Have you ever started to do something on a regular basis and then you find you just can’t stop? That’s exactly what’s happening right here, right now, on this website. It’s time for my traditional Brisbane’s winter versus London’s summer weather comparison.
Brisbane’s winter versus London’s summer compared 2015
Yes, this particular head-to-head has been going on since I started this website so we have had seven battles in all before today. To say it has been an epic would be an understatement.
Here are the scores so far:
- 2008: Brisbane win; 1-0
- 2009: London win; 1-1
- 2010: London win; 1-2
- 2011: Brisbane win; 2-2
- 2012: Brisbane win; 3-2
- 2013: London win; 3-3
- 2014: London win; 3-4
As you can see Brisbane held its own up until 2013, a remarkable achievement when you consider we are comparing the weather in Brisbane during the very middle of winter with that of London when it is the height of summer there.
The hype going into this year’s classic has been unprecedented. Here are just a few of the news headlines I’ve noticed leading up to today’s event.
In the UK:
- Imminent heatwave will see roads MELT – 25 June
- Britain set to be hotter than Barbados – 25 June
- UK weather: how long will Britain’s heatwave last? – 9 July
Yes, that final question is all important, because today is the day I make my comparison; slap bang in the middle of summer/winter.
Did the UK heatwave last until now?
The buildup here in Australia really reached fever pitch in the last four days or so, here are some of the headlines.
In Australia:
- Australian weather forecast: Cold front coming this weekend – 10 July
- Arctic vortex: NSW, VIC in for blizzard intensity cold snap – 11 July
- Icy blast an even chance of bringing snow to southern QLD – 12 July
But, of course, these headlines revolve around the UK and Australia, my comparison is between London and Brisbane. Even so, things are looking pretty grim for Brisbane this year, I think London is going to give us a real bashing.
Especially when you consider that Brisbane woke up this morning to the following news headline…
- Brisbane Weather: City shivers through coldest morning of the year – 15 July
Let the games commence!
Let’s start with Brisbane. Here’s a snap of the weather taken today at 2 PM…
Brisbane
Okay, 17°C, sunny, hardly any wind.
I decided to go out and brave the ‘cold’ to see how others were coping. Obviously being the coldest day of the year I decided to wrap up warm, I put on a longsleeved T-shirt…
To be honest though, I was a bit warmer than I would have liked. Maybe I should have stuck with short sleeves.
But how were others coping?
I went down to our local shopping centre to find out. I wasn’t expecting too many people to be around; most, I suspect, would have been staying in to protect themselves from the bitter cold.
Luckily though, some people had ventured out.
All photographs, including mine above, were taken at around 3 o’clock this afternoon.
As you can see, everybody has taken extra special care to rug up for the day. I spotted some long trousers here and there and one or two woollen tops. I think I may have even seen a jacket.
So there you have it; that’s a Brisbane cold snap. Let’s check out London’s summer. Here’s how the weather was at 2 PM yesterday because 2 PM today, at the time of posting this, hasn’t happened yet.
London
The analysis
Looking deeper behind those weather records, London’s maximum temperature this month appears to have been 34° on 1 July, other than that they’ve had five days with temperatures of between 25° and 27°, with the other days so far this month reaching between 21° to 23°.
Here in Australia we don’t call that a heatwave, those kinds of temperatures simply mean it’s just another day, and not necessarily a summer’s day. So we laugh at your heatwave.
Similarly though, I’m sure the people back in the UK will be laughing like drains at Brisbane’s ‘cold snap’ in which daytime temperatures reached 17°C.
I must stress though that this is Brisbane and it is not representative of all of Australia. Darwin would have been hotter, apparently it got to 29° up there today although Perth would have been around the same temperature as here in Brisbane.
Sydney and Adelaide maxed out at 14° with Melbourne 12°, Hobart 11° and Canberra was the only major city today that didn’t get to a double digit maximum daytime temperature.
It topped out at 9°C in the capital.
Minimum temperatures are a different matter though, here in Brisbane last night it dropped to around 3° at its lowest with the rest of the country varying from around 1° to 8° with Darwin again being the exception.
The low temperature up there was 16°C.
Conclusion
It’s another victory for London, but by nowhere near as big a margin as the hype was suggesting with just 3° in it. But if you look at the forecast for the rest of the week for both of these cities, it’s the right result.
For the first time in this series a city has taken a two-point lead, and it’s London.
2015: London win; 3-5
Plenty of time for Brisbane to catch up though, after all, this series does go on forever.
My thanks to weather.com for the stats.
Well that’s another summer done and dusted here.July and august have been very average, the highest temp I’ve recorded all summer is 27C, which occurred during our two day heatwave! I really do need to move to Brisbane or Perth, its early September and the heating has already been on to warm the house up. Just need a cold winter and I might just be able to persuade family to make the move.
Two decent hot days? Gosh!
I could never go back to English weather, too depressing. Good luck persuading your family.
Hi Bob,
I read about the ossies laughing at pom’s heatwave. But it’s not fair. I live in France and we are now facing our second heatwave for this 2015 summer. And when I say heatwave I mean it : over 37°C (100°F) at day and over 20°C at night during more than 5 consecutive days.
You easily understand that when outside temperature is hotter than your body’s, the cells have to change their ingeneering and instead of producing heat to maintain the enzymatic reaction at its best (ie 37°C), cells have to cool the body but, unfortunately, there is no such reverse process…. The body need to be cooled by some environmental mean : cold water or air conditioning.
And Uk, as France, are not used to individual swimming pools or air conditioning that would make the heatwave bearable.
I checked the temperature in the coastal areas (where more than 80% of australians live) and it’s rarely so high, even in your summer it’s hot and dry (and I suppose very hard to cope with) but don’t laugh at temperature over 37°C (http://www.bom.gov.au/jsp/ncc/climate_averages/temperature/index.jsp?maptype=1&period=jan#maps).
No air conditioning – don’t we in the UK know it! The other week in the middle of our (short) heatwave, on the trains, all with broken air conditioning and, strangely, sealed windows (they’ve sealed them all shut in the last few years for some reason), crammed in like sardines because of delays/cancellations…
Ronny, you have misunderstood me slightly, us Aussies have not been laughing at your 37°C heatwaves, what we laugh at is when you describe it as a heatwave when it’s around 28° to 30°C. That to us is just another day, certainly in Brisbane.
And don’t be fooled by those weather maps, it can get very hot almost everywhere in Australia in summer; Brisbane, Perth, Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide, they all get temperatures over and above 40° at some point during their summers, it’s very rare that they don’t.
We call it bushfire season.
Here’s a link to one of my earlier posts, this one from 2014, we had searing heat here in Brisbane, I clocked 46°C in my back garden…
https://www.bobinoz.com/blog/14002/the-australian-heatwave-summer-2014/
Cheers, Bob
got it 😉
Here in the UK, or at least where I live, we’ve had a mostly pretty miserable summer.
I had the misfortune of having to travel on the trains when it got really hot (and believe me, it was hot) about a fortnight ago, and it was rough. Apparently, according to train conductors, the heat WAS causing the tracks to warp, and some of the overhead cabling got caught in a train and the train took it all down. It was hell.
That being said, the weather itself was nice – very nice. We were routinely getting into the high 20’s, and sometimes grazing the 30’s. Definitely shorts and t-shirts weather. Little wind too. The occasional thunderstorm, but we don’t mind that.
But it doesn’t last. The weather now is grey again and probably in the mid to high teens, which is perfectly acceptable t-shirt weather. The good spell where I am lasted about a week, then along came the grey skies, wind and rain again, punctuated with occasional bouts of sunshine.
Yes, that sort of sums up the weather in the UK, when you get a hot spell in summer it just doesn’t last. You are soon looking at grey again. And when it is quite hot, which isn’t often, the place is not set up to cope with it, i.e. the trains.
Then again, the trains can’t cope with the winter either. Sometimes you just can’t win.