Britain’s ‘super heatwave’ will bring ’30 degrees Celsius’ next month, forecasters warn

A leading meteorologist has warned that a “super heat wave” is heading for Britain, which could bring temperatures of up to 30C.

The Met Office’s definition of a heatwave involves a location recording temperatures that meet or exceed a temperature threshold for a heatwave for at least three consecutive days. The threshold varies by county in the UK between 25 and 28 degrees Celsius – easily surpassed by the impending warm spell if forecasts prove accurate.

Exacta Weather forecaster James Madden took to Facebook last night (Wednesday 5 June) to announce that a “major heat wave or super heat wave” will hit the UK around “mid summer”.

Madden then explained when exactly that might happen. Referring to an earlier “high confidence” prediction, he said extreme heat “is still on track to develop in or around mid-July for the UK and Ireland”. He suggested that the “peak” of this super heatwave could see temperatures “reaching the mid to high 30C level”.

Despite other forecasters yet to reveal their detailed forecasts for mid-July, Netweather suggests the whole month should be “a very warm to hot month with high pressure often in charge”.

If Exacta Weather’s predictions are true, the heat could be on a par with that experienced during the heat wave of July 2022. It’s almost two years since Britain saw its hottest ever temperature and broke the 40C mark for the first time and the Met Office recorded a temperature of 40.3°C on 19 July 2022.

Last year, experts said our chances of hitting 40C had increased “tenfold”. Speaking on the Met Office’s Weather Snap podcast, Dr Mark McCarthy, Science Manager of the National Climatic Information Center (NCIC) said: “We found it very unlikely that we could reach that threshold just through our natural variability… (for) the current climate we’re in we’ve estimated that, although still unlikely, the chances of reaching 40C have increased tenfold because of human activity.”