During the current heatwave I’ve been drifting outside my habitual South West England lane into East Anglia. For additional background information please see also the June 26th section of “The June Heatwave in West Devon” article, wherein I surmised that:
The 06Z UKV run suggests that the pan UK record for June may well be broken in East Anglia later today:
Somewhat later in the day I further surmised on the “Summer 2026 max temp heat watch” thread on the Netweather forum that:
Based on the current UKV I’ll plump for Norwich
Can you imagine my joy when I subsequently recorded the following image from the Netweather “Live Weather Stations” map?
Can you also imagine my surprise when the Met Office then published the following image on their X/Twitter and other assorted (anti)social media channels?
When the Met Office later published this press release my astonishment knew no bounds! Amongst other things it stated that:
The UK has provisionally seen a new maximum temperature record for June for the third consecutive day, with 37.3°C reached at Santon Downham in Suffolk on 26 June.
This exceeds the figures reported on 24 and 25 June and, if confirmed via the verification process, would become the new daily maximum air temperature record for the month of June.
Doing my due diligence following this unanticipated turn of events, I discovered that Norwich Airport isn’t on the Met Office list of “official” weather stations. However not too far away can be found the “Mildenhall No. 2” weather station, which is currently green flagged as being officially approved:
Clicking the “Station details” link reveals the following information:
Curiously the “Mildenhall No. 2” weather station appears to be located near RAF Lakenheath on the Met Office’s map, whereas assorted METAR reporting web sites reckon “EGUN” refers to RAF Mildenhall:
The weather station at RAF Lakenheath is instead known by the “EGUL” moniker:
Now there may well be a perfectly rational explanation for all of the above, but bear with me and go back one more day to the 25th of June, when I reported that:
The pan UK June and all time SW England maximum temperature records have duly (if provisionally!) fallen at Yeovilton in Somerset.
I was not in the least surprised to discover that the Met Office agreed with me, albeit whilst leaving out the part about the “all time SW England maximum temperature record”:
Later in the day I checked the SYNOP data from Yeovilton once again, and added that:
The maximum temperature at Yeovilton subsequently reached at least 36.8 °C
You could knock me down with a proverbial fevver when the Met Office reported thusly instead:
I’d be extremely grateful if you could provide me with a logical explanation for the apparent fact that 36.7°C at Merrifield is hotter than 36.8 °C just up the road at Yeovilton, since the Met Office Press Office has singularly failed to do so as yet.
[Update – June 29th]Evidently the Met Office has been listening to me! Here’s their latest (anti)social media infographic on the controversial topic of the “Hottest UK June day evah!”:
Lingwood is a manual weather station east of Norwich. I assume the “verification processes” thus far have included checking such manual stations. Removing the “provisional” label takes longer?
To be continued…
