August started very hot and ended warm, but in between the UK had two weeks of cool and cloudy weather. The month as a whole averaged 0.4° C above the normal, the sixth successive warm August. The coolest locations in relative terms were northeast England and eastern Scotland, which were more than 0.5° C below the monthly norm. August 1^st and 2^nd were the two hottest days of 1999.

There are not many months when Scotland and northern Ireland are consistently drier than England and Wales, but the usual UK rainfall gradients were reversed in August. Rainfall over Scotland was barely 50 per cent of average, whereas much of England recorded more then 50 per cent above average. With widespread thunderstorm activity during the middle fortnight, however, some localised areas recorded well over twice their usual August rainfall. Ross-on-Wye, Birmingham and Scarborough were three such locations. This was the wettest August in the UK since 1992 and it means that only one month in the last 12 has been drier than average (see Graph).

The sunshine anomalies were mostly the inverse of rainfall so that Scotland was relatively sunnier than England and Wales. Tiree and Stornoway, for example, recorded 30 per cent more sunshine than usual, while Bristol and Morecambe recorded 20 per cent less than their August average. The nationwide average of only 2.1 hours of bright sunshine on the 25^th was the gloomiest day of the 1999 summer, but sunshine returned in time for the August Bank Holiday. The summer of 1999 has been warmer, sunnier and wetter than average.

Dr Mike Hulme is a Research Climatologist at the University of East Anglia

(more details at web site: http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/~mikeh/)

Daytime Temperature: 0.4°C above average; Rainfall: 30% above average; Sunshine: 6% above average.

[all average figures are based on the 1951-80 average]

Mean monthly extremes:

Warmest Guarnsey 21.6°C

Sunniest Folkestone 264 hours sun

Wettest Scarborough 170mm

Coldest Lerwick 15.0°C

Cloudiest Belfast 136 hours sun

Driest Leuchars 22mm