After Madrid, Spain recorded it’s highest June temperature on record, the historically hot air plume continued it’s journey northward and two days after breaking long-standing records in Spain, it broke records over France and the UK too. Yesterday was no ordinary ‘hot day’.

This is a map worth saving for your archives.

Highs over particularly northern France and the UK will down in the history books as the UK’s hottest July day while Paris suffers it’s hottest day since 1947. Only one other day was warmer in the capital’s history! Some cities in France even recorded their all-time highest temperatures.

Up until yesterday, the record for highest July reading anywhere in the UK was 36.5C set in Wisley, Surrey in 2006. Heathrow surpassed this value, maxing out at 36.7C sometime between 3-3.30pm GMT.

Quite the spread in temperature over Scotland yesterday.

The anomalies were about as positive as they get over northern France and southern UK!

The high of 39.7C was the 2nd highest reading since 1873, surpassing the highest value recorded in the 2003 heat wave

#France – new all time Max temp records set 01/07/15 Melun 39.4C (prev 38.9C) Dieppe 38.1C (prev 37.0C) Boulogne-sur-Mer 35.4C (prev 34.8C) via Steph Ball.

The culprit to all this… note the ‘book end’ troughs either side of the ridge. This has forced some of the hottest air on the planet northward and with a warmer than normal Mediterranean and drier than normal soil over Iberia and France, the stage was set perfectly.

Not much rain in the past 30 days for France, Low Countries, Germany into the southern/central UK.

This has led to low soil moisture content.

Dry ground and a warmer-than-normal Mediterranean has helped boost upper level heights and ground temperatures, a big contributor to such an Omega block which produced this record heat wave.

Digging deeper and one could argue that the presence of the strengthening El Nino and the highly amplified MJO is behind this ‘longer-term’ pattern which created the set-up for this heat wave.

Just look at how much waters have warmed around Europe and how much the El Nino has come on in the east Pacific in the last 30 days.

Jul 2

The MJO is currently responsible for providing large-scale UPWARD motion over the Pacific and DOWNWARD motion or sinking over the Atlantic, hence stronger than normal high pressure…

As well as the heat, last night’s thunderstorm display for some was equally if not even more impressive. Here are some great shots from the Tyneside area.

A stunning image from Edinburgh. via Real Edinburgh http://www.facebook.com/realedinburgh

With the heat continuing over the European mainland, Paris may get just as hot with an outside chance of even hotter Friday. The all-time record high for Paris is 40.4C or 104F. According to weather historian Chris Burt, the hottest night ever recorded in Paris was 25C (77F) back during the 2003 heat wave. Check out the forecasted low tomorrow night according to the BBC.

Urban heat island plays an important role, particularly with the lack of cooling by night!

While many global warmists would shout about the temperatures being recorded, particularly in Paris. Especially following the devastating heat wave of 2003, however when you look back through history, Paris does indeed have a long past of deadly heat waves which have killed many!

Here’s a newspaper clipping from 1911, long before any talk of climate change.

So Does This Heatwave Last?

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Following a series of Atlantic fronts over the next 2 to 3 days, the cooling trend really kicks in across Ireland and the UK. A muggy, thundery day today with a cluster of storms expected to push up over the UK later this afternoon and evening. Once cleared, this gives way to another warm or very warm one tomorrow UK-wide, downright hot again for northern France into the Low Countries but into the weekend and particularly next week, the Atlantic becomes much more of a player once again over Ireland and the UK but it remains oppressively hot over mainland Europe where more records are expected to fall next week.

The below ECMWF chart shows the cooling trend for Northwest Europe while the core of the heat slides eastwards.

CFSv2 weekly 2 metre temperature anomalies.

See video for the discussion..

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Tags: Europe heatwave, europe heatwave 2015, France Heatwave, heat wave, Paris heat, paris heat wave, UK heatwave