Local Forecasts, History & Records
Summer Weather in Durham UK
I don’t think I would be being too harsh on Summer 2019 if I said I thought it was slow getting started. After the first half of June, the prospects of summer were looking dire. There had already been over 100mm of rain by the time we’d reached the half way point. There had already been 5 days with more …
Noctilucent Clouds over Durham City, June 17th/18th 2019 by Mike Ridley Photography Some of you eagle-eyed skywatchers will have noticed a ghostly glow in the sky on the way back from the pub in recent days. Was it real? Was it just an illusion caused by too much Gin? No, what you saw was real and is called ‘Noctilucence’. It …
July 2nd 2018. The height of the summer. This view shows Old Durham Gardens, just to the East of Durham City. We were in the middle of a long hot dry spell, where no rain fell at all for about 3 weeks. (21st June – 15th July). The dry spell broke with thunderstorms and heavy rain on 16th July. A …
This incredible Shelf Cloud, looking like an alien spacecraft from the film “Independence Day” came in over Durham in July 2015. Although it looked very threatening, on this occasion not much rain fell from it. It’s the best example I’ve seen of a Shelf Cloud in the UK. On 1st July 2015, the temperature hit 30 degC in Durham, …
In contrast to everything that had gone before, it was the warmest July in Durham since 2006 and therefore the second warmest month on record at Durham since 1850. The absolute maximum (28.4°C) on the 9th was the warmest day at Durham since 18th July 2006. Only 5 days had a maximum below 20°C with 5 days above 25°C. The …
Flooding at Croxdale, near Durham in the phenomenally wet summer of 2012. The River Browney, a tributary of the Wear, snakes past the hotel and is prone to flooding. Flood prevention here has stopped things getting as bad as previous years. The hotel has been flooded out on many occasions in the past (see photo below). June was particularly poor. …
Some of the worst flooding in recent years was experienced in Durham during the very wet July of 2009. The River Wear burst it’s banks in the city and riverside businesses were inundated after more than 2” of rain fell in one day (64.2mm was recorded on the 17th), on top of already saturated ground. The most extraordinary weather episode …
There’s a lot of talk going around about summer 2008 being the ‘worst in living memory’. Well, I hate that phrase, because it is basically worthless. The human memory is horribly fallible when it comes to remembering what happened when, especially regarding the weather. The memory filters out things, depending on the activity being undertaken. It also has no concept …
June 2007 This month has proved to be quite a wet one, with 80.0mm of rain falling (although 111.8mm recorded in Durham) – not a remarkably high total (146% of the 1971-2000 mean), but considering the first 11 days of the month were completely dry it’s quite noteable. Only two dry days were experienced after that. It could have been …
July 2006 This month has created history as it is the warmest month on record. The records go back to 1850 at Durham, and this month has beaten July 1983 to the highest monthly mean temperature. To put things into perspective, the average temperature for July 2006 is 2 degC above that recorded as an average for July 1976, a …
After a really warm night on 9th August 2004 (minimum was 19.9 degC) at my weather station in Ferryhill, the next two days were extraordinarily wet. In fact the whole month was a soggy mess and about as bad as a month can get in summer. Midnight-midnight 9th August 37.2mm 10th August 30.4mm Two consecutive days with > 30mm …
