Summer coming to an end

Like it or not summer is coming to an end, at least meteorologically speaking. The 3 calendar months, June, July and August constitute summer but hopefully there will be plenty more 'summer-like' days to come during the autumn. With 10 days left until the end of the month it looks, assuming that there will be more than 10mm of rain before the 31st, as if this summer will be rated as the poorest since 1988. So how poor was that summer compared to this one. Firstly, in June 1988 there were only 25mm of rain against 82mm this last June. There were only 9 days with rain falling but in June this year there were 17 rain days. However, in June 1988 there were 18 days when the temperature failed to reach 20 C., but this year there were only 16 cool days. In July 1988 there were over 65mm of rain measured compared with 52mm this year. The rain fell on 17 days in 1988 but only on 12 days this year. There were 15 days with maxima below 20C in 1988 but only 10 days this year. August 1988 was not wet, just 29mm recorded but temperatures failed to reach 20C on 9 days. So far this month we have had over 30mm of rain but temperatures have only failed to touch the 20C mark on 3 days. It's still possible that this summer will descend to the level of 1988, but probably not.