Does a long, hot summer mean a harsh winter ahead?

Not at all. Were you to plough through the Met Office's records of the past 50 years, you would find that long, hot summers are just as likely to be followed by a mild winter as a cold one. Winter rainfall is equally hard to predict on the strength of summer weather alone. "As far as we can tell, it's completely random," says Derek Hardy at the Met Office. "You really wouldn't want to put money on it."

If you wanted to delve into the dubious realms of the statistically insignificant though, there might just be a slight tendency towards a cooler winter after a hot summer if the conditions fall right, says Hardy.

A long, hot summer means a high-pressure weather system has been lurking overhead or nearby. High pressure systems force air downwards and, since rain clouds typically need rising air to form, the skies above high pressure systems usually remain cloud free.

If the high-pressure system persists into the autumn and early winter, the clear skies also continue as the days get shorter, giving long, cloudless nights as winter approaches. With no cloud cover, the heat radiated from the ground over the longer nights escapes, making the land cool more than usual.

"Without the cloud, you lose the blanket that keeps the ground warm at night," says Hardy. The result is a colder winter, so long as the high-pressure weather system doesn't move on.

Since mid-July a high pressure system has dominated Britain's weather, leading to few days of cloud and rain. If the high pressure remains where it is, we could be in for a cold winter, but there are already signs it is moving on.

"At the moment, the high pressure is slinking away to the west and allowing a north-westerly wind to come in and take over," says Hardy.

Sadly, that doesn't mean we're in for a particularly mild winter. In this situation, the loss of the high pressure will give way to cooler winds from the north-west, bringing rain from the Atlantic with them.

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