You would be forgiven for thinking the summer of 2021 was an exceptionally damp squib, but weather bureau KNMI says it was a typical year.

The weather bureau has been totting up the figures for the last three months, the meteorological summer. July and August were relatively wet, it said, but the average temperature was 17.7 degrees, 0.2 degrees higher than an average Dutch summer.

‘We have had three very hot and dry summers in a row and that is why this summer looks as if it was very bad,’ NOS weather woman Willemijn Hoebert said. According to Hoebert the data from the last 30 years show it was just business as usual for the summer of 2021.

The average temperature was boosted by the hot days in June, which was the warmest since records began in 1901. The one tropical day was registered on June 17, when the thermometer hit 30.8 degrees near weather station De Bilt.

But June also saw the coldest night as the temperature in Twente plummeted to a very chilly 4.8 degrees on June 13.

Rain was the main theme through July, culminating in serious flooding in Limburg, where over 100mm of rain fell in three days. The unstable weather continued into August.

Sunshine levels were slightly below average with 620 hours of brightness, 20 down on the national average, so perceptions of gloom were partly justified.