Josh writes: It is good to see Christopher Booker writing about the UK’s ‘hottest day of the year’ in the Telegraph again. Paul Homewood’s excellent posts, on which his article is based, are well worth reading.
The story on Paul’s blog starts here, with more here, and Booker’s first Telegraph article, followed by more doubts, some Met Office spin, then a belated response, comment moderation, and finally more Met Office spin. It’s quite a saga.
Anyone would think they are trying to hype every possible weather event they can. I wonder why?
Yes 1976 had more July days above 95f then this present summer the hottest was 95.9c in Cheltenham which was only about 0.8c below the reading from Heathrow Airport .I remember the roads melting in Lincoln where I lived in 1976 and it easy to fry eggs on the pavement. The source for maximum temperatures I use is the following:
http://www.torro.org.uk/site/hightempsyear.php
Anyone puzzled by the hysterical hyping of the Heathrow “hottest day evah” need look no further than the weather section in today’s Sunday Telegraph. Like May before it the mean temperature for June was below the long term average throughout the United Kingdom – by as much as .7 celsius in places. This after the UK Met Office predicted “barbecue weather” from May through to the end of July and temperatures well above average. Some people never tire of being wrong – or are never held accountable.
Reminds me of the Janis Joplin song which goes “Summertime, and the Weather is Sleazy”.
She didn’t write it, I know, but when I think of the song, I hear her version.
Just to mention Sheffield, England on 1st July 2015 (33c) did record it’s hottest July maximum temperature since records began and the station location is not near an airport and in same place since the 1880’s. I do agree that airport locations and even station locations that didn’t exist even just decades ago, give a false representation of the overall situation.
Who’s to know what the relative new Gravesend, Kent station location was on previous hottest days when it never existed. It may have been even warmer in the past, but nobody knows. Gravesend is the most exposed location to the hottest continental air in a SE movement, Moving NW across the short English channel with very little modification of the sea. In this scenario it wouldn’t have surprised in previous decades, this location being as hot if not hotter than the record set in 2003.
A common mistake the media uses is the misuse of the word heatwave. A heatwave is not just one day of hot weather, it requires a minimum set duration and max/min targets.
The hot tarmac/jet-blast, etc from Heathrow seems to have extended out across a much wider area than one might anticipate.
According to the daily Central England Temperature (CET) record, July 1st 2015 was the warmest July 1st since records began in 1659: http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/hadobs/hadcet/graphs/HadCET_act_graphEX.gif
Only an idiot would attempt to compare the methods and technology of temperature measurement over 350 years ago to today’s, let alone the fact that the temperature readings now can be contaminated by things like UHI, and jet exhaust.