Good weather for August? Don’t get your hopes up.

The curtain is falling on the month of July, meaning that we are soon to enter our last summer month of the year.

August is when we long for days of warmth and sunshine, before the evenings start to darken noticeably earlier.

And, of course, if you have children off school, you’ll be hoping for good weather so that they can get outside and not be driven mad by being stuck indoors.

However, out of all the summer months, August can be pretty unreliable, with our ideals of fun in the British sun never a guarantee.

August weather over past decade

I thought I’d have a little dig into the meteorological archive of the Met Office and see what each August over the past decade (2005-2014) has brought us, in terms of rainfall, temperature and sunshine.

For mean temperature (an average of day and night temperatures), it’s a 50-50 split, with half of the Augusts in the past decade having above normal temperatures and half below.

Rainfall proves a little more interesting, with seven Augusts in the past decade having above average rainfall – some significantly so, with 2008, 2009, 2012 and 2014 having rainfall 49, 29, 24 and 55 per cent above normal respectively.

Sunshine, unsurprisingly, ties in closely with the rainfall figures, with seven Augusts in the last decade having sunshine amounts below normal, although aside from two years, never by a huge degree.

So, in a nutshell, in the past decade, Augusts have generally been wetter than normal with below average sunshine.

What about August 2015?

If you’ve not been impressed with the weather that we’ve had during the past two weeks, then look away now, because more of the same is expected.

Whilst there will be a temporary burst of warmth and sunshine this weekend across eastern parts of England and Wales, by early next week, the cool weather will return.

The reason for this is that the jet stream is likely to spend the first half of August generally to the south of the UK, which puts us in cooler air and in the path of areas of low pressure.

It certainly won’t be raining all the time, with sunnier, warmer days, but any prolonged visits from high pressure, sunshine and warmth look unlikely. You could say that summer itself has gone on holiday, for now.

Don’t forget, you can get the latest forecast on the Channel 4 Weather website. I’ll also be posting regular updates on Twitter – @liamdutton