This has, once again, been a summer of heatwaves, with a record temperature of 38.7C set in Cambridge on 25 July, breaking the previous high, recorded at Faversham in Kent, in early August 2003.
Yet just three years ago, in 2016, the highest temperature in the UK for the year occurred not in July or August, but September – the first time this had happened since 1954. This was not at the start of September, as you might expect, but in the middle of the month – at the classic hotspot of Gravesend in Kent.
Although the mercury reached 34.4C – almost 94F – this was not quite the highest-ever recorded in September. Even higher temperatures occurred twice in the early years of the 20th century, in 1906 and 1911, with the record still held by Bawtry, South Yorkshire, where in 1906 it reached 35.6C.
In 2016, the mini-heatwave lasted just three days: ending with widespread thunderstorms across eastern and southern England that produced two weeks’ worth of rain in just a few hours, and which derailed an early morning train travelling from Milton Keynes to Euston.
Once things calmed down, this mid-month heatwave was followed by a second warm spell, making September 2016 the second warmest since records began over a century earlier.
