Summer months were the 'warmest locally since before 1953'

The summer months have been the ‘warmest locally since before 1953’, a retired Maidenhead-based meteorologist has revealed.

Dr Roger Brugge, a former meteorologist at the University of Reading, said that despite the ‘cooler end to August’, summer (from June to August) was ‘marginally cooler than in 2022.

But it was otherwise the ‘warmest locally since before 1953’.

Dr Brugge said that with 101mm of rain, this was the driest summer since 2022 when 78mm of rain fell.

But it was ‘much wetter’ than in 2018 when 60mm of rain fell.

He revealed that there have been ‘many drier summers over the last hundred years locally’, with 1995 when 32mm of rain fell at Boyn Hill, remaining ‘the driest over that time’.

August has seen an average temperature of 18.8 degrees Celsius, which is ‘slightly cooler’ than last year, when the average temperature was 19 degrees Celsius.

This was mainly due to some cool nights which led to the night-time minimum temperatures being 0.1 degrees Celsius lower than normal, Mr Brugge revealed.

He added that August was the ‘coolest of the three summer months at Boyn Hill this year’.

In August, only 0.1mm of rainfall had been recorded at Boyn Hill by Monday, August 25.

However, some heavy downpours during the last week of the month led to the monthly total increasing to 22.7mm, which is about 40 per cent of the normal August total.

It was still the ‘driest August locally since 2003’, Dr Brugge revealed.

August was sunnier than usual, with 211.3 hours of bright sunshine recorded, and was the sunniest since 2022.

The total rainfall so far this year has been 307.8mm locally, with almost a quarter of this falling in January.

This is a decrease compared to the expected 411mm.

Across spring and summer, there was 156mm of rainfall, which is ‘barely half of the normal amount expected’, he revealed.

There were 698 hours of sunshine this summer.

However, several summers in the recent record have been sunnier, Dr Brugge explained, an example most recently being the summer of 2022 when there was 725 hours of sunshine.