While driving yesterday, I kept hearing this report that "2018 has been the hottest summer on record – for England."
I know that the BBC tends to be quite London-centric, quite England-centric, but certainly where I live, in Scotland, that statistic does not apply!
The reports did also say that it was the joint hottest summer on record – with 1976, 2003 and 2006 – for other parts of the UK. Even that I find a bit questionable. OK, it might have been. Certainly the first part of the summer was very hot, and people kept saying to each other, "I wonder if this is going to beat the records for 1976?" - that's still remembered as the hottest summer ever, for anyone who was alive then!
But after June, it went downhill! So when you've had two months of rainy, cold weather, when you've been having to wear your jumper, even though it's summer, and then you keep hearing that it's the hottest summer on record, you do start to question things a bit!
I know, it's that typical thing of Scotland being just a side project - but in fact Scotland makes up 25 percent of the British Isles in terms of landmass. England has 41 percent of the landmass.
Source
So I'm starting to wonder if England is getting all the global warming.
We had very hot weather this summer, between May and June. Those were glorious months. We just had day after day after day of hot weather – and that seems to be quite typical. I would say to anyone who lives overseas, if you're planning a trip to Scotland, come in May. In June it sometimes all breaks down, but this June was lovely too
As a hillwalker, I pay a lot of attention to the weather. I'm always looking at weather forecasts. After the beginning of July - after the first few days - the weather started to become more typical for Scotland, with occasional sunny days, but lots of rain. I went camping with a friend at the end of July, because we thought the good weather was coming back. The weather forecast looked positive. But as the departure date approached, the forecast started to change, and we ended up having thunderstorms at first, then lots and lots and lots of rain… then my friend got fed up with the rain and left.
The rainy weather just didn't let up, and on the fourth night I was really cold, despite being in my sleeping bag wearing all my clothes. I decided to pack it in, as I didn't want to risk getting a cold.
So that was the end of July, and it had been a pretty rainy month overall, with not very high temperatures.
Then in August, I kept thinking, "We're going to get this heatwave back!". But it never came back. It was just rain, rain, rain. I was looking at the weather forecast – rain. Looking at the weather forecast again – more rain. Winds! High winds.
We did have the occasional nice day, and I did have some nice days in the mountains, when – maybe the sun shone for a few hours. But generally, I remember August 2018 as being one of the more miserable summer months that I can remember.
The Guardian has also been writing about this, and this is what it says:
The summer of 2018 will be remembered for a six-week spell from the end of June to the second week of August when daytime temperatures in parts of the country consistently topped 30˚C (86˚F).
Well, I can tell you this: we did not have temperatures of 30˚C in August or in July – maybe in early July, in the first few days. But certainly not in late July or August.
So that is just meaningless for us in Scotland.
And also, don't forget – we had a very cold winter!
Special microclimate
So I have to conclude that England is getting all the global warming. England has a special microclimate of its own, and that gets all the headlines!
I'm actually going to look into this further, because I suspect that towards the end of this year, we're going to see smaller reports saying that actually 2018 was almost the hottest summer on record, maybe the second or third hottest summer. I don't know, because I don't know what exact dates they're using.
You get these sensationalist headlines, and it does make me feel quite sceptical. I've recently been reading a book about the first man to climb all the Munros and all the Munro tops in Scotland, between the years 1917 and 1923. He kept a diary, and on a couple of occasions he was talking about the unusually hot weather. I think you do get phases where you get hot weather.
I'm not saying that global warming is nonsense. I just don't know – I do question it. Especially when you get headlines like this, that only focus on one part of the country – 41 percent of the total landmass of the British Isles.
My video is at DLive