Met Office Issues First Ever Extreme Heat Warning!
By Paul Homewood
The Met Office issued its first ever extreme heat warning last Tuesday:
Now if you’re thinking that this is surely not the first time Britain has had hot weather, you would be right, as the small print (ie the bit nobody ever reads) in the Sky report explains:
In other words, its the first heat warning since 1st June!
I wonder, by the way, whether they will also be issuing “extreme cold warnings” this winter? Surely the Met Office would not be doing this just to scare the public about global warming?
As for this “extreme heat”, the heatwave in England has been pretty run of the mill.
In Central England, there were only five days above 28C, and no day topped 30C, which PHE say is their average threshold for a heatwave, depending on location.
So far this summer, these are the only days above 28C, whereas in 1976 there were seventeen, and sixteen in 1995:
https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/hadobs/hadcet/cet_info_mean.html
I gather that GB News were discussing the heatwave earlier this week. One might have hoped they would show a bit of realism, but sadly they appear to be just as gullible as the rest of the media. I am told they started harping on about the hot weather, and the fact that heatwaves last 13 days not 5 days as they used to.
Perhaps somebody should have told them that heatwaves are not caused by carbon dioxide, but by anti-cyclonic weather systems. I am not aware of any mechanism by which carbon dioxide can keep high pressure systems over Britain.
It never ceases to amaze me how grown up people can get themselves into such a tizzy about a few days of sunshine. Meanwhile, we are already back to typical British summer weather, sunshine and showers and average temperatures. No doubt the rest of the summer will carry on the same.
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NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
Hope we live to see the unraveling of the climate scam.
Anyone like me who experienced the summer of 1976 knows how bogus this all is.
When that heatwave started we were on a family holiday in Jersey. On the day of our return flight to Heathrow the temperature at Jersey Airport was so high that there was an operational risk that our jet would not be able to take off fully laden using the restricted length runway at Jersey.
We did make it back but on arrival at Heathrow the temperatures were even higher.
The damage that summer did to the beech woodlands of Epping Forest was severe. Many ancient shallow rooted beech were killed outright, while in Kensington Gardens I witnessed an underground root fire in a dead elm as the soil there was bone dry to the depth of a metre.
Weather of 1921…press comments 100 years ago this month:
“BRITISH ISLES: London, July 10. England is sweltering and suffering the worst drought in a century. Today was the seventy-eighth virtually rainless day. For the third successive day temperatures have exceeded 100. The rainfall for the year is less than one-third normal to date.”
CO2 pre-industrial.
Bogus indeed. Met office official definition of extreme heat is 90 degrees F = 32.2 degrees C.
To my knowledge the UK temp did not reach or exceed this defined temp. Where then the extreme heat?
Heathrow made 32.2C exactly.
NI broke their fairly old all time record 3 times but not by much considering all the extra UHI, from 30.8C to 31.2C to 31.3C to 31.4C
Most hot places were bobbing around 30C, not spectacularly hot, but I was surprised how hot it was because we never tapped into direct N.African air, the heat was home grown and very localized in a small blob over the UK.
I have a memory that in Scotland, Tayside in my case, we had a very dry and hot summer and autumn before 1975/76. Possibly 1973. From July to October possibly longer. I worked on the local estate as a Ponyman from early August until early October and the ground as already dry. When the season started, I don’t remember any rain apart from one very light period of rain on one day. We were able to get to places with the ponies which were normally too boggy to cross safely with a fully laden pony. Our spring fed water supply was reduced to virtually nothing.
As it has been since time began, it was so dry as no man could remember.
It ended with heavy rain as droughts often do.
Yes, once it did start raining in September 1976 it hardly stopped till the following spring.
Farmers could only do one tillage operation on their fields after which the ground became too wet to do any further cultivation so either had to use a fertiliser spinner to sow their winter wheat onto the soil surface (not very effective as pigeons ate much of the seed) or else wait till the spring.
The relatively new technique of direct drilling seeds into the uncultivated soil surface allowed some farmers to get their wheat in at the normal time.
Another very wet year was 1983 when the ground remained too wet in the spring to allow farmers to turn out their dairy cow on grass pastures until June, and silage made late was poor quality and reduced milk yields the following winter.
This had a depressing effect on milk yields which was unfortunate as this was the base year for the milk yield that was used to calculate the milk quotas imposed on dairy farmers in 1984.
Milk quotas were imposed by the EU to reduce the amount of milk being produced as part of an attempt to get rid of the “butter mountain”, “milk lake” , “wine lake” and “grain mountains” that were being produced as a result of EU subsidies which didn’t have any cut-off point.
Before the UK joined the Common Market,as it was then, we had a system of standard quantities whereby if farmers had better harvests the subsidy per ton of grain was reduced.
I posted a tweet about this, ponting out that there are 1.5 million people wanting to PAY to fly to places much hotter than England, no comments.
Indeed. The people probably hope there is another Met Office heat warning soon.
28C in July, extreme heat. Where I live (near Washington DC) that’s a cool mid-summer day. The AC goes off at night and you sleep with the windows open. Will these warning educate the public? They certainly will. The public will learn to ignore what the Met Office says.
First define heatwave…
https://www.britannica.com/science/heat-wave-meteorology
“No formal, standardized definition of a heat wave exists.
The World Meteorological Organization defines it as five or more consecutive days during which the daily maximum temperature surpasses the average maximum temperature by 5 °C (9 °F) or more. Some countries have adopted their own standards.”
Like the UK, https://rmets.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/wea.3629
“The recommended definition of a heatwave is:
‘A period of marked unusual hot weather over a region persisting for at least three
consecutive days during the warm period of the year based on local climatological conditions, with thermal conditions recorded above given thresholds.’
At the start of this piece, the authors say:
“The climate of the United Kingdom is changing. At the time of writing, the average temperature for the most recent decade (2009–2018) has been 0.9 deg C above the 1961–1990 reference climate (Kendon, 2019).”
No surprises there then, when that was one of the coldest periods of the 20th century. Guaranteed global warming. The 30 year CET average was 9.47C, whereas the previous 30 year period, 1931-60, was actually warmer at an average of 9.56C.
Written in 2018, they take 9 years as a comparison. The whole period, 1991-2020, was 10.22C, 0.75C difference to 61-90,with 1998 and 2016 El Nino events included. Compared to 31-60, that’s 0.66C over 60 years, massive!
“The climate of the United Kingdom is changing. At the time of writing, the average temperature for the most recent decade (2009–2018) has been 0.9 deg C above the 1961–1990 reference climate (Kendon, 2019).”
A weather change. Not a climate change.
You get more attention if you call it ‘climate change.’ In fact, if they called it “weather change,” which it is, they wouldn’t have bothered to publish it.
Next logical step must surely be PHE health warnings against travel to any country where temperatures exceed, or can exceed, 28C. I’m not sure that actually leaves anywhere to go – but then perhaps that’s what they are seeking.
Very clever!
(I wish I had thought of that.)
Sadly GB News yesterday was enthusing with a car salesman and garage owner about the popularity and burgeoning sales of EVs despite the misgivings and reluctance of a population fed a diet of false information.
I am afraid that GBN have swiftly learned that there will be insufficient income to fund their new channel unless they join all the other news outlets that are subsidised by our green taxes recirculated from our pockets via govt to pay for our own brainwashing.
The circle is complete. we can no longer change it.
Gge
I suspect ‘popularity and burgeoning sales’ is an evidence free assertion.
U.S. EV sales dropped in 2019. They remained under 2% of vehicle sales.
EV sales taking off is wishful thinking, or just plain lying.
The poor Met Office feels left out as North America has its extreme hot weather to blame on climate change, Europe has its own extreme floods to blame on climate change and the Met Office has nothing. Great idea let’s invent our own extreme weather event so we can blame this on climate change as well. Only problem of course is that the recent heatwave was neither extreme nor unusual.
Rather like school and university exams there is definitely a ‘grade inflation’ going on in the description of heat and warmth in British summers over the years? In 1964 Brazell’s ‘London Weather’ defined a warm day as 24C or above. In 1976 Chandler and Gregory’s ‘The Climate of the British Isles’ defined a ‘summer day’ as 25C or above and a ‘Hot’ day as 30C and above. In 1982 Robin Stirling in ‘The Weather of Britain’ defined a ‘warm day’ or a ‘summer day’ similarly as 25C and above. Interestingly, also, in 1975 I wrote down the official definitions that the Met Office required should be used in its forecasts for describing the warmth of a day. For summer in the Midlands and South a ‘Very warm’ day was defined as 26-28C, a ‘Hot Day’ as 28-30C and a ‘Very Hot day as 30C plus…..
Now we have a post in the last week on the Met Office Facebook page (reporting the results of a study assessing ‘Global Warming and Future High Impact Weather in the UK’) that uses the bizarre definition of the term ‘Extremely Hot Days’ as “where temperatures exceed 25C”. Finally, as this post points out the Met Office ‘invents’ the term ‘Extreme Heat Warning’ and has issued two of them this week even though the highest temperatures I can see are three days of 30C in places like Bristol Cardiff and Oxford, with 30, 31 and 26 at Southampton and at Exeter is 28-29-28 and at Truro 27-26-27 (and yet this latter City was also covered by this ‘Extreme Heat’ warning). It is plain that the Met Office is no longer an intelligent and unbiased reporter or forecaster of events, but a propaganda organisation given to hyperbole.
Such things are relative, I suppose.
From your chart, it seems that 31°C (about 88° F.) might be worthy of a comment by the local media. A comment such as “don’t leave kids or pets in an auto.”
Being in a different part of the world, and being used to this and warmer temperatures every summer, no one would think to apply the phrase “extreme heat” to anything below 37° C.
My local forecast office is here:
https://www.weather.gov/pdt/
This is a big area, so the southern part is expected to have “excessive heat” while the middle section gets a just “hot” warning.
Type KPSC in the locator box (upper left). Kennewick WA is shown as “hot” on Sunday with 101° F. [38.3°C]
Use KELN in the locator box and the graphic shows “sunny” with a temperature of 95°, or 35°C.
Like school and university exams there is ‘grade inflation’ going on in our description of heat and warmth over the years? In 1964 Brazell’s ‘London Weather’ defined a warm day as 24C or above. In 1976 Chandler and Gregory’s ‘The Climate of the British Isles’ defined a ‘summer day’ as 25C or above and a ‘Hot’ day as 30C and above. In 1982 Robin Stirling in ‘The Weather of Britain’ defined a ‘warm day’ or a ‘summer day’ similarly as 25C and above. Interestingly, also, in 1975 I wrote down the definitions that the Met Office required should be used in its forecasts for describing the warmth of a day. For summer in the Midlands and South a ‘Very warm’ day was set at 26-28C, a ‘Hot Day’ as 28-30C and a ‘Very Hot day as 30C plus…..
Nowadays things have escalated to a preposterous degree. There was a post last week on the UK Meteorological Office Facebook page (reporting the results of a study assessing ‘Global Warming and Future High Impact Weather in the UK’) that defined the term ‘Extremely Hot Days’ as “where temperatures exceed 25C”. Since then we have had the Met Office twice invent this new ‘Extreme Heat Warning’, even though the highest three days of temperatures I could see in the area covered by their first such warning see are three days of 30C in places like Bristol Cardiff and Oxford, with 30, 31 and 26 over three days at Southampton and with Exeter having 28-29-28. Truro was forecast to have 27-26-27 (and ludicrously was also covered by this ‘Extreme Heat’ warning). It is plain that the Met Office is no longer a measured provider of objective information, but is a propaganda organisation pushing hyperbole.
Some have referred to the summer of 1976 – and I wonder how it would be described nowadays if we were ever to have a repeat?. I thought I’d check the figures from that year and it makes interesting reading – it dwarfs any heatwave since. The most intense heatwave of that summer was from 23 June to 8 July and on those 16 consecutive (!) days the temperature exceeded 30C somewhere in England. On 15 consecutive days it was above 32C somewhere in England (23 June to 7 July). There were 7 days on which 34C was exceeded and 5 days on which 35C were exceeded somewhere – including the 3 consecutive days 26-28 July. At many locations in the Midlands and SE for this 16 day period the AVERAGE/MEAN daytime maximum was nearly 32C!
Midlands, summer 1976. I was there, working in a machine shop in Coventry, which is as Midlands as you can get. It was ******* hot!
I remember the bodies everywhere… Mostly on the grass, slathered in sun tan lotion and saying ‘I’nt it nice’ or ‘musn’t grumble’
I remember 1976 in Nottingham – it was the first time I’d ever heard the word “bowser”, never mind having to use one.
For those lucky enough never to have met a bowser, it’s a little water tank on a trailer, from which you and your neighbours filled buckets with the precious water. And when it was empty, that was it until the next ration came through. Happy days – though probably being 45 years younger helped!
LeedsChris,
My dad experienced the Summer of 1949 too.
He was not very impressed by 1976.
Excellent 6 minute video ridiculing the Met Office’s extreme heat warning from Tony Heller:
Well worth watching. He shows the highest temperature reached in the south was 30.6 C at Middle Wallop – yet another airfield!
Shame he didn’t pick up on the fact that they only just invented the warning system days before using it, that a similar number of wind free days have happened this July, and to nitpick, Heathrow was the hottest place at 32.2C.
Yes – Tony’s post appeared on Thursday and linked to New Forest Weather, which showed the previous day’s high at Middle Wallop rather than Tuesday’s high at Heathrow. I’m sensing a connection here… perhaps the Met Office should warn the public not to sunbathe on airport runways?
https://realclimatescience.com/2021/07/extreme-heat-warning-in-the-uk/
I thought Middle Wallop was a grass airfield – anyone know where the weather station is located?
It appears to be located here
View on Google Maps street view
Interesting Philip, since if you go back in the streetview years it is not there in 2008 or 2011 if that is the weather station and in the previous years there appears to be a tarmac runway.
“if you go back in the streetview years”
Gerry,
Thanks for the tip!
I did not notice that that was an option.
Hi Philip – I don’t believe the locations in your links are correct. The Met Office website gives the coordinates for the Middle Wallop surface station as 51.149, -1.569, which locates it by the concrete apron below the airfield control tower when you plug them in. There are several hangers for the helicopters and a number of buildings nearby, as well as the Salisbury Road.
I have visited the nearby Apache Café (next to the Flying Museum) a number of times on my bicycle and noticed that the base has several large wind blocking hangers. The location given by the Met is surrounded by concrete aprons and car parks. The weather station is probably fine for providing useful meteorological information to the Apache and Chinook pilots, but not for monitoring climate.
Hi Wellers,
I am not going to argue with local ground truth-ed knowledge.
51°08’56.4″N 1°34’08.4″W
Thanks for the correction.
I totally agree.
Nearly 30C in SW Scotland on Thursday, a rarity for the area…
Hottest day Scotland: Dumfries and Galloway records official hottest day of the year with temperatures reaching 29C
Thursday is officially the hottest day this year in Scotland as Dumfries and Galloway takes the boiling crown with temperatures nearly hitting the 30C mark.
https://www.scotsman.com/news/weather/hottest-day-scotland-dumfries-and-galloway-records-official-hottest-day-of-the-year-with-temperatures-reaching-29c-3319162
Heading back closer to seasonal norm now. No more *boiling* 🙄
Last night’s BBC weather had N.Ireland with a ‘record high’ of 32C.
Your take Paul?
No evidence in my garden of ‘climate chaos’. All the vegetables are doing gloriously, the apple trees are laden with fruit, soil moisture below the surface is very healthy for this time of year.
2021, we had a much wetter May than average, July has also had plenty of moisture.
All the wailings about late frosts are typical nonsense: if you know your weather history, you know that frosts in April are entirely normal and frosts in May occur regularly, if not every year. It’s not nature’s fault if you are thick and plant things too early: all my perennial pollinators have done brilliantly this summer, so clearly they are capable of deciding on their own when to burst forth based on weather signals….