After a variable July, this August was kinder to the vacanciers and was one of the best in our 15 years here. Indeed, at times it was a bit too hot, with a 10-day heatwave when temperatures nudged 40°C. The downside was a series of thunderstorms. They had us nervously unplugging all our electronic equipment and shutting down the electricity.
Every month I post an update on how the weather has been in our corner of southwest France, based on the statistics we have kept since 1998. To see the other weather posts, please click on ‘Weather’ under the Topics tab in the right-hand sidebar.
Here are the figures.
Weather assessment for August
A quick reminder of our subjective weather assessment: we assign each day a plus if it’s fine, a minus if it’s bad and a zero if it’s indifferent or we can’t decide. In August there were:
Pluses – 27
Zeros – 2
Minuses – 2
The chart shows the percentage of plus days each August for the past 15 years (the line is the trend). Only two previous Augusts have been equally good, while 12 have been worse – much worse in some cases.
Although we often complain about our swimming pool, it did come into its own this month. The water temperature even got up to 31°C one day, which is unusual in August when the sun is no longer so high. We enjoyed several late-night swims, cooling off before going to bed.
Rainfall
Our rainfall stats go back to August 2004. This year, we had 72 mm of rain compared with the average of 65.5 mm, largely because of a couple of thunderstorm downpours. It rained on 7 days as opposed to the average of 8.1 days. The total for the year to date is 524 mm, about 96% of the average (547.4 mm), so it has caught up a bit.
We were glad to get some rain since the garden was looking very parched, not assisted by the canicule (heatwave).
September has started sunny but fresh. In fact the temperatures have almost halved in the space of a week. Here’s a dicton (saying) about the month.
En septembre, sois prudent, achète bois et vêtement. Be prudent in September: buy wood and clothes.
Well, the wood is in hand. We had 8 cubic metres delivered and are halfway through cutting it up for the wood burner. I hope we shan’t need to light it for a while.
Copyright © 2012 Life on La Lune, all rights reserved
Life on La Lune 
Our weather was pretty variable, perking up towards the end of the month. Now it’s gorgeous after two cold and rainy days which followed a hot spell. Never know which clothes to wear.
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For us, August was generally hot. September has started well with just a little rain in the past day or so and cooler temperatures in the mornings. But we’re still swimming – the pool is around 24C. And next week promises to be hot still. September and October are now among the best months of the year.
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We have a lawn that looks like yours. We got the high temperatures too but sadly didn’t get the rain. The veg are very sad and the trees have pretty much given up and gone into autumn mode already. Generally we have lots of thunderstorms in the summer with heavy rain and hail but they must have all come to you this year!
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Our lawn has greened up a bit recently with the rain 10 days ago and the cooler mornings and evenings. But, as always, it’s very dry and we desperately need more rain. We had a lot of thunder storms this year in August, but that’s not uncommon.
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