I see BBC are reporting the lovely weather represents “UK weather: Hottest late August bank holiday weekend on record”. We saw 33.3 at Heathrow.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-49466596The report concludes with the obligatory, sinister, mention...
The government's advisory Committee on Climate Change has warned the UK is not prepared for the increase in heatwaves that is expected with global warming.
And, as with the early Easter, they fail to point out that the date of the August holiday varies from year to year and this year’s is quite early, so not terribly surprising it might, with a bit of luck, be relatively nice. Out of interest, I checked to see if I could find underlying stats to draw a meaningful comparison of temperature extremes, compared to this time of year, from years gone by. I found a Met Office page...
https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/research/climate/maps-and-data/uk-climate-extremesIt seems the record for August seems to be 2003, 10th August - just two weeks earlier, when Kent saw 38.5, a full 5 degrees hotter.
And smashing as this weekend’s weather has been, it appears to be some way short of a record temperature for September, when South Yorkshire recorded 35.6 on 2nd September, a whole week later, in 1906.