Weather extremes ease in August

Hastings enjoyed a warm and dry August, though it did not match the temperature peaks and rainfall troughs of July. Now change is in the air, as already evidenced by plentiful rainfall in early September. Nick Terdre reports.

After July returned the lowest rainfall in Hastings since records began – a negligible 1.6mm – August proved slightly wetter, with a total of 16.2mm, though this was still only 27% of the long-term average, Hastings’ meteorological team told HOT. Most of the rain fell in just two days, 9.5mm on 16 August and 3.4mm on 24th, while 22 days were entirely dry.

August was another good month for sun lovers, and hopefully for the town’s tourist trade, with 234.1 recorded hours of sunshine and no sunless days. That was equivalent to 107% of the long-term average, though this was not statistically remarkable, according to Bill Butler of the meteorological team.

There was no repeat of July’s record temperature, 34.7°C – the hottest day, 31.6°C, was the 12th, and temperatures reached 30°C on the following two days.

In fact the mean maximum temperature in August was 23.8°C, above July’s 23°C. And at 20.7°C, the mean sea temperature was well above the long-term average of 18.1°C. It was also higher than July’s 19.4°C, but then the sea tends to retain the sun’s warming effect and swimmers can continue to look forward to relatively warm waters persisting into September.

If there is a lot of rain, they will presumably also have to contend with the usual large volumes of raw sewage released by Southern Water.

Joint warmest summer

According to the Met Office, this summer (June-August) was the joint warmest on record in England, along with 2018, with a mean temperature of 17.1°C. Four of the warmest English summers on record have occurred in the past 20 years, “as the effects of human-induced climate change are felt on England’s summer temperatures,” the agency said.

This was also the sixth driest summer on record.

The high pressure which dominated the UK’s weather in July persisted through the first half of August before moving away and allowing more showery conditions, though not so much in the south of England, the Met Office reported. England South East and Central South was the UK’s driest region, with 31.1mm of rain, apart from the Midlands, and the warmest, with a mean temperature of 19.5°C, except for East Anglia.

Now that September has arrived, ushering in meteorological autumn, a change in the weather is already apparent, with several bouts of rain in the first week of the month followed by several heavy downpours on Thursday. More rain is forecast for Hastings on Friday, preceding a dry weekend.

Reporting to the Met Office

Hastings is one of several hundred climate stations reporting data on a daily basis to the Met Office. While some stations are automated, here the data is collected manually.

Readings are taken by a seven-strong team of volunteers from four locations. The air pressure is recorded at the weather kiosk on the sea front to the west of the pier, while the sea temperature is measured off the end of the pier, or a nearby groyne if the pier is closed.

Up in White Rock Gardens there is a Stevenson screen, an enclosure with louvered sides open to the air but preventing direct sunlight reaching the instruments. Here an electric thermometer records the temperature over a 24-hour period and draws a graph from which the maximum temperature for the day can be read. A wet bulb thermometer provides readings from which the relative humidity is calculated. Rainfall is monitored using a rain gauge located nearby.

Finally the hours of sunshine are monitored by a Campbell-Stokes sunshine recorder on the roof of the museum off Bohemia Road.

An inquisitive gull once shredded the card in the sunshine recorder on which the sun burns a trace of its presence, the team leader Bill Montgomery told HOT, but the card is now well protected from such unwanted interference.

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