mark Summer 2023 can get is about 40 percent. Some Summers here we struggle to get 2 sunny days. This year we got over 20. So it's 10 times better than most Summers in the Northwest and its probably going to trend hotter as the decades progress so enjoy the fresh air.

Though this outlook is a bit too fresh. I like 18c n partly cloudy but not this

For once I agree with almost everything you say 😀 But only almost!

Now you can throw stats at me all you like but I saw no six weeks of "great" weather. Not in Tralee. We had two absolutely glorious weeks the first two weeks of June. For personal reasons I remember clearly when it started, the last weekend of May. Now you might think I'm a right aul moaner but I'd say I verged on annoying east coasters with my daily rave reviews of how fabulous it was. The Med style gin blue skies ended the weekend of the 10th. While it stayed warm and quite pleasant for the following two weeks, we might even say two and a half weeks, it was mostly cloudy and very thundery with the odd pet day. On Saturday 17th Tralee was flooded. So that's 4 and a half weeks tops of good weather, wonderful weather for half that period but floods also. Since the 27th June it's been crap. I'm in Spain now, so back in my comfort zone, but that has been my experience of June/early July weather in Tralee. But I agree that the current unsettled spell can't go on forever so I'm hopeful. Yes I do optimism too.😀

Only the second half of May was good and doesn’t count anyway as it’s in Spring. 3 weeks of June were good and it’s been mediocre to bad since, with a poor weekend coming up and the rest of the July a write off. June good, July mediocre to bad, and August?

We had a rain rate of 20mm/hr here in Cork for a few minutes, but only a total of 4mm rain. Got outside and did some pruning after.