On a hot day, the light in Kew Gardens has a certain quality; it is heavy and golden, falling over the flower beds like something taken from the Mediterranean. This week’s Monday saw a temperature of 35.1 degrees Celsius. When you take into account what it replaced—the previous May record for the entire United Kingdom was 32.8 degrees—that figure seems abstract. This was not a slight improvement over an outdated standard. It was completely rewritten.
In stuffy bedrooms, on hot commutes, and in parks where the grass had already turned yellow at the edges, the Met Office confirmed what many people in England had been experiencing on a more tangible level. In just one week, new May maximum temperature records were set across 163 weather stations. Readings were recorded well into the low and mid-thirties in several counties, including Oxfordshire, Surrey, Bedfordshire, and Cambridgeshire. Bute Park in Cardiff recorded a temperature of 32.9 degrees. It was a “truly historic spell of May weather,” according to the Met Office, and for once, that kind of language felt earned rather than ordinary.
The nights were just as difficult to shake as the heat itself during this specific event. After dark, even warm British springs typically provide some relief—a drop in temperature that enables people to rest, recuperate, and function. For the most part, that cooling did not occur this week. The Met Office reported that overnight temperatures remained consistently warm throughout much of the nation, which is unusual for May and exacerbates the physical toll in ways that are not fully captured by daytime forecasts alone. There’s a difference between watching the thermometer rise at noon and watching it remain stubbornly high at midnight.
It seems more difficult to treat incidents like this as singular surprises. The UK experienced its first temperatures above 40 degrees in the summer of 2022. Another record-breaking spring occurred last year. This is it now. Every event has a footnote, such as a graph showing the trend line moving in a single, obvious direction or a climate scientist on the radio, and each time the public appears to take it in, process it for a short while, and then go back to discussing when the rain will return. It’s possible that most people haven’t yet fully realized the significance of these records.
As predicted by the Met Office, the shift away from the heat started to arrive on Friday from the west. Chris Bulmer, chief forecaster, put it simply: showers and possibly thunderstorms were predicted for the remainder of the weekend, and the spell was breaking down as fresher conditions moved in behind a weak cold front. By Sunday, it was predicted that temperatures would return to normal, with the northwest experiencing the most rain and the south experiencing low twenties at best and mid-teens elsewhere. Given how dry the ground had become during the hot spell, Met Office meteorologist Greg Dewhurst said that it would probably be “much needed and much welcome rain” for farmers and gardeners. When the headlines are about record temperatures, it’s easy to overlook that detail—the cracked soil, the stressed crops—but it matters.
Something heavier was also left behind by the heatwave. Over the course of the week, twelve people perished in open water incidents, attracted to rivers, lakes, and reservoirs by the heat that made cool water feel relieving. The involuntary gasp, panic, and sudden loss of control that can overwhelm even strong swimmers the moment they hit water that is significantly colder than the air above it are all signs of cold water shock, according to numerous warnings from the Royal Life Saving Society. Charlie Noble, 16, was the twelfth person killed; his body was found in Stirlingshire on Thursday.
A cooler, more erratic pattern is predicted for the first week of June, with low pressure systems moving in from the Atlantic and bringing clouds and rain to a large portion of the nation. According to the Met Office, conditions might return to normal in the middle to second half of June, with increased pressure taking center stage. It’s genuinely unclear if that means another period of extreme heat. As of right now, the parks are closing, the lidos are quieter, and the ground is receiving the much-needed rain.
