Summer Of 1989
Taneka Tarring
July 1989 was the best month of the summer and it was the perfect combination of hot dry and sunny weather. With a CET of 18.2 it was the hottest month since the 1983 and about the same as July 1976 the peak of 34.2 at Heathrow on the 22nd was the hottest day since 1976 the first time 90 degrees had been achieved since 1983 and also the hottest temperature of the decade. The mean maximum of 21.7 at Edinburgh airport was the highest since records began at Heathrow the mean maximum was 25.8
the thing that made this summer so great was that every month of the extended summer had a lot of warm to hot sunny and dry weather unlike a lot of more remembered summers there was not really a bad month of the entire extended summer
Summerlover2006 It was an excellent summer here, as you say, not often mentioned and overshadowed by 76, 95 and 18.. but for consistency and length probably beats all. May featured a very warm spell. September was dry and warm as well. Indeed 1989 with exception of April and to an extent Nov and Dec was exceptionally mild, sunny and overall one of the driest on record.
Summer 1990 was good, but a summer of 2 halves, best conditions came second half July, first half August. I was away first half Aug but remember the first 2 weeks or so of school holidays brought day after day of hot sunny dry weather.
Good topic, thank you! Yes, it was an epic summer, I was still young and could enjoy the heat, unlike now with my health conditions. I do recall long, hot, sunny periods...and a series of cricket Test matches, Eng/ Aus, at the end of an era for England and the start of an era for Aus (!). Weather wise, I loved it. Purely personally, mostly because it was the summer that I met my then red-hot girlfriend who somehow agreed to become my wife (?!), the summer of 1995 surpassed it. But back in the day when I could enjoy heat, I loved it 1989...1990...1995. Now...sadly, I can't take heat....which is of course more intense now anyway.
1989 really was a great summer but personally i would put 1984 ahead of it despite the statistics being slightly the opposite just how it felt at the time.Along with 1983 a trio of great summers.I would put both 1984 and 1989 better than 1990 with 1990 ranking alongside 1983.None of the trio of great 80s summers were bettered until 2018 except for 1995.The most distinct thing i remember was after almost 5 years of of wet or relatively poor weather from summer 1984 it suddenly switched in April 1989 to dry and the land that summer is something we hadnt seen since 1984.
Then followed a very wet period until Spring 95... with a record dry Apr-Aug period and the infamous hot late June to late August period.. indeed the April 95 to April 97 is I believe the driest 24 month period on record. Mother nature has a habit of balancing itself out, drought and flood wise!
1989 certainly had concerns about water shortages owing to drought with the very good summer following a very good May. At Herstmonceux where I worked at the time, there were 130 consecutive days of sunshine from 2nd May to 8th September inclusive.
Weather-history Summer 94 and 96 were decent but wet at times, notably 1994 with a lot of thunder. We were on the brink of a very hot summer in 1994, Europe experienced one of its hottest. 1996 featured alot of warm dry and sunny weather but coming on the back of 1995 felt underwhelming.
I remember the weather suddenly flipping at the very start of May. Most of May was then anticyclonic with a pattern in the first half of warm-ups followed by weak cold fronts, cooldowns then warm-ups again. However from around the 14th to around the 23rd it was particularly sunny and hot. The only thundery activity came on May 24th when my last ever school cross-country run was cancelled as a result of the thunderstorm.
June started with a further 10 days of cool and rather cloudy weather and there was even some heavy rain at times, but then turned hot and sunny until the 26th. The last 4 days were unsettled, as was July 1st.
Warm and sunny weather then returned on July 2nd and for a couple of days there was low humidity and moderate temps, just marginally above normal. In an unusual turn of events (but one repeated in both 1993 and 1997 in May) a warm front moved westwards later in the week, introducing humid, cloudy, thundery weather. There was one day with isolated thundery showers but then on (I think) the evening of Friday 7th there was more intense thundery activity after dark, towards midnight. Sat 8th was dull with low cloud and extremely humid and I heard distant thunder again - was very reminiscent of thundery spells in the mountains in Alpine regions.
I returned on August 6th to warm, bright weather but with As cloud. A somewhat unsettled interlude followed for about a week with cloudier skies and occasional light rain but it had turned warmer and sunny by the weekend of the 18th/19th and most of the rest of the month remained that way albeit with occasional cloudy days.
Overall I would probably consider 1989 better even than 1995, as all three months had lengthy spells of warm, sunny weather whereas in 1995 we had to wait until around June 21st for the best of the weather, and there was a fairly lengthy more changeable spell from July 10th-19th in 1995.
Disagree with that one. June was bad (cool and cloudy, but not that wet) here but from not long into July a hot and sunny spell started which was even more pronounced than any of the individual spells in 1989 for longevity. If I remember right it was literally warm to hot, and sunny, here almost every day from around July 10 to August 10. I distinctly recall one single day at the end of July, the final Monday if I remember right, when it was cloudy and how strange it felt after weeks of hot sunshine. It was a very Mediterranean period and, with May and July 1989 and August 1995, was almost certainly one of the sunniest ever months I've experienced in the UK.
cheeky_monkey Would generally agree. I'd actually rate 1989 as even above 1995, due to each month having long sunny, anticyclonic spells (July 1995 was somewhat changeable at times albeit warm and sunny overall) and I would also agree with the high placing of 1990 (which is very much an underrated summer).
After graduation, my summer continued the same, happy, carefree trajectory. I remember going with my good buddy Tim Hernandez and his family to the Holiday Inn for the weekend of June 18th. Tim turned fourteen that weekend. I can pinpoint the exact date because we watched a boxing match between Tony Lopez and Tyrone Jackson. The fight was televised on NBC the Saturday afternoon we were there. I was already a big boxing fan, so these details stay hard wired in my head. Tim and I had a blast playing the video game Contra, making prank calls, and hanging out by the pool. Randomly calling hotel rooms claiming to be the ultimate party animal Spuds McKenzie was the gloriously goofy epitome of fourteen-year-old foolishness. It was great fun.
After we came back from that weekend, I would not see Tim until June 1993. That was it. I cannot remember why or the particulars. It just happened that way. He was not like my best friend Ranjit Rodericks. Ranjit and I hung out playing basketball and talked on the phone almost daily discussing the world of sport. Tim was not like my good friend Danny Nunez, where there were deep roots related to the years at Gospel Outreach. It was just a natural parting of the ways. Tim finished eighth grade at Gospel Outreach in 1989-1990 and eventually attended Sullivan High School where he played football and wrestled.
That summer, I spent time with my other grade school pals: John and Jonathan David. The curiously named brothers of Indian ethnicity had been my friends since sixth grade. They were also crazy about basketball. Their father, James David recognized my potential as a basketball player. James was an intelligent and articulate man who was keen on sport. He took us to a city park for a pickup game on a crowded court. I remember moving easily and fluid, feeling so good physically. At this point I was jumping up off of one foot and comfortably grabbing a 10-foot rim. I had reached the point where my coordination and strength were beginning to catch up with my six-foot frame. The weather was warm and we played for hours. It was competitive, yet carefree pickup basketball. The way I played reflected where I was at in my life: Happy, no pressures, doing what I enjoyed and was meant to do.
John, who graduated eighth grade with me, would continue to attend Gospel Outreach for high school. His younger brother by a year, Jonathan, would graduate from eighth grade at GO in 1990 and attended the now defunct Lutheran North High School on the north side of the city where he played football.
My love of boxing has also provided a way for me to keep track of timelines. I have a maniacally comprehensive memory of the fights and can easily look up the dates. On May 21st, I vividly recall watching Nigel Benn against Michael Watson on NBC. The fight took place under a circus tent outside London. The atmosphere was loud and feral, with ring entrances unlike anything you would see in the US.
July 1989 rolled around. Most summers, Danny Nunez and I would attend Lake Geneva Bible Camp in Wisconsin. It is about a ninety-minute drive north from Chicago and I remember each summer riding with the Nunez family in their Dodge Caravan. We would have a blast at this camp. One week of relentless outdoor activity. We would swim and play basketball, floor hockey, and tetherball.
You may be forgiven if you are not familiar with tetherball. It was a game where a leather ball, shaped like a volleyball but heavier, was attached to a rope that was in turn connected to a tall pole rooted in the ground. The game consisted of two players and would begin when one player would serve the ball as hard as they could to send the ball and the rope around the metal pole. The player on the other side would attempt to smash the ball back with an open palm or a fist to prevent the ball and rope from wrapping around. Each time the ball that was attached to the rope would wrap around the pole. The winner was determined when the ball had gone around so many times that the rope would be completely wrapped around the pole. It was an aggressive game, and we would pound the bejesus out of that ball.
c80f0f1006