A great title. At school we sometimes had 'Worms on Concrete'. Spaghetti Bolognese on toast. Dried like pastures brown.

Today looks nailed on to reach 30C again (already some rounded 30s in the east) which would then equal the record. And I would be utterly astonished if we then failed to reach 30C again this year. I am fairly sure we will get to 40 days of 30C+ before the year is out.

I'll update my list from the Daily Weather Summaries once July and August are published (seems to be at the beginning of the month "n+2", as they have just released the June ones).

GFS 6z offering a week-long heatwave starting Saturday, with a 37°C peak in NW Kent.

Edit: GFS has finished - a one or two day cool off then a further heatwave sets up until the end of the run.

Just noting it- await the ENS for greater interest.

30.5c at Heathrow

Yep we equal 1995 , 34th 30c.

Feels very humid here today.

Plenty of 31s 

Quite a few corrections where some high values on Starling's Roost have been discounted, and also several manual stations that were higher than what I had (Faversham/Brogdale has featured a few times, so it is still reporting).

I still only make it 19 32C+ days though (including yesterday), and 33 30C+ days (including today). So the Met must be counting an extra one of each, presumably from a manual station in July. All will become clear in a month's time I guess!

Heatwave 5 is mid August, no? So no.6 would need to come later on.

Technically what we have now is heatwave 5 and next week 6.

Not that it really matters as this summer the heatwaves have just blended together 

It varies place to place, actually. For us, today just marks the end of number 4, so yes, we await 5 (not necessarily happily). 1 in May, a longer one in June and 1 in July, then one that ends today according to the Hampshire 3 day 27° rule. This one doesn't really feel like one. But the July one ran from 5th to 17th, and had 3 days just over 27°. Had the later 2 of those been .4 of a degree cooler, we would have had 2 heatwaves during that period instead of one protracted one. There must be places locally with lower maxima.

Also, some places have had short bursts of heat outside of our 'heatwaves' here that might have met the criteria, including places that only need to manage 26 for 3 days.

So some people will almost certainly be heading towards #6.

I’d call it a regime. We’ve been under a heatwave regime (or a “warm settled regime”) since mid June. Within that there have been a number of individual heatwave events. 

I wouldn’t include late May in the same regime because there were two weeks of proper unsettled mobile weather between it and the June heatwave. But perhaps it sits within the 2026 warm weather “superstructure”.

Indeed, the nights this summer have been unbearable.  Something I dont remember in 1995 or even 2006. 

Yes I was 18 in that summer too – although I had already finished my first year at uni as I started at 17. It was a cracker, although I was out of the country for most of July (in Africa, so still hot!)

It was a fantastic summer overall, with an 18+ July CET and a 19+ August CET. I was fortunate to have summer holidays in a school career for the best part.

But June, other than the last week, was nothing to write home about.

In Southampton, the mean maximum for August was above 27°C. There was near-constant heat from late July to 23rd August, and more 30+ days in July as well as a couple at the end of June.

The late July-early August period was very humid in the Winchester area at least. We had tropical nights, and a fan and all windows open all night. Some of the tarmac roads in the Twyford area were patches of liquid in places.

This year's ruining humidity was in that late June heatwave. I remember seeing wbt forecasts of up to 30°C and it felt it. Had to stand in water up to the neck to get cool, even with a breeze. Other heatwaves this year have mostly avoided such humidity.

For those keeping tabs, it's also the 40th day of summer (since June 1, i.e. 65 days so far) that has been hotter than the corresponding date in 1976.

The swifts have now left London skies for another year. One of the early signs of the changing season. 

First is the falling quiet of the dawn chorus, in mid July. Then the swifts go. Then the football season starts, back to school clothes and stationery fill the shops, and before you know it it’s strangely dark after dinner. 

I was told today that Halloween outfits have just appeared in one of the local supermarkets. 

Just searching my metaphorical depths for a link to the thread title...

Thought I’d take you all back down. Call it a memento mori.

(OK, call it meaning to post in a different thread but realising too late and leaving it there).

That’s what I thought. Only had the four here in the far south (so far).

🙂🙂🙂🙂

All the BBQ and gardening stuff has been cleared from my Tesco.  Thats always a sign of Autumn.  No sign of Halloween yet though!  But lots of back to school stuff

Back to school stuff always appears at the end of July, it used to irk me as a kid in the 80s! And the wholesalers will be in full-on Christmas mode, if you fancy a selection box just go to Makro. As a morning person (check the time of this post) it's now almost dark when I get up - although there's still some light to the NE, but it's still full blazing sun when I go to bed. It'll still be light at bedtime for me for a few weeks yet. 

It is, however, comforting to know that we're losing 3 minutes of daylight a day, and each day the sun is 0.3 degrees lower in the sky; it's around 10 days away that it starts to noticeably lose its strength down here.

Sadly none of that matters much in terms of heatwaves, at least for a few more weeks, as it can still get into the mid 30s even in a month's time. This year really has been remarkable, and yesterday's 32C here epitomised it! Look at the synoptic chart with a low passing by and you'd expect a showery day, perhaps a bit more organised rain as the occluded front went by, but the reality was more like being in the Med.... windy, hot, and at times very humid indeed. 

Even today, after all that stuff, the MetO raw still has 26 here (the heatwave threshold being 27)... there are two days of 22C (a whole degree below average!) then a run of 26/27/25/26 - on the warm side in an ordinary summer, but of course this is anything but. I do feel, however, it's a harbinger of what's to come when/if I live to be into my 60s...

EDIT: And the 18z GFS has 27/24/25/28/31/28/27/30 for the next 8 days, so that's the next heatwave right there!

Dont panic Capt Mannering!  Next week looking hot and extended all the way on long range ECM

In the olden days, I'm sure our ancestors dreaded the onset of colder and darker months. I assume thats when most illness and deaths occurred. 

It's why the winter solstice was so celebrated.