June Review / July Preview

It's time for a familiar refrain: we've come to the end of another warm month.

In terms of daily highs, June 2016 was second place after 2002. Almost the whole month was above 20°C, with 26 days breaking that mark. But we didn't have a single day that cracked 30°C.

Back in May we had 15 days above 20°C and 6 days above 25°C, and at the time I'd said that was about typical of June. But this June was still a lot warmer than this May.

Since I started this blog, every month I give a short summary, and here is a recap of all of them:

• January: not as many cold days as normal, but not as many warm ones either
• February: tied for warmest, with 2002 
• March: second most days above freezing, after 2010
• April: top-3, and similar to 2005 and 2006
• May: more days above 25°C than in any of the last 20 years
• June: second warmest after 2002

Outside of January, there's a definite theme there, with 2016 consistently ranking in the top one, two or three of the last 20 years. In a few weeks I'll take a closer look at just how warm 2016 has been.

In terms of lows, we had no nights below 0°C or 5°C. But 2002 and 2006 both had more warm nights.

As for July:

Most years will have a few days above 30°C. And we're often very close to having everyday break 20°C, but even last year which was the closest had one day that only reached 18°C.

For a sense of how things have bounced around over the last month:

May was really a rollercoaster - swinging from highs to lows and back again. But June mostly settled down, with a few well-above-average days at the beginning of the month. After that though, temperatures stayed mostly between the 25th and 75th percentiles. There were only 5 days with highs below the 20-year average, and 8 days with below-average lows.

According to climate scientists this historic El Niño has just ended, so we'll have to see how things change in the next few months.