The Remarkable Month of July 2013

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Nicholas Gardner
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Joined: Sat Dec 12, 2015 8:11 pm
Location: Rural riverside valley location near the village of Newton Poppleford and 2 km from the sea.
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The Remarkable Month of July 2013

Post by Nicholas Gardner » Thu Jul 21, 2016 7:22 pm

This July (2016) is starting to be a rather lovely, warm, dry and increasingly sunny month. But it cannot even compare in anyway to one of the most remarkable summer months I have ever experienced and that is the July of 2013.

After a cold spring followed a pleasant, dry and fairly sunny June. Then July started a little unsettled but nothing unusual except for a rather cold day on the 2nd with a maximum of 15.6°C. Not that surprising given the cold spring and still unusually cold sea surface temperatures.

Then on the 4th a large area of high presure settled over southern England and then gradually spread northwards. It was this high pressure that stayed with us until the 25th, culminating in a thundery breakdown. By the 7th the temperatures had climbed into the high 20s and low 30s, and they stayed that way until the 23rd.

The most remarkable feature (apart form the persistent heat) was the sunshine. The cold SSTs may have been a contributory factor but the sunshine was unbroken from the 5th to the 23rd (allowing for a few foggy/misty starts due to my river valley location). That is a total of 19 consecutive days when the sun beat down in all of its glory.

At the beginning of the hot spell we were told that the summer was likely to be cool due to the very cold SSTs but many people do not realise that SSTs can be quite dynamic and warm very quickly given the right conditions. By the end of June SSTs were still nearly 2.0°C below normal in Lyme Bay but by the end of July they were 0.5°C above.

The month of July ended up with a total of 328 hours of sunshine with 292 hours occurring from the 5th to the 26th, that's an average of 13.3 hours a day. The summer continued in a similar warm and settled way with August being another dry, sunny and rather warm month. After the poor summers from 2007 to 2012, this was a most welcome change and certainly it was the best summer since 2005.

Temperature and rainfall for July 2013
july2013temp.jpg
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Sunshine, solar radiation and UV for July 2013
july2013sun.jpg
july2013sun.jpg (108.9 KiB) Viewed 16958 times
A pressure chart for the 5th of July 2013
july5th2013isobar.jpg
july5th2013isobar.jpg (153.68 KiB) Viewed 16958 times
Otter Valley Weather
Near Newton Poppleford, Sidmouth - Devon
50:41N 3:17 W; 20 metres AMSL; Station Grade B-BAAA37
http://www.ottervalleyweather.me.uk

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