Assuming that Daily Sceptic readers survived the ‘extreme heat’ of yesterday, where temperatures hit a record summery 38.1°C in Suffolk (is it possible to survive that kind of extreme?), we’re inviting readers once again to send in readings from outdoor thermometers (in the shade) during the afternoon. As before, you can either put them in the comments below or email us here. If you know what the forecast was for your area then mention that as well so we can compare, and don’t forget to include your location. If you don’t have a thermometer you could use the current reading (not the forecast) from your phone weather app (though if it’s from an app rather than a thermometer do mention this).
Yesterday didn’t quite live up to the promise. While a scorcher (for England), it had been so hyped as a ‘red alert’ deadly 40°C record-buster that when it only got to 38° it felt like a let-down. Daily Sceptic readers’ thermometer readings showed that in most places it missed the forecasts by around 2° or more, though some were closer.
One reader wrote:
I placed my thermometer outdoors on Sunday, July 17th. The forecast said 29 degrees for Adel in north Leeds and the highest temperature reached on Sunday was exactly 29 degrees. Good job, Met Office! However, today (Monday July 18th), the Met office forecast said 34 degrees, but the garden thermometer strangely never rose above 31 degrees. Let’s see what tomorrow brings. Met office says 37°C for Adel. I’ll believe it when I see it!
It has to be asked: if weather forecasts can’t predict the temperature a day in advance, or even on the day itself, how are climate models supposed to be able to foresee what the temperature is going to be 100 years from now?
Today is supposed to be even hotter, hitting 43°C in some areas – though last night’s forecasts have this morning already been revised down to 41° – before the cooler weather rolls in by Wednesday (gone so soon? Not so much a heatwave as a heat waft). So will it live up to the hype today before the ever-fleeting British summer melts away into the drizzle once again?
With the help of Daily Sceptic readers, let’s find out.
The forecast here in Warwickshire is for 39° max today, though the hourly forecast already has that down to a maximum of 38° at 3pm. Yesterday’s maximum reading was 37° (according to my weather app) after a forecast of 39°. So today is shaping up to come in below expectations again. Let’s see.
Stop Press: A temperature of 40.2°C has been recorded, the first above 40° for the U.K. It was, of course, at Heathrow airport, where tarmac and jet engines raise the temperature above the surrounding areas. A reader near Heathrow says his thermometer only hit 39°C today maximum. The new national record is 40.3°C, measured at 5pm at RAF Coningsby – another airport. It was certainly a hot one today, particularly in certain areas (and airports), but once again the forecasts were way high. 43°C was forecast, 3° above the actual maximum. This is even further out than yesterday, where a forecast of 40°C was missed by almost 2°. In Warwickshire, my phone app read 39° in the middle of the afternoon but never hit 40°. The cause of the unusual heat is not related to climate change, of course – it is a freak weather phenomenon linked to the June heatwave in Europe. To quote Wikipedia: “The June heat wave was due to an interaction between the high pressures that generate atmospheric stability and Storm Alex, the strong sunshine of the boreal summer, and an air mass coming from North Africa, which entered the Iberian Peninsula loaded with suspended dust (that caused haze in the center and south of the peninsula).” The Wikipedia page about the U.K. heatwave omits this information for some reason, but does include a little section about the “misinformation” that this heatwave is not caused by climate change. The global temperature in June was no higher than normal, despite the European heatwave.
Stop Press 2: One reader in Yorkshire wonders why the Met Office’s forecasts for today are a full 5°(!) hotter than the BBC’s…
Some replies by email:
- “Interesting where some of the highest temperatures were recorded today: RAF Northolt, RAF Coningsby, Heathrow, Charlwood (village right next to Gatwick runway).”
- “Max temperature in the City of London on Tuesday 19th 35c, BBC forecast 38C.”
- “East Hertfordshire. Max 34.5C. My phone app informed that the local temperature went up to 39C but that was clearly not the case.”
- “Letchworth Garden City, Herts. Forecast high of 39C. Actual reading: Peaked at 35.6C.”
- “London Hampstead. Max 39 at 3pm. Forecast 41.”
- “Temp peaked in Sidcup, Kent at 34.6c at around 430pm.”
- “Daventry again, 39 forecast, dropped to 37 forecast mid morning, highest temperature touched was 36.”
- “Telford Max 30 degrees centigrade (Met Office forecast 35).”
- “Stevenage high 39.5 3pm. This was as predicted.”
- “Northampton. Met office forecast max at 1500 of 102F (38.9), my reading at 1500 96.6F (35.9C).”
- “Bolton on outside thermometer on shaded wall at 1.0pm 34.5C, now at 3.30pm 32C. Strong wind has sprung up and dissipating the heat. Met Office forecast 37C.”
- “Temperature 39 degrees in the shade in West Suffolk at 2pm.”
- “Teddington, Middlesex, 35.5C actual – 1pm. Forecast, 41C.”
- “Tiptree, Essex. BBC forecast 37 currently. Reality is 30.7. 12.33 Tuesday.”
- “Bedford. Forecast: 39 C. My mid-day reading: 34.”
- “In Owslebury, Hampshire, 12:30, it’s 28 degrees according to wall thermometer. Unremarkable.”
- “Here in Buckingham it’s currently [noon] 34degrees and even the BBC is forecasting that it won’t get above 36 degrees. We managed 38 degrees yesterday, according to the temp gauge on my car.”
- “34.8 in Stroud. 12:20. Temperature taken in the shade.”
- “Here in Norwich 11am 35C by calibrated thermometer – forecast was for 38C.”
- “In cloudy Plymouth Devon at 10.45am the outside temperature is 25.5C, it’s raining (so I don’t have to water the garden), there’s thunder an lightning and we about to get hit by the mother of all storms by the look of the sky.”
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Yesterday afternoon the Met Office instruments on Swansea City FC were persistently 4-5C above my outside thermometer. This morning at 09:00 they are exactly the same at 28C. Forecast says it will get no hotter here today due to showers coming in about 12 noon.
Where I am, we now have a full-throttle thunderstorm going on: it’s dark and it’s raining! The Met Office needs a clearout and a return to its proper job.
I’ve actually completely given up on the British public at this stage. I was looking at some forum posts on another site earlier. One was wondering how he couple persuade his father that he was in deadly peril from the heat when he was protesting that it is just a warm day. There was a chorus of tutting and support for this poor citizen about to lose his father to terminal pleasant weather. Someone else was saying how criminally dangerous it was to go to the beach. The BBC pulls the strings and the public dance like the sad puppets they are.
Oh god, it wasn’t mumsnet was it? If you want to see off the scale millenial panic that’s the place to look, if you can bear it. I no longer can.
May be his father remembered 1976…….as I do
The elderly relative I look after has only been able to go out into the garden in the last 3 weeks, before that it was too cold for her. Met Office forecast was at least 5 degrees too high yesterday where I live. Loving this weather and I’m working in it, no aircon required or desired.
0900, shaded north facing shed currently at 28.7C
BBC observations says about 27C in Bedford.
Will it really hit 43C today? The Met Office and the BBC will make sure it will – even if it means sending someone out with a blowtorch to the nearest weather station.
Exactly. It amazes me how people believe something because they’re told it by the MSM. I had texts from people going on about the heatwave and I was just shrugging and saying ‘So what?’ As with COVID-19, the normal is being reported as abnormal and people are falling for it!
All that matters is the forecast. And the forecast has hit 43C today. Now, please stay tuned for the latest musing about DEADLY CLIMATE CHANGE!
You’re right. They got their 40’C, but only by sticking the thermometer up a 747’s backside at Heathrow. They’re desperate aren’t they. Same as with The Covid.
Ha ha!
I’ve just twigged, Coningsby airfield.
Are any of these high readings not near an airfield, heat island etc. ?
We were actually slightly down on the same time yesterday.
They tend to take readings at an airport to achieve a higher reading. Someone suggested it was as a result of the jet engines!!
Jet engines plus acres of Tarmac and concrete = hot!
They’ll be knackered when it’s solar powered planes taking off from grass airstrips…
Actually, come to think of it, all these temperature readings should come from buoys and lightships etc. so that they can’t be corrupted by these sort of things.
25º here in Plymouth. A nice, cool breeze. We had a couple of claps of thunder and it just poured with rain. We’re due a good two hours of rain from about 11.30 and the rainstorm we just had was an unexpected boon. The temperature is going to drop substantially afterwards. A normal British summer, in other words: a couple of stifling hot days, a thunderstorm and back to the usual mediocre weather!! 😀
According to the BBC of yesterday (arguably, I only skimmed the article because I simply cannot stand idle babbling), two days of temperatures above 30C in 2022 are much worse than 90 days above 30C in 1976 because
The strain on the NHS I predicted yesterday has already materialized but so far, nobody has used that to call for return of Corona measures. Amazingly, there’s also a national farmer’s union which has a president who claims that – while we’re not in drought yet – water is scarce in the UK and it will get worse in future. After oneandahalf years of nothing but downpours, one can only wonder if the lady(?) refers to bottled water in her fridge because the fight with her husband who must carry it next time hasn’t yet settled to the degree where actually buying some would be feasible.
I’m now going to hang the washing out because with all this climate change, one can never now when water might suddenly become very unscarce.
These people are crazy.
Yes there have been many MSM comparisons with 1976, all tying themselves in knots to make out that this time it’s worse.
The usual claim is individually, there’s nothing unusual about this (except that we had never admitted that hadn’t we been called out on it) but it will happen more frequently in future. That’s unverifiable until this future has become the past. Very convenient, because we make irreversible changes now because of something said to happen in future, we can’t paddle back after this something actually didn’t happen. An interesting question is also what precisely this future will be compared with. We don’t really have enough weather information to reliable find patterns in a huge and very dynamic chaotic system which also changes over time. Getting this information will likely take at least a few more hundred years.
Water won’t get any less. Instead of spending silly money on a climate scare, or a Winter virus scare etc., maybe we should spend money on ensuring good irrigation? If people thousands of years ago could create desert gardens with water pipes from those distant hills, why can’t we sort this?
10:25am 35C in shade in NNW facing. Rural area LE16 near Market Harborough. BBC Weather app says it should be 26C
Is this hysteria, Climate change grooming? Telling the gullible that this is the first time we’ve had to use this RED warning when it only became a ‘thing’ last year looks like coercion. We’ve had rubbish summers for years and now have something that resembles a summer and the climate extremists jump on the bandwagon.
Two or three fine days are lovely, but up to now it has been a very poor summer – only a couple of weeks ago I was having to put extra clothes on in the evening because of the chill. I fully expect that we will return to normal shortly – until the next 2 hot days when all hell will break loose again. You’d think the met office would be embarrassed by their behaviour.
You would think that but this is a worldwide agenda, the msm at least appear to be onboard for ‘some reason’
Yes, the late, great Christopher Booker covered this well (or badly if you’re a Guardian reader).
Could be. I was wondering about what Tim Berners-Lee would have done if he’d foreseen the consequences into the future? Maybe you don’t need to in that profession, or at least, you can make cash out of it (a cynic might say).
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-62126463 shows the hottest places, surprisingly these are in built up areas and at the top of high rise flats /sarc.
In the winter the weather forecast always say that temperatures will be lower in the countryside so why don’t they apply the same logic in the summer?
In June & July 1976 the temperature reach 90f on 15 consecutive days. No schools closed and it wasn’t even mentioned as a possibility.
To try and explain away the inconvenient facts of 1976 the Met Office spokeswoman on Talk TV yesterday said that the heatwave was “localised” – this is the same nonsense description that they used for the Little Ice Age.
A few coincidences
a) blocking high in 1962-63 winter very cold winter
b) blocking high in 1976 summer (+12.5 years)
c) blocking high in 2017-2018 winter very cold (+55 years from 62-63)
d) blocking high in 2022 summer heatwave (+59.5 years from 62-63 and 46 years from 1976)
Solar cycle is 11 years/22 years approximately.
Every 11 years the magnetic field switches to opposite polarity, therefore every 22 years the field is the same polarity.
Certainly a) & c) are exactly a multiple of 11.
b) & d) are almost a multiple of 22.
You could look back even further, to 1946/47 winter. I’m reasonably confident that I exist on account of that; long story about how my parents got to know each other, but that was how it was. It’s not all that bad!
I think the same applies as to why I arrived in October ’63.
33 in the shade in Hertfordshire. Fairly quiet out and about yesterday here, dog walkers went out earlier than usual to get some freshness. Quite a few people and dogs paddling in the river. Schools seem to be open, kids going in wearing PE kit. East Coast Mainline completely out of action today.
Why did the runways at Luton and Brize Norton airports melt but our local roads or motorways haven’t?
Potholes can’t melt.
😀 😀 😀
Quite a few roads, like much of the A419, use concrete rather than tarmac. Noisy, bit cheap to maintain, and if they were clever they’d market it as resistant to heat as well.
Certain local roads have deliberate low-noise surfaces; I don’t know if they are more vulnerable to high temperatures.
Kent 11am 32C – (33C noon yesterday) – weather app.
37C high is forecast, then rain tonight and tomorrow.
So just another typical English Summer.
Interesting reading for all the Climate doom monger sheep out there.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1911_heat_wave
The United Kingdom heatwave of 1911 was a particularly severe heat wave and associated drought. Records were set around the country for temperature in England, including the highest accepted temperature, at the time, of 36.7 °C (98.1 °F),[2] only broken 79 years later in the 1990 heatwave, which reached 37.1 °C (98.8 °F).[3] The highest ever accepted temperature is currently 38.7 °C (101.7 °F) recorded on 25 July 2019 in Cambridge, Cambridgeshire. Weather in Northern Europe was also affected around about this time.
AreasUnited Kingdom and Ireland
Start date
Early July 1911
End date
Mid-September 1911
Peak temperature36.7 °C (98.1 °F), recorded at Raunds, Northamptonshire and Canterbury, Kent on 9 August 1911[a]
Documented in The Go Between really well! Set text for A level many moons ago.
Laurie Lee’s work was amazing.
I have a book of his short stories, there’s one about water, how people change when they’re around it, how therapeutic it is…
It was. Go Between author is LP Hartley & also had a lot of scenes about the effect of water & human interaction.
I’ve read & reread it many times & have yet to tire of it, even though I dissected it to the nth degree!
Good literature is priceless – the author’s words direct to your brain without any external filtering.
I suspect this Wikipedia entry might be due for an ‘edit’ in the next few days.
Whilst I don’t have a thermometer I just have an idea as to how to cope. I’ve been on the watering rota for the hanging baskets in the village and we started an hour earlier than usual. Surprisingly, we had no problems.
Judging by messages coming from Important People, you must be of well above average intelligence because it seems like people need to be told the Bleeding Obvious.
I also find it amusing that millions of Britons desperately rush away to hot places every summer and winter, buy houses in Spain and Tuscany and Provence etc etc, all places as hot or hotter than the UK right now.
It was fine to use airports/airfields to measure the temperature as they were usually out in the countryside and weren’t very large.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Heathrow_Airport
Of course now they are huge metropolises and the weather station which started in the middle of a field is now located by a building. Also what effect does the radar system have on temperature?
Inside temperature is 303K.
Outside temperature is 306K in shaded greenhouse with door open
Currently 36.6c at 11:37 in full sun. Just south of Bolton.
Currently (11.45am) 31.5 here in West Glos, BBC forecast says it should currently be 33. There is a quite a strong breeze too, which makes it very pleasant.
Checking in my diary I find that this time last year we had a spell of hot weather over 4 days with the temp between 28 and 32. I can’t remember any fuss being made about that.
1200, shaded north facing shed currently at 35.3C
BBC weather app says 36C a few miles SE of Bedford.
Noon IG9: 35 in the shade, digital thermometer. Apple weather app and forecast say 37.
1430 39 degrees
The Met Office had a few showers for the south west, the BBC nothing for today. Been raining for the last half hour in South Devon with a few growls of thunder as a percussion accompaniment
12.05pm 30c in the shade West Sussex
35 degrees in Cranleigh and not going to get any hotter. So 8 degrees lower than BBC prediction! What a suprise.
Reading/ Abbey Ward temperature 38C, supposed to be peak for today, BBC 37C, Met office as well. Tomorrow, the climate is supposed to change to thunderstorm which gets us another weather warning. Presumably, at the end of this, we’ll get warned that a day without weather warning is about to occur. God only know what that’ll bring!
29c in Fife today. Same as yesterday but it’s cloudy so doesn’t feel as warm.
I woke up a bit sweatier than usual this morning but apart from that the heat hasn’t really affected me. I did avoid going out in direct sunlight yesterday and went for a walk in my local park with trees for shade.
I can’t imagine many people standing out in the sun all day long just to prove a point that it’s dangerous. I suspect people who felt a bit hot would take some sort of action like have a drink and move into some shade without needing to pull out an emergency guide on what to do if you’re feeling a bit hot.
37.6c on the Derbyshire borders, at just about peak heat. Its needs a bit more breeze, but its not unpleasant. That’s our two days of freak weather over, as we return tomorrow to the mid 20’s through to the weekend.
In the Wirral it hit a peak of 35c at 12.30 – it’s starting to drop and is now 32.5c. BBC predicted 32c so we’re actually hotter.
39 degrees in the shade here in Suffolk – I’ve just given my tomato plants a cool water spray.
Just hit 40.5c here. Apple Weather was forecasting 38.
Hi there Mid Norfolk Colkirk Fcast 38 c actual shaded thermometer 37c at 2.30 pm.
Feels hotter today and there is a stronger warm breeze today.Waiting for the thunderstorms tonight !!
33.9 °C at my place, at 14:50. Within the limits of accuracy, similar to that reported by https://www.westweather.co.uk/ not far away. It’s been a blue sky day as well.
39 on the Northants/Rutland border.
IG9 (North East London) Digital thermometer in the shade briefly recorded 42 degrees C about 1450. Falling now.
Batley 15.30 hrs result just in Met Office 38. Actual (outside in shade 28.)
just read on the BBC website that a temperature of 40.2 degrees has been recorded at Heathrow Airport. Vast area of heat absorbing concrete regularly visited by heat generating jet engines. No sh!t sherlock.
According to an entry in the BBC live blog by Nick Miller, Scientists told us this day would come! That would be the same scientists who told us temperatures would reach 41C yesterday (which they didn’t) and 43C today (which they also didn’t). Another of these Met Office clowns even predicts that – unless this fire thing is finally undone! – things could get so bad that we’ll end up having two warm days in a row about every three years. Truly apocalyptic!
Hi again Colkirk Mid Norfolk. at 4.00 pm Forecast 39c actual 38c.Local roads , tar and grit surfaced starting to melt badly in places.Just measured road surface temp in full sun all day sat at 53c using laser gauge..Hot wind seems a bit stronger than earlier
LE16 Near Market Harborough. 16:30 in shade NNW facing 40°C. BBC weather app says 37. We are in an exposed windy position and the wind is stronger now and feels very hot.
Temp inside house with curtains drawn and windows shut 33°C
Conditions are rather favourable to the human condition in our puddle-sized paddling pool in the Transit-van-sized back yard of our home in this officially deprived area of Leeds.
Don’t know what the temperature is, I can’t be bothered to check, and anyway, she’s just come out with an ice lolly.
Cheers!
1700, shaded north facing shed currently at 37.1C
BBC weather app says 35C a few miles SE of Bedford.
In the car the outside temperature was showing as 40C around 1500
just heard this, ‘glad its not snowing it would be terrible trying to shovel snow in this heat’
So funny!
Heat has to be approached with common sense, which sadly is no longer common & is enjoyed by the majority of the population. There are some folk who due to health conditions really struggle & it is they who should be given support/information on how best to deal with the weather. Not Joe or Joella Bloggs!
Problem is that a lot of the current generation of parents weren’t parented with common sense themselves so there is no family member who is able to turn to for the much needed dose of common sense. This generational effect is seen in all areas of parenting & wokedom.
The ‘Apocalypse Britannia’ pictures in papers drive me to despair. Several images of burning houses claim fires are breaking out on ‘scrubland’. This, presumably is scrubland local councils haven’t bothered to tend to for three years.
Where I live, there is considerable council land unattended and now very overgrown. Historically, in rural areas, we’d have burn-backs to protect fields, but many of those are now banned. If scrubland is cut (or burnt back), the fires wouldn’t be breaking out.
I’ve taken, surreptitiously, to cutting back grass and weeds on council land adjacent to our house, because it’s becoming a real threat. Add to that the sheer scruffiness of the roundabouts and grass verges on our roads which are now waist high. It seems they’re deliberately creating a problem.
But you’re stopping the rewilding for wildlife diversity!!!! 😉
Good on you, bet your neighbours appreciate the area being tidier
In the hot summer of ’76 I lived in the home counties in an area with a lot of heathland. There were many scrub fires over the summer, mostly caused by arsonists not letting a good opportunity go to waste. Many were actually arrested, but then the police actually policed in those days.
A marvel from the Naugidar:
So-called XR protestors have made a terror attack on the News UK headquarter in London, smashing windows and glass panels and leaving posters reading tell the truth and 40 degrees = death, thereby demonstrating – due to still being alive – that they’re not telling the truth and that 40 degrees centrigrade doesn’t equal death.
Only got to 35 today in Oaksey and we had rain at about 5pm and been quite nice since then.
so it only got really hot at a busy airport near London.
I grew up in Oz and as my mother pointed out the Brits go on holiday in the hottest places all year round and survive quite happily, aside from their inability to understand how suntan cream can help burning.
Nothing to see here so we should all move on. What are we being distracted from right now.
NWO
But then you knew that
It’s 43C here in Orlando and everyone is coping fine. Sadly, this temperature hasn’t reduced the crowds thronging through the Magic Kingdom!! Even the morbidly obese are coping on their mobility scooters.