Hottest Day? At Heathrow, Maybe–But Not In The Rest Of The Country

via NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT
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By Paul Homewood

It has certainly been uncommonly hot these past few days. Many outlets have talked about a “record breaking” heatwave, such as this report in the Telegraph. This is a grossly misleading claim, because it relates to a record temperature for a single day, in this case June 21st.

There are, of course, thirty days in June, and in a record going back 100 years you would on average see a “record daily temperature” about every three years.

I also noticed last night that the BBC TV weatherman actually put a large newsflash on screen which claimed a temperature of 35C at Heathrow, when the actual temperature was 34.5C. A typically dishonest stunt from the BBC!

But how hot has it really been, in comparison to previous Junes?

Eagle eyed readers will already have spotted that the highest temperature was set beside the runway at Heathrow. Coincidence? I think not, as Heathrow was also the scene of the highest temperature on Tuesday as well.

Even with the help of the tarmac, the Heathrow temperature fell well short of the highest June temperature of 35.6C, which was set in 1957, and equalled in that record breaking summer of 1976:

But to get a better perspective, we need to look at the more representative Central England Temperature series, which provides daily temperatures averaged over a wide area, rather than a collection of individual sites which cannot be compared with each other, and are often biased by artificial local factors.

So far this month (including yesterday), the top three temperatures on CET were 28.2, 28.9 and 29.1C. An analysis of days in June of 28C and over shows that there is nothing at all exceptional about this month’s weather.

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Many days in the series have been much hotter. Obviously 1976 stands out as the exceptional year, but there other really hot June days prior to then, in years such as 1878, 1941, 1947 and 1950.

Since 1976, there have been no days approaching those sort of temperatures.

This all puts a rather different complexion on claims of “hottest day” and “record breaking” that the BBC and others have been propagating.