Yup - one or two days is bad enough, but that Heathrow forecast (29 / 36 / 36 / 35 / 34 / 35 / 31) is showing dangerous levels of heat. I feel sorry for anyone expected to be doing physical work in those conditions... just being in a regular office will be unpleasant enough.

GFS is showing a run of 7 days between 30 and 34C here, too. I'll be in at work for two of those days and I'm not looking forward to it, I have to say! (More for the traffic jams - always worse in the heat IMBY, with added aggro - and for the house, which will be steamy by the time I come back.)

It's going to be a case of heads-down, grimace and get through it.

(It does give me a wry grin when people who've no experience of this sort of heatwave in their area lust after it...)

I regret mocking people who bought Aircon units

But I have worked out how to make my own with a wet towel hung in front of a fan

The cloud is very clearly not following appropriate guidelines and is arguably behaving in an illegal manner. This morning I actually had about half an hour of drizzle. In a heatwave that is, frankly, up there with driving to county Durham with Covid-19 symptoms.

Someone need to have a stern word with the cloud to be honest. It's time it resigned.

I don't have a dog in this race

Cloudy until 11am but as soon as the sun arrived the heat kicked in.

An effortless 29.7c here on a day that only expected to reach circa 26c here.

We have entered an exceptional spell of weather...buckle down and enjoy the ride.

Chance of a new all time UK record ? ....hell yeh ! 

Feels like a furnace already out there

I would gladly do a house swap with you, and a wife swap (though I dont have a wife)

Excess deaths are going to rise next week as they did in August 2003

Is it possible we are chasing the wrong record?

Maximin record is 23.9C

EURO4 suggests temps on Friday night not getting below 24C

That is what kills the elderly in non airconditioned indoor environments

Though aircon would increase the risk of Covid spreading

That's a very hard record to break, especially now that the days are losing around 3 minutes each day... to beat it we'd need:

• A very humid, tropical airmass (more humid than at present, as you know the higher the dewpoint the slower it is to cool down - you'd be looking at 18 or 19 as a dewpoint).
• Cloud by night (to trap the heat)
• Clear just after dawn, to allow insolation to heat things up again.

We might get two of the three, but I'm not sure we'll get all three.

What's the exact definition? So let's say the record was broken on the 7th August 2020. Would that imply the temp didn't get below 24C between midnight tonight and midnight Friday night?

Or is it 6am to 6am?

Or does it not include daytime?

I feel these records will be challenged as we move into the cloudier and thundery stage of the heatwave next week. The 0z ECM run yesterday were forecasting mins of 24c in parts of Kent next Tues into Wednesday.

From the Met Office's observation guide. It would need to fall no lower than 24.0C from 10 AM to 10 AM the following day to beat the record...

https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/binaries/content/assets/metofficegovuk/pdf/weather/guides/10_0230_fs_17_observations.pdf

Daily maximum and minimum temperatures normally refer a 24-hour period 0900 UTC to 0900 UTC where they are quoted to the public, such as in newspapers and on the web

23c here, mostly cloudy, occasional sunny spells, gentle breeze

I'm not going swap my wife, but I will consider a decent cash offer  (and no refunds!)

Now that's what an English summer should be like. Warm beer and a gentle game of cricket on the green, with a sweater required after dark

Sadly, our climate has changed down here and its the Costa Del Croydon with beer swilling half naked chavs roaming the streets shouting

I'll need to see a photo of your wife first

I bet you will, you mucky-minded perv

Nothing above a rounded 28C on the official maxima so far, the lack of weather stations in Kent really is a problem.

Agreed. They need to invest in their operations rather than their website