Bristol set to see more rain!

Promises of a "barbecue summer" have been finally washed away after weather forecasters admitted this month's rain is set to continue into August.

Heavy downpours fell for much of the day in Bristol yesterday and that pattern is set to continue for much of today and then into the weekend, with the Saturday of the Harbour Festival forecast to be particularly bleak.

Back in April, the Met Office coined the new phrase to accompany its seasonal forecast, which predicted a two-out-of-three chance that temperatures would be higher and rainfall lower than average.

But in an update issued yesterday, the Met Office had to backtrack and predict weeks of unsettled – wet and miserable – weather, saying that "for the rest of summer, rainfall is likely to be near or above average over the UK and much of northern Europe".

Average UK rainfall for August from 1971-2000 is 84.6mm (3.3in).

May and June saw people soaking up the sun and Wimbledon fortnight coincided with a heatwave that raised hopes of the Met Office's April predictions of a good summer would come true – but it has been downhill since then.

Tom Tobler, forecaster at the MeteoGroup, the weather division of the Press Association, said temperatures should rise in Bristol next week although there would still be rain.

Philip Eden, vice president of the Royal Meteorological Society, has criticised the Met Office for raising people's hopes of a hot summer on the back of an "experimental" long-range forecast.

A spokeswoman for the Met Office defended its policy, saying this week's update to the seasonal predictions and forecast was something that happened every month.

She said: "In April we said there was a 65 per cent chance of temperatures above average and rainfall below average but that does leave a 35 per cent chance that the opposite would be true.

"June was a particularly nice month.

"Wimbledon had two weeks of virtually uninterrupted play – it had the best weathersince 1995 – and Glastonbury and even the Ashes had some good weather.

"July has not been as nice as people wanted and unfortunately it has been fairly wet.

"But seasonal forecasting is still a new science. It's something we are still building on.

"When we are looking at seasonal forecasts, we are looking at the season as a whole, not a specific day or week.

"The forecast was for the temperatures to be above average. June temperatures were 1C above average and rainfall was below average, so it's about putting things into perspective."