2026 comes out 1st in my list going back over 100 years just pipping 1976 at the post. Although there were a lot more rain days in 2026 compared to 1976 and the sun hours was almost exactly the same, the huge difference in maximum temperature swung it in favour of 2026

I'd expected to see 1989 and 1990 figuring in that list - they were certainly dry and hot in mid-Kent with grass shrivelled up.

Or perhaps 55 BC, when Julius Caesar recorded that his invading troops had been unsuccessful in foraging for food (sc. terrorising the locals) 'propter siccitates', 'on account of the dryness'.

I have Summer Index  values of 328 and 303 for 1989 and 1990 resp. making them 6th and 18th in the SI table from 1900 to 2026

I think I only cut my grass about twice all year. I have to say that in this area, with out sandy soil, it made no difference whether you cut the grass or not, it had basically turned to dust by the end of June. After the rain of this week there are a few green tufts starting to emerge but basically it still looks like straw.

Walking down the alley to the churchyard, most of the trees are completely brown. The oaks are hanging on but the birches are totally bare now, and the horse chestnuts mostly brown too, even big 50ft+ trees that must be decades old. It will be interesting to see to what extent they come back in the spring or whether we've lost a lot of them.

BTW yesterday was day 86 to reach 25C this year. Could we make 100? Probably not quite, but 90+ seems very achievable.

I described it in the summer CET thread as a summer of a succession of multiple heatwaves.

The main difference between the south and north has been that the weather in gaps between heatwaves has been a little more pronounced and less warm the further north you went.

In parts of the S & SE, the gaps between were less noticeable as temps only fell back to 'warm' or 'fairly hot', and any rain was negligible.

It's been a very good summer here, with periods of 1-3 weeks of hot, dry and sunny, but interspersed with anything from a few days to over a week of temps back closer to the norm, increased cloud and sometimes a little rain. 1995 was better as it was more one bloc of warm/hot and sunny and dry lasting a couple of months.

It wasn’t a bad summer at all and quite pleasant at times but a bit more sunshine would have been nice, and as ever, autumn seemed to start at some point in August.

I think 2018 was superior to me, not because the index suggests so, but it felt sunnier despite August being the weakest of the three summer months. From about the solstice to the 2nd week of July, it was basically wall to wall sunshine with occasional fair weather cloud. It was outstanding.  May-July 2018 was truly exceptional, it had a "summer" index of 296, up there with summer 1976 and 1995.

Summer 1995 was still the outstanding for me around this area and the outstanding year for weather of my lifetime.  2018 has been the closest since, shame August-December let it down. 

Here's the mean temperature map:

You can see that the Merseyside-Manchester conurbation & Cheshire, along with much of S/W/E Yorks are in the same 'band' of temp as the bulk of the southern half of England/ Astomishing that London/some of the Home Counties/Thames Estuary/part of the South Coast had a mean summer temp in excess of 20c.

2025 just pipped 1976 and it was a nail-biting close thing. But 2026 has sky-balled the hottest summer record so significantly in the CET that I think it will be a long time in the beating. Add in the warmest spring build up and it's no surprise that some posters are harping on about the hottest year going.

Was 26C today and last 40.2 in the conservatory which I bid farewell to it.  Been a great summer just only disappointed it been rudely cut off short from mid August until now we never had proper settled much needed dry weather yet.  When a good summer should end gradually not like this cut off.  1995 was the best for dryness then 2018 while this year failed as both June and August turned out very wet months only July being rainless.  

The outlook is pretty good still, think 25c is on the cards over the next couple of weeks.

Yes, today should reach 25C (day 89 at least) and GFS reckons another 3 or 4 to come in the next fortnight with a plume around the 18th-20th.

As for the hottest CET year record, I can't see it not being broken this year. We would need to have an almost four month period with an average temperature 0.1C below the long-term mean in order to fail to break it. Hardly likely in this day and age.

00z ensembles looking good and warmer days to average after this week below average but looking welcome dry weather, badly needed in this area.  Hope the rain tomorrow will miss it here as it moving along the south to make those who need the rain.

🤔

You sure on that?

After many days of stinky rain showers so need a good dry break now 3rd day being dry so much needed, it still very wet soil here.

- the harvest was completed earlier than ever before

- instead of using forced air circulation to dry the grain in store, this year , he's had to use it to cool the grain to minimise insect spoilage

- yields are down but the price compensates as other parts of the world have had poor harvests, and the Ukraine-Russia conflict has cut the amount harvested there.

I thoiught I'd try and check.

It may be that I'm not wording the search right, but I can't find a site that lists the min & max temps across the UK for every single day. I know numerous plaes publish the max/mins of the previous day, so surely there's a simple datasheet log kept of these. 

Anyone know where to find such a list?

19.9 on the 11th June was the last time, I think:

https://digital.nmla.metoffice.gov.uk/IO_c1fe4096-6980-4923-b77f-8b8a26fa3516/  (p84)

You can see the other months here:

https://digital.nmla.metoffice.gov.uk/SO_e9c5c20f-4856-439d-b642-84324766b7a3/ 

Thanks, Darren. Why do the Met Office 'hide' stuff like this away in little pockets of their site. I find it so tricky to navigate the Met Office website for the info I want to find.

Darren - did you go through each individual day to find that??

Unless I'm being dim, there doesn't seem to be a table showing each day's max & min (ideally a highest & lowest max and highest & lowest min, with locations. They could do that in a very simple spreadsheet table)

I cheated a bit - I found another link (which I didn't save) which had temperature anomaly maps for each day, and the last one with widespread blues was the 11th. Similarly, my own records here had the 11th as being the last day below 20C, so it was a quick check of the 11th, 12th and 13th... 

FWIW yesterday's high was 20.4 Pershore, so the run of 20s nationally continues.

Yes we crept over it in the end. Looks like the next couple of weeks should get to 20c fairly comfortably.