Notes

Abstract

THE present summer promises to be one of the coldest on record, but for rainfall it is likely to be several inches short of the measurement in 1903, when at Greenwich the total fall for the three months, June to August, was 16-16 inches. So far, the highest temperature at Greenwich since the commencement of June is 77.7°, on July 18, whilst at the observing station of the Meteorological Office, in St. James's Park, the highest temperature is 75°. The Greenwich records only show three days in June with the thermometer above 70°, and the observations since 1841, a period of sixty-eight years, only show one June, 1860, with an equally small number of warm days; but as recently as 1907 June only had five days with the thermometer above 70°. For the first twenty-seven days of July there have been only fifteen days with a temperature above 70°; this is precisely the same number as during the whole month in 1907, whilst in 1879 there were only eight equally warm days, and in 1888 only twelve. In 1907, the summer of which approximates somewhat to that of the present year, there were twenty days in August with a temperature of 70° and above. In 1868, which is about the warmest summer on record, there were in the three months seventy-seven days above 70° and thirty-three days above 80°, whilst in the coldest summer, 1860, there were only twenty-three days with 70° or above, and the sheltered thermometer on no day touched 80°. Taking England as a whole, the temperature this summer has been largely deficient of the average, and the rainfall has been generally in excess, but not to any great extent, whilst the sunshine is everywhere deficient.