For the third straight summer, the UK Met Office has forecast hot weather using their state of the art computer models. Summer 2007 and 2008 were complete washouts, ranking as two of the most miserable, rainy summers on record.
Summer 2007 – a wet season
Wet summer could end with a bang
29 August 2008
Forecasters at the Met Office are predicting that that final day of the summer could end with heavy rain and thunderstorms affecting some parts of the country this weekend … … Within the UK some local rainfall records have been broken, especially across parts of Northern Ireland and Scotland where flooding severely affected road and rail transport. Provisional rainfall figures show that Northern Ireland had its wettest August since 1914 .
The current summer isn’t looking much better. Here is the forecast from UK Weather Online.
Do you want summer?
Issued: 0900hrs Friday 5th June 2009
Duty forecaster: Simon Keeling & Captain Bob
If you’re requiring rain you’ll be in luck, if you’re wishing for summer, then perhaps don’t hold your breath!
My sister tells me that in Merstham, Surrey, England, it was 17c
In the Isle of Wight (also UK and an allegedly warm spot) it is currently lunchtime and 14.5c, which is 58f. We had several days warmer than this in March!
I know it’s early days, but the Met Office’s “barbecue summer ™” is looking a bit slow off the blocks!
Funny how “hot” is opposed to “wet”. Would be like saying “someone predicted the winter to be cold, but in fact it has been dry”.
“Flanagan (08:40:57) :
Funny how “hot” is opposed to “wet”. Would be like saying “someone predicted the winter to be cold, but in fact it has been dry”.”
It’s funny how Al Gore stated, not a prediction, that the Arctic ice would be gone in 5 years (Circa 2013). Now that *is* funny.
Flanagan (08:40:57) :
Funny how “hot” is opposed to “wet”. Would be like saying “someone predicted the winter to be cold, but in fact it has been dry”.
You’re quite right. It can be wet and warm. In fact this is where a lot posters get it wrong. It’s often the case that it’s wet but temperatures are still above average particularly at night.
However, this thread is specifically about the Met Office forecast which starts as follows:
The coming summer is ‘odds on for a barbecue summer’ ….
I would suggest that means both warm and DRY.
barbecue summer
Carefully chosen words, I suspect. Anyone who’s ever held a barbecue here anticipates cold and wet…
Does snow in June count as Met Office “BBQ weather”?
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/weather/article6458067.ece
So much for “flaming June”. On Saturday, an overnight low temperature of minus 2.7C (27F) was recorded at Kinbrace in the Scottish Highlands. And on Friday, around 5cm (2in) of snow fell on the Highlands, enough to build snowmen, and snow also covered some of the highest hills in Cumbria and Northumberland.
So it’s cold and snowy in June in the Scottish Highlands…
Mae (02:32:49) : […] somebody who grew up with real summers and who spends every summer in Scotland longing for some heat.
OK, Scotland… That will make tomatoes a bit of a problem 8-\
I live in an area which seems to get far less rain than normal in Scotland – maybe a slightly milder microclimate – and I had been looking forward to planting some fruit trees and fruiting plants as well as roses, even the lavender was doing well for a while but my garden seems to be running a bit late this year.
My guess is that it will be “running a bit late” for the next decade or three…
E.M.Smith – any resources online where I can check out good dwarf varieties for fruits/tomatoes/roses that can cope with the wind here and the lack of sun hours and maybe the colder weather heading my way?
Well, one problem you will have with the online stuff is import restrictions to the E.U. and G.B…. so you are better served by a local garden shop or nursery that knows your area very well (and local garden clubs can be a godsend – folks who’ve spent the last 40 years banging on “that cold tomato problem” and can tell you exactly what works – or that nothing works…)
Fruits: I would expect (and could be very wrong!) stone fruits and apples (and maybe a few pears) that can stand winter cold and don’t need a lot of heat to ripen. That, and various bramble berries – like raspberries.
Roses? Gads, there’s a million of them and I don’t know much about cold ones… but generally the older roses were more hardy. The Yellow Rose of Texas stands up to some frozen Canada Express winters and cooking summers and we had an old “rose hips” red rose of unknown type but planted about 90 years ago that didn’t seem to care what weather happened (from 110 F + to 19 F and below…). So I’d look for old varieties.
Most anything planted where you are will have trouble growing, so I think you will get a ‘dwarf’ no matter what you plant… If not, you can always prune it to a Bonsai 😉
Tomatoes are going to need a “hot house”. I’m in California a bit “in” from the Coast Range mountains. In a hot summer, I can grow most tomatoes. In a cool summer, cold tolerant only. We are far warmer than Scotland…
So if you really want tomatoes, build a small greenhouse. (They can be as small as 1 or 2 meters on a side…). I’d start with Siberia and Siberian. (Two slightly different very cold tolerant tomatoes) and maybe a “Stupice” Czech tomato and work up from there. Even a “cold frame” against the house facing the sun could do it.
These folks: http://www.seedfest.co.uk/about/about.html
say:
In 2007, we hope to also introduce our first introduction of our own exclusive breeding in the guise of a brand new cherry tomato we call “Highland Lass” which was developed during the time we spent on the north east coast of Scotland. The Highland Lass tomato is a very fine, very small fruited cherry tomato that sets its fruit even in Scotland’s very bitter climate. This new cherry tomato variety descended in part from the famous British tomato variety “Moneymaker” and has been cultivated purely for the last three years without any variation in leaf-type, fruit size, fruit color or other features. Highland Lass is very hardy and resists even very cool temperatures with high winds and thick fogs, having been trialed strictly on an outdoor basis in Scotland’s brutal climate with no assistance of cover.
So you might well have a chance at some cherry tomatoes outdoors…
I’d ask those folks (who seem very focused on cold conditions) what fruit trees might work too…
And here:
http://www.thegardeningwebsite.co.uk/butterworths-organic-nursery-speciality-fruit-trees-scottish-apple-varieties-i115.html
Lists a Scottish Apple.
Beyond that, all I can suggest is a google of “Scottish fruit trees” or “Scotland fruit tree” and see what pops up.