Try doing this with gardens as full of plants as ours. Takes me 2-3 hours every evening.

Fortunately we missed a single drop of rainfall here and it slipped south of here. Fingers crossed that the verges take an even more bleached than they are approach.  Amazing summer weather. 

Will be touring around the country side tomorrow to see the beautiful parched landscape. I remember seeing those parched landscape on the 1995 Last of the Summer Wine that programs shown stunning parched Yorkshire landscape. I kept focusing the landscape than the men acting.  

'Beauty is in the eye of the beholder' ... myself I prefer living to dying plants

Wasnt the 80s a cool decade overall, like the 60s. Ir maybe that's just my imagination!

Scroll down for concise summary of 30C + records and map

You are thinking of Fashion.😄

A lot of trees round here are starting to drop their leaves. The young trees which managed to survive after being planted on a new "country park" near a housing development in summer 2022 (!) look to have been just about finished off now. Many of them are now totally brown and dead looking.

BTW looks like 31.3C was the final max yesterday at Ross-on-Wye.

Tree planting programmes are a waste of money unless you can guarantee rain or organise a rota of people with watering cans.

So the heatwave finishes on 43.8 points then. 

I don't know, but it didn't reach 30c at all in 1980 or 1981, and the warmest day in 1985 was just 30.0c   1987 and 1988 both reached 30.2c

I posted the total on the previous page, thanks to a chart by Sryan Bruen on Twitter. 46 for the 1980s and only 1983 and 1989 reached double figures.

The graph below shows the number of days reaching 30C at Kew in each decade since 1881 

There have been 99 such days in the most recent decade on that graph (2017-2026) and part of this summer is still left

It took 85 years from 1881 to 1976 to get to almost the same number of days reaching 30C (93 times in that period)

Any idea what the other decades did in the 20th Century.  I imagine the 60s was the lowest of the whole century. 

Out of interest what is your criteria for the end of the heatwave? Is it the regional heatwave threshold?

I'm glad of a fresher few days, anything over a heat index of about 22c is enough for me, as I work outside in direct sunlight. Even sitting still in the shade outside sipping cold beer much over 26c-27c is plenty and 25c indoors is enough. If I worked in a shady office with aircon I'd have a different opinion. I only really like heatwaves between early May to Early August for an hour before and after the sunset/sunrise, and the nights. As soon as the sun is high enough with warm enough air it's 30+c in direct sunlight every quickly. September/October heatwaves are far more enjoyable due to lower sun angle/intensity.

The graph is here: https://x.com/SnowbieWx/status/2077335147448283555?s=20 

The 1960s managed 25 in total. We have had more than that just this year alone.

In the 1960s 25C was considered a hot day. Hard to imagine that now. 🙂🙂🙂

Depends where you are of course. I still consider 25C to be a hot day, or at least the lower limit for it to be considered one. A poor summer up here in the 1990s might have 25C as the highest temp reached all year.

Thanks.

50s - 38

60s - 25

70s - 58

80s - 46

90s - 86

00s - 85

10s - 80

20s - 105

I’m using 30C, not based on any official criteria but simply because when we’re comparing classic heatwaves of the past that’s the commonly understood number at which we all start to get interested.

1 point for 30, 2 for 31 etc. 

Supports my feeling that, adjusting for global warming since, the 90s were the greatest decade.