Pack away your wellies and hunt out the sun lotion

After the sixth-wettest July on record and a similarly washout August, it feels strange to be finally writing these words. Cast off your galoshes, the weekend is upon us, and with it an extended spell of high pressure.

Things get better still. By the middle of next week, temperatures are forecast to reach as high as 27C (80F) in London, with similar sunshine elsewhere. It may have taken until the onset of meteorological autumn, which started yesterday, but finally it seems as if summer is here.

Such late warm spells have been increasing in recent years as climate change accelerates. September temperatures topped 30C in 2021, 2020, 2016 and 2013, while last autumn was the third warmest on record in a data series which goes back to 1884.

However, it is true to say that warm autumnal weather has also long been a part of our seasonal variation in the UK, and there is a correspondingly rich vocabulary to describe it.

The phrase “Indian summer” remains the most commonly used, although nowadays feels distinctly cancellable. It relates to an 18thcentury description of the weather in Native American territory by a Frenchman called John de Crèvecoeur.

He wrote in a letter: “Sometimes the rain is followed by an interval of calm and warmth which is called the Indian summer.” Shakespeare wrote of an “All Hallown summer” in Henry VI: Part 1 as a muggy October gave way to November.

Similarly, a dry and calm spell around mid-October is known as a “St Luke’s little summer” while a “St Martin’s summer” describes an unseasonable spell of heat around St Martin’s Day (Nov 11).

But anyway one swallow doesn’t make a summer and a few days of much needed sunshine does not necessarily mean the rain is behind us.

Indeed, next weekend showers are once again on the horizon. Enjoy it while it lasts.*

The sun rises over a ship in the North Sea