A taste of King George II's British summer

In what, so far, has been a decent warm summer, the first real plume of continental warmth and humidity is expected later this week.

It’s a classic British summer set-up, apparently first noted by none other than King George II in the early part of the 18^th century, describing the British summer as three fine days and a thunderstorm.

Professor Hubert Lamb, who studied summer weather patterns over 100 years, also identified the type of weather that will develop this week as the ‘thundery and cyclonic’ phase of the British summer.

This phase more often than not would become established, according to Lamb, from mid to late July, lasting into August.

Temperatures in London and the south-east could quite easily reach around 30C (86F) by Friday with 27C (81F) certainly achievable in our region, more especially across parts of South Yorkshire, Lincolnshire and the North Midlands.

This would make it the hottest spell of weather so far this summer.

But this high humidity, high energy air will be accompanied by falling pressure ahead of a cold front, all the ingredients needed for some lively thunderstorms to break out, which could lead to localised flooding on Friday and into Saturday.

King George II would, no doubt, have been unsurprised to learn of this sequence of British summer weather.

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On the weather show this week, I discuss the climate, flora and fauna of the earth in pre-historic times, which you can hear on the iplayer by clicking here.