A generation has now grown up with no memory of the famous summer of 1976, for exactly three decades have now passed since that unprecedented season of heat and drought. Younger readers have doubtless listened to their parents talking about that memorable summer, perhaps with a measure of disbelief. They might reasonably think that some of the more outrageous stories were the result of faulty memories and over-active imaginations. They probably weren't.
This week is the 30th anniversary of the highest temperatures of that exceptional summer. It is true that there had been earlier hot spells in early-May and early-June when the temperature reached 30°C, but they were short-lived and separated by lengthy cooler intervals. However from June 22 until August 26, a period of nine weeks, the weather was consistently dry, sunny and hot.
It should also be remembered that summer 1976 marked the culmination of a prolonged drought which had begun in April 1975, and there had been water-shortages even during the summer of 1975 which itself had been the hottest for 28 years.
By April 1976 the drought had become very serious, not only for the water-supply industry but also for agriculture. The topsoil in East Anglia had turned to dust and was being systematically eroded by stiff easterly winds, and farmers warned of poor yields unless the rains came soon. They didn't. A Drought Bill was rushed through Parliament, water consumption was restricted as reservoirs and aquifers dried out, the parched countryside turned from green to brown and from brown to white as the last vestiges of moisture disappeared, and there were extensive heath and woodland fires in southern England. Finally a Minister for Drought, Mr Dennis Howell, was appointed to co-ordinate water conservation. Within three days it had started raining!
The centrepiece of the summer, meteorologically speaking, was a truly unprecedented heatwave which lasted from June 22 to July 16, a period of 25 consecutive days on each of which the temperature climbed into the 80s Fahrenheit (27°C or more) somewhere of other in the UK. Even more remarkable, the temperature reached the 90s Fahrenheit (32°C) on every one of the 15 successive days from June 23 to July 7 inclusive. No previous or subsequent heatwave has produced more than five days in a row in the 90s.
Apart from 1976 the mercury had previously reached 35°C only in 1906, 1911, 1923, 1932, 1948 and 1957 (and since in 1990 and 2003), but this single heatwave produced as many as five individual days above this threshold. Highest of all were 35.6°C at Southampton on June 28, equalling the all-time June record for the UK, and 35.9°C at Cheltenham on July 3, the highest July figure anywhere in Britain since 1911.
Only a minority of workplaces enjoyed air-conditioning in 1976; consequently working conditions were almost impossible. Public transport organisations reported hundreds of passengers suffering from heat exhaustion, and dozens of people collapsed at the Wimbledon tennis championships which took place at the height of the hot weather.
© Philip Eden