Wet August brings curtain down on cooler-than-average summer

Updated

A cool and wet August has brought to an end a mixed summer of weather, according to meteorologists.

Despite a dry and sunny June and a brief heatwave at the beginning of July temperatures overall look set to be cooler than average.

The Met Office said that 2015 was expected to be cooler than either last year or 2013 and it has also been rather wetter than average.

"In general the weather has been dominated by a westerly flow from the Atlantic, bringing often cool and rather wet conditions, especially in the north and west, with the south east generally experiencing the best of any warm, dry, sunny spells," a Met Office spokeswoman said.

"Using provisional figures up to August 26 and then assuming average conditions for the final few days of the month, Met Office statistics show the UK mean temperature for this summer will be around 14C. This is 0.4C below the long-term average.

"Rainfall overall is slightly higher than average, with the UK so far having seen 271mm of rain, which is 13% above the long-term average.

"Rainfall from the final few days of August is likely to increase this number slightly further.

"However, across southern and eastern England this rain has often come from short, heavy downpours and these have been interspersed with some fine, dry days."

When looking over the whole summer, the statistics mask some big variations between months.

June had an unseasonably unsettled start but finished drier and sunnier than average.

But in July records were broken when a temperature of 36.7C was recorded at Heathrow - a new best for July and the country's highest recorded temperature since August 2003.

The weather so far in August has continued to be fairly mixed, with some fine days interspersed with more unsettled periods of weather.

Overall August has only been slightly wetter than average but due to heavy and thundery downpours in southern England some areas have seen notably high totals of rainfall.

Cornwall and much of the south coast have seen more than double their average rainfall so far this month.

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