The weirdest summer ever

[thy]

You know I normally... okay once told you: In Denmark the summer weather change more or less every day and we get a lot of cool days with rain.
Not this year, winter was very mild and spring was early and warm, For the first time ever I had to hose water the garden in April, then we god a hard frost start May, never seen frost after mid April in this area in the 33 years I have lived here.
Then summer was hot, hot and dry, May, June and July each got one inch of rain in total, August and September hardly got anything at all ... until this Friday it was bone dry, hostas and even daylilies were suffering, then we got rain, rain and rain 3 inches with in 36 hours and more in the other days... my garden may be saved, my hostas hopefully got the water in time to come back in okay size next year.
Now it is late October and the fire place have been lid for the last 2 days and I expect to turn on the heat with in a week or so.. That's very late here.
With temps between 26 and 31 we have had a lot of turists coming up from Holland, France and even Itally.. France got a lot of cold rain this year.

I know some areas of the US have been vet.. stolen our rain I think How have your summer in the garden been ?

Pia

[Carol O]

Pia, I have lived in SWWashington 35 years and this is the first summer I wished I had a swimming pool. It was hot and dry from May on. August had a week of over 100. The lawns got really brown. So we didn't take your water.
Finally it did start raining about 3 weeks ago and it is amazing how fast the lawns greened up.
This week we have had some record highs (70) and we are 10 degrees warmer than normal this time of year. The other night we broke a record for having a warm night. It is very strange.

[kHT]

Thy, I'm here south of CarolO and let me tell you it's been so hot we thought we were living in TX again. Finally the rain started and we are seeing signs of
fall/winter with the temps in the 50s where they need be. Doing the last of the fall clean up in a t-shirt has been nice! I know it won't last but at least it's
been a nice change. I have the yard almost done but others just aren't doing so.

[thy]

100 to hot for me on my ole days.. 90 was more than enough if I wanted to do anything okay to hot for me to do anything except sitting in the shade or being on the beach.
Grass was brown here too, not at all normal here, but did not dare to ask for rain... when I have asked on this forum, I have gotten rain for weeks or a month ... and I only wanted one day a week
High 50' here too and only dropping a bit in the evenings.
So is it the Michigan and Ohio folks who have stolen all our water ?

[kHT]

Thy, we have gotten almost 1 3/4" of rain today here in the Portland Metro area. I'm not going to send it your way as we are so
behind for the year. They say rain for a solid week so we should catch up fast if it keeps this up like today's rain. You can have the heat
it was to hot for me this year. I love it when we are in the 70s and cooler at night.


Morning All!! Another wet day in the PNW and I forgot how much fun it is to garden in the rain!! Pia, it was so nice the last half hour to enjoy the cool
wet rain as it dropped out of the sky. High winds are to come in later today so I'll be back out picking up the leaves that blow in. Hair is soaked so I think
it's time to get dry clothes on and dry up a bit.

[Tigger]

Summer was strange here on the other extreme: slow to get started, and not very hot once it did. We did have nasty storms in spring (notably, significant hail damage over a wide area), but the summer was mild, and about normal in overall precipitation. Only one short heat wave. Perhaps most remarkably, it was a sort of "Camelot" summer: rain fell during the week, but we had an unbelievable string of gorgeous weekends. Great for both gardening and entertaining. On the other hand, such cool weather meant it was NOT a good year for tomatoes in the garden.

Likewise, the recent months have been mild with not much to mention weather-wise. We have a weak sort of Nor'easter going on now, but no storms (tropical or otherwise). It was chilly this week but still well above frost temps; what few annuals we plant are still holding on.

Summer was also weird for us because we took a big vacation in the middle of summer: 2 weeks in Romania. (A Romanian friend—a school teacher here—went back to visit his family for the first time in 10 years, and we, along with a small group of friends, toured much of the country.) Deer only got to a few of the hostas while we were gone.

Summer was capped for us by getting married (!) on the day we celebrated as our 30th anniversary: August 19. It only became legal in Pennsylvania in May, but planning for the group vacation took precedence over planning for the wedding. Then a few weeks ago we had a big party to celebrate; almost 90 people, including my parents and siblings (and 2 of 3 spouses thereof).

[thy]

David, so glad you got the wedding, I and the old ones know how important it is for you, so .. Congratulation to both of you.

Camelot summer, never heard the impression before, but here it was cloudy most weekends

Ohhh, we have gotten rain and rain and ore rain... the country have changed from a red alert dery zone to a dripping wet green zone.
Do not know if it will do for the hostas to get the moisture so late... but better late than never I think

[kHT]

Thy, we have very wet Nov. here and it really helps the hostas. Hope yours do well next season.

Back to the wind here, third day of high winds and I'm still bagging my neighbors' leaves, yesterday was 4--40 gallon bags! They say we could see !

[rosemarie]

No snow here yet but in Redmond they had a pile of it. Just rain, dropping leaves and cold here!

[kHT]

Thanks for checking in Rosemarie, isn't this wind terrible? We got a teasing of snow but it didn't last. Still picking up my neighbors leaves here. One less tree to drop leaves as they had a huge maple drop in their back yard. Dumb folks had no clue, what can you say when you plant a tree over your drain field? If cold isn't much fun either, stay warm!

[Tigger]

For Pia, the lyrics by Alan Jay Lerner.

A law was made a distant moon ago here:
July and August cannot be too hot.
And there's a legal limit to the snow here
In Camelot.
The winter is forbidden till December
And exits March the second on the dot.
By order, summer lingers through September
In Camelot.
Camelot! Camelot!
I know it sounds a bit bizarre,
But in Camelot, Camelot
That's how conditions are.
The rain may never fall till after sundown.
By eight, the morning fog must disappear.
In short, there's simply not
A more congenial spot
For happily-ever-aftering than here
In Camelot.

So in our "Camelot" summer, no rain was permitted in the weekend (and indeed, July and August were not too hot, notably during those weekends).

However, we're clearly not having a Camelot fall, with mid-winter temperatures expected this week (barely reaching 0°C on Wednesday and Thursday!).

David

[thy]

Thank's David, it's beautiful... and Camelot can't be that far from me

You got SNOW in lots I think ... from what I could see on the TV

Aren't December yet

[rosemarie]

'Camelot' is what I called this year too! It seemed to fit, then we had about a week of nights about 23 degrees (very unusual for us) and eastern Oregon had a load of snow, but here in Western Oregon-zero, just COLD! Now is supposed to start raining. And we got just enough wind to de-leaf all my trees! (I know, that's not a word!) So okay, what's'next?

[Linda P]

Our weather year here was fairly uneventful. It took some time to warm up this spring, and in my area crop planting was delayed by temperatures and rainfall. Then we had a very nice summer, not too hot, with adequate rains. One of my friends and I were also talking about a 'Camelot' summer. Funny how a tune from a Broadway show has become so pervasive! We had a very dry period in August that stretched in to early September. I hauled out the hoses and watered for several weeks. Then the rains returned and I put the hoses away, unlike last year when they were still out as the cold settled in. On November 10, the temps were in the 60's here, but we rapidly descended in to winter, with highs below freezing by the end of the week, and lows dropping down to the teens and single digits. That is about 30 degrees below our average, and it seems to be locked in. They're predicting a warm up for the weekend, in to the 40's with quite a bit of rain, then back to the cold and snow by the first part of the week. It looks like winter is here to stay.