Emz by the Thames

Find your nearest M&S Foodhall, it's so cold in there today the staff are wearing gillets. It's too hot in my flat already - I'm dreading the next few days.

Disgusting day. Dark cloud, humid, 31.c here but feels hotter. Got the week off but weather like this is unusable to most.

Thunder in the direction of Marlow, well outside the warning area.

Working outside today and phew! It's humid. Fingers crossed for a storm as I'm having to spend ages watering the allotment atm...

My niece is on a field trip, they are in a dorm hostel in central London and they said it's so hot that the children are sleeping on the floor with damp towels for pillows! Unsurprisingly, a request to sleep on in Hyde Park was nixed by the teachers!! Looked out my window just now to see two foxes drinking out o the bird bath - it's gonna be a hot one.

I've learned a good tip - go to an M & S Foodhall - they are positively arctic on hot days!

I love hot, sunny weather, a large part of my childhood was spent in Saudi Arabia so temps in the low 30s were a norm for me. However, we also had air conditioning, ice cold water dispensers - even in the classroom, shady buildings designed for hot weather and swimming pools! When it hits 30 now, I'm stuck in a flat with no balcony, sat on a heat island with an A road and a tarmac car park in front and it's absolutely unbearable. My two days in the office are boiling as there's no air conditioning of any sort and lots of people feeling ill and disagreeing about the windows being open or not. The allotment has no shade. Last year, during the Meto's extreme heat warning in July, a combination of consecutive hot days, a bit of dehydration from my birthday weekend, a tumble dryer making the flat even hotter and the dehumidifier not working (humidity over 75) meant I suffered heat exhaustion in my own living room which was really frightening. My partner dashed home and put me in an airconditioned car and I drank a litre of cold water he'd bought en route but it took 20 minutes to stop feeling horrendous. I dread it getting over 30.c now to be honest, many of our living and working spaces aren't suited to it.

A couple of weeks until the solstice - and my allotment is really suffering, there hasn't been any prolonged sunny, warm spells to kick off the growth in the plants. In fact some have started to rot owning to the cool days and heavy, frequent showers. ...and STILL we've all got dreadful hayfever!!

Got down to 5.c in the polytunnel at some point in the last 48 hours - nothing is going to grow with temps getting that low. I hate it when the evenings are so light yet the temps don't match, it seems like such a waste of light evenings. I gave in and put the heating on yesterday. Heating hasn't been on for 6 weeks but a combination of a chilly flat full of damp, drying clothes, the flat downstairs being empty and unheated, being caught in a shower and getting my clothes soaked...and I had to put it on as I was shivvering. Quite a depressing thing to do at this time of year. Rant over. I'd take an uncomfortable heatwave over this dirge.

Very unstable here atm, gone so dark I've had to put all the lights on.

I was watching Midsomer Murders once and Alexa kept 'chatting' to DI Barnaby, it's was really odd. Big raindrops and thunder in the middle distance right now...not showing up on lightningmaps though.

Strikes inside the M25 now. Nothing here but gone soooo humid.

Oooh that lightning map crackle....it's been a while... Not sure how I feel about any storms tomorrow night as I'll be in a field watching the Happy Mondays in a field at 10pm!

Nice to see a little rain falling now - but it's not enough by any means. Early May and already our allotment is so dry that I've made the decision to leave a couple of beds empty that would usually have nasturtiums, mixed salad, leftover seedlings etc. As other allotment holders will know, most of June and July is spent watering, especially if we have few storms. To be deep watering in May only to be met with dust-like beds a few days later is hard work, especially if your plot is quite a distance from the taps! I am worried about the crops out in the surrounding fields now. Makes me wonder if our changing climate will change allotments. At the moment, most allotments allow you to grow both produce and flowers. The trouble is, lots of people grow non-edible plants, cut flowers etc. The main reason for this seems to be that we, like lots of people at our allotments live in a flat, so the allotment is our garden too. But endlessly watering display plants like some people seem to spend hours doing at my allotment, I get the feeling that may soon be a thing of the past.

Liam Dutton just tweeted: After the spring warmth last week, winter bites back this week. Not only will it gradually turn colder, but some places will see some snow - even in the south. Detail to be fine-tuned as the week goes on. Stay tuned!

So an hour ago I jumped in the car and drove to work before anyone else got there, stuffed the laptop and files in the car and drove home. Stuff it. I'm not taking holiday either. On route, I was listening to 3 Counties Radio who were interviewing a roofer who was trying to get to work at a central London building site. He was at the station where he was told no trains and no replacement services - yet he was still trying to find a way to get into London to work on a roof at his bosses insistence! Madness.

My tinnitus is horrendous.

Despite both office and home being in a red warning zone, I have to go into work. Why? Too short notice to arrange WFH and we're only 5 miles from the amber zone anyway, apparently. If we want to stay at home, we have to take a day's holiday today. I don't know what the point of warnings are to be honest.

Many schools in Buckinghamshire are staying closed tomorrow, parents feel annoyed as the high schools are closing but the primaries staying open, even in the same town - lots of confusion/mixed messages this late in the day.

Hope not. The issue with this is that if they expect people to stay at home tomorrow, we really need to know by about 4pm today max so that preparations to work from home, cancel work journeys on Friday etc, take work computers home etc the night before.

Still not sure if an outdoor survey planned for Friday morning should go ahead (in a former dairy farm). If it was a yellow warning yes, a red warning no, but an amber really is the middle ground for cancelling stuff. Tricky. I still remember the Burns Day storm in particular as our school shut abruptly and I walked home at 2pm with debris flying in all directions, including the huge metal weather vane, which missed me by about 2 metres, cartwheeled down the road and was instantly squashed by a car. I do fear flying debris a bit now. The remains of the weathervane is still in my dad's shed!

I don't need a thermometer to tell me how cold it is, I simply count the number of visits by the robin and blue tit on my little windowsill feeder/camera set up. 7 visits yesterday, 34 visits today! Also, our local fox doesn't come for his piece of buttered toast when it's colder than minus 1, I've noticed. Colder than zero and it's there untouched in the morning.

Big flakes in high Wycombe in the valley, snowed for 15 minutes or so, stopping now but a covering on the grass and roof - rather magical!

Pretty sure there was a red snow warning in Dec 2009 in the Bucks area. My postcode is inside the wind and snow warning areas, but being in the valley, I'm expecting northing more than breezy sleet!

Weather warning for wind on Saturday reaches as far south as Bucks, Luton, Reading etc.