We call it “midsummer”, yet midsummer’s day – this Sunday 24 June – traditionally marks the start, not the middle, of the summer season. In my view, this is down to a linguistic confusion. Just as the word “midwife” has nothing to do with middle (it derives from the German word “mit”, meaning “with”, and so refers to a person attending a woman giving birth), so surely “midsummer” means “with summer” – the first day of the new season?
Either way, the start of summer depends both on where you live and that particular year’s weather. On a visit to Shetland in mid-June 2015 I recall the weather feeling more like late winter than summer, with temperatures struggling to reach double figures. Last year, on the other hand, midsummer was one of the warmest periods of the year.
In 1976, it marked the start of the longest period of above-average temperatures ever recorded in the UK, topping the magic 90F (32C) mark for 15 days in a row. The hot, sunny weather famously continued for another two months, Britain’s longest recorded drought finally coming to an end with August bank holiday downpours.
