When Does Summer Actually Start in Birmingham?

Updated: 2026-08-28

The nearest Met Office measuring point to Birmingham is the Halesowen station, in the West Midlands, at 153 m above sea level, about 13.3 km from the city centre. These are its historical records. The urban heat island of Birmingham, its local topography and altitude differences can make the real city climate differ from this station, but Halesowen gives the closest long-term picture available.

The earliest possible start of summer — 1 June — occurred three times in this record: in 1978, 1982 and 2003. At the other extreme, the latest start on file is 7 August 1988, matching an equally late 6 August 1964. The summer onset across the 1946–2004 series shows no fixed calendar date: it swings from early June to early August.

That date matters because the calendar says summer begins on 21 June. The weather, measured daily, tells a different story. In 1978, conditions that meteorologists class as summer arrived on the first day of June. The same happened again in 1982 and once more in 2003, a year that stands out in this series for other reasons too.

A variable season opener

Scrolling through the full yearly table below, most summer onsets land between mid-June and mid-July, but the spread is what catches the eye. A start on 5 June in 1960 and again in 1980 sits beside a start on 29 July 1981. In 1956, the season did not begin until 26 July; in 1988, it waited until 7 August. The distance between the earliest and latest starts, measured across the series, is wide enough that any single “official” summer start date would mislead.

The average number of winter frost days — 34.83 per season, across 48 complete winter seasons — gives a sense of the cold baseline that summer has to overcome. The warmest year in the record, 2004, averaged 11.17 °C for the year, while the coldest, 1963, averaged 7.81 °C.

Six notable years, from both ends

Here is how the extremes of the summer-start timeline break down, by year:

Earliest summer starts (top 5)

Latest summer starts (top 5)

The warmest and coldest years

Warmth accumulates over time, and these are the benchmark years from the series:

Five warmest years (annual mean temperature)

Five coldest years (annual mean temperature)

Full yearly series: summer start, 1956–2004

What does this mean for Birmingham?

The series covers 1946–2004, a period in which the Halesowen station registered some very early summers and some very late ones. The three earliest starts on record, all on 1 June, are spread across 1978, 1982 and 2003 — nearly a quarter of a century apart. The three latest starts, all in August, are 1956, 1964 and 1988. A clear pattern of summer arriving earlier or later over the decades is not visible here; instead, the data shows a season that, year to year, can begin almost anywhere from the first of June to the first week of August.

For anyone planning outdoor events, gardening, or simply wondering when to pack away the winter coat, the honest answer is: watch the thermometer, not the calendar. The 34.83 average frost days per winter season also serve as a reminder that in some years, the cold holds on well into what the calendar calls spring.

Source: Met Office — Halesowen station, West Midlands. Data period: 1946–2004. Met Office MIDAS data, Open Government Licence (OGL v3.0).

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© 2026 HistoClima · data: Met Office (OGL v3.0) · not affiliated with Met Office · citation permitted with source.