A last hurrah in North Sea... then straight to scarves
IT IS a late, late farewell to British summertime this evening as the clocks go back. If you are hoping for it to bow out with a spectacular sunset over the coast, you will most probably be disappointed. Temperatures are dropping from the high point of earlier in the half-term week, when in sunnier eastern parts of the country, they were up over 68F (20C). Grey skies are taking their place.
Perhaps better, then, to treat the whole of the week just gone as summer 2017’s extended last hurrah.
On East Anglia’s sun-kissed beaches, some hardy souls were so fooled by the warming south-westerly breezes that they stripped off and went for a final swim.
But the North Sea is grey for a reason. So almost as soon as these late summer revellers had jumped in, they were out, leaving the rest of us feeling slightly smug that all we had taken off were our coats and scarves.
We will be needing to put them on again pretty pronto. There is snow on the forecast for higher parts of northern England and Scotland as Sunday turns into Monday. Even perennially overheated London will see the mercury dropping to 37F (3C) overnight.
No time, then, for autumn to act as a buffer between summer and winter. We are switching suppliers from one to the other, with no time to acclimatise.
There is plenty of fog coming our way too, as the wind direction switches to northerlies, bringing down blasts of cold air from the Arctic. Not just coats and scarves required, but mufflers and many layers.
And just in case, the fruitless search for a sunset has confused you as you go to bed over whether to add an hour to the clock or subtract, remember the useful phrase (if you can overlook the Americanisms) – “spring forward in Spring and fall back in Fall”.