Best-ever summer?
Looking for a
staycation destination?
You could do a lot worse
than the Inner Hebrides
in May, with Tiree clocking 239 hours of
sunshine on average.
was a May 2000
– with sunny delight
of 229.3 hours
, it was the sunshine the
month of sunniest
last 40 years. I REMEMBER the summer of 1976 – it seemed to go on forever.
But I don’t think things are getting worse.
Weather is cyclical. It’s too easy to look back through rose-tinted glasses and think it was better in the past.
Don’t get me wrong, we’ve had some pretty crummy summers, but there have also been some good ones mixed in there, too. There was little call for a brolly in April 1980, which holds the record for being the
driest month in the last 40 years. Scotland got just 19.8mm of rain on average that month. Incredibly, that was less than the summer
months of 1976.
The nature of our weather is very much determined by the specifics of the UK’s geography and the fact that we are surrounded by water.
This summer has been pretty good.
For me the best way to
coast in the east Visiting is a really months of r summe t part the sunnies
The is bright idea. season
the d during area. Scotlan surround ing
the of Fife and average
s has an over Andrew sunshin St e
of also 523 hours
r. The region summe the number
lowest has the
with rain. of days Phew!
Scorchin July 2006 g
holds the record for warmes the
t month 1976 at since
around on 15.6C average
. measure it is by looking at the forecast in the morning and seeing if you can get out and about.
I have three kids and I’ve been able to get outside quite a lot this year.
There’s absolutely no reason to be fearful that we will be stuck with damp summers from now on.
People do have a tendency to complain about the weather, dwelling on the recent storms for example, but my attitude is, it’s gone – now make the most of it.