Summer returns!

A review of the weather of July 2024

July didn’t start too promisingly, with a fair amount of wet weather – indeed, once again we had a much wetter month than the long term average of our 40 years of records. A total of 98.2mm of rain fell, almost all of it in the first half of the month, making this July the third wettest in our records, and 41.0mm on the 6th made this our second wettest July day on record. Despite this, it actually rained on just 14 days in the month, which although above the long term average of 12.9 days is not exceptional. It’s just that when it rained, boy did it rain! We’ve now had more than 75% of our average annual rainfall already this year.

In the second half of the month, as the rain cleared away, the sun came out, and the temperatures responded. The top temperature of the month was 32.1°C on the 30th, which has been beaten only five times in our July records. Each of the maximum, minimum, average daily max and min, and the overall mean temperature for the month were above the long term average, so it was another warm month – in fact the 12th month in a row that was warmer than the long term average.

The pressure chart shows how the first half of the month experienced a series of low pressure systems bringing the rain, whereas high pressure and settled weather led to the warmer end to July. Overall each of the mean, maximum and minimum pressures for the month were lower than the long term averages.

Unsurprisingly, the winds reflected this. The predominant wind direction was from the WSW, the commonest quadrant for British weather, and mostly winds were not particularly strong, the strongest gust coming on the 15th at 26mph (Force 6). The average wind speed for the month as a whole was just 2.3mph.

And finally the sunshine – plenty of it towards the end of the month! There were just three days with no sunshine, and the sunniest day was the 28th, when we recorded 12.0 hours. (It should be noted that on that day the total time the sun was above the horizon was just over 15 hours, but when the sun is close to the horizon, it falls below the houses and trees near our solar detector, so we can’t record the true maximum.)