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Any reason why so many of the Met Office readings for 2pm haven't yet arrived? I use WQRadar normally but it's not showing them yet - neither is Weatherobs.

Gringley on the Hill, which was 36.8C at the last reading.

That's the max temp in the hours (probably 6 hours) before midnight, so thankfully not the actual temp at midnight.

When do you reckon mid-Essex will see the peak heat? Presumably not long after 1pm?

Regardless, I see no reason for them not to have tweeted out hourly temperatures, yet they've only done so at 10am, 12pm and 3pm so far. Given they don't make all the temperature data freely and easily available on their website, this is pretty poor on one of the most important days in history for UK weather.

Agreed - and I think other countries do it better than us too (despite us being a "weather loving" country). I had a look at MeteoFrance's website the other day and there's far more data on there. It annoys me as well how the MetOffice "03xxx" weather stations have easily accessible data but the "99xxx" ones do not. It creates a very patchy picture depending on what you have access to. There's no official single place to look at live data when there should be. I wouldn't have thought it'd have hurt to tweet hourly updates instead of sporadic ones. They've now deleted two tweets due to errors in them. I appreciate today is pretty busy for them but they've had enough notice...

The Met Office seem to have deleted the tweet about 37.5C at Kew!

Already 29.8C at the Writtle MetO station in Chelmsford. Looks like it's one of the hottest in the country at the moment.

Already 29.8C at the Writtle MetO station in Chelmsford. Looks like it's one of the hottest in the country at the moment.

Below is the actual minimum on Tuesday night according to today's 12z GFS.

That's the maximum recorded in the hours (3 or 6 perhaps?) before 3am GMT (4am BST), rather than the minimum of the night.

I haven't found this at all. I have a southwest-facing conservatory with a big glass sliding door opening onto the living room, which has a blackout roller blind over it in the living room. If the blind's left up and the door's open then the living room warms up quickly on a sunny afternoon (useful in the winter). If I close the blind and keep the doors shut then the inside temperature doesn't increase anywhere near as much.

It depends if you want fully fresh, hot air or slightly stale, cool air. Most people keep their windows closed for long periods during winter and the air must get stale then. The best thing to do is surely to keep windows and curtains closed at the peak of the heat and then open them once the inside temperature is higher than the outside, usually from late evening.

If it's hotter outside then it'll warm the house up.

This isn't China!

Neither have I. The WeatherPro app (run by MeteoGroup who also supply the BBC with forecasts) is now going for 40C in London on Tuesday.

The government and Met Office will do that. This is a weather forum so people will undoubtedly be interested in extreme weather. "Willing" something to happen won't change the outcome anyway!

Higher probability for 'extreme' temps (i.e. mid-high 30s) but lower probability for breaking the all-time record.

I don't use as much heating as many people do in the winter as I don't get cold easily. I guess the same applies to others who use A/C in this country. Swings and roundabouts!

I wasn't aware of that. I guess you have to avoid places that have A/C running too? In terms of cost, the portable A/C unit I have runs at about 780 watts when at full pelt, so going by the UK average electricity cost of 28p/kWh then it costs about 21.8p/hr to run. That'd be £1.74 for 8 hours overnight, but they usually have timers so could switch off after 4 or 5 hours and reduce that down to about £1. I know some people who have gas central heating but also use an electric heater occasionally. They're usually around 2,000 watts so could easily cost over £2 for an evening's usage. (And of course it's easier to warm up than it is to cool down, so you could argue running an additional electric heater is less worthwhile unless you're really in need of it.) It depends how you want to spend I suppose.

Above post is from @Alderc in the model thread, but I agree about the 'guilt trips'. We all know the dangers of heat, particularly for certain groups of people, so I don't think it needs reiterating every few posts in the model thread. I also don't think it'll help if non-weather enthusiasts find the thread and read such comments, especially if the extreme heat doesn't materialise. It'll seem like the "boy who cried wolf". Appropriate warnings will be issued by the government as and when necessary.

I still don't understand why more people haven't bought a portable A/C unit to help with sleeping. I know they're not cheap (£250-£300 these days) but we've been seeing evidence of warmer summer events for at least a decade, so if I hadn't been able to afford one then I'd have saved up for one as a priority. I bought one 6 years ago and regularly use it on warm nights otherwise there's no way I'd be able to sleep in the heat.

Looks like this will indeed be the first year since 2009 that neither Writtle nor Andrewsfield achieve 30C. The closest was on 18th July - Writtle at 29.7C; Andrewsfield at 29.4C.

I don't understand why more people don't use portable A/C units. Obviously not everyone can afford them, given they cost around £230 new (plus they cost about 50p per night to run), but it's surely a worthwhile thing to save up for. Climate change will clearly make summers less bearable. They do a great job in a small bedroom, where you can at least escape to for a while, and of course it makes sleeping bearable too. Even if it's only been in the low 20sC during the day, it still gets to the mid-20Cs upstairs in my house, so whacking the A/C on for a couple of hours reduces the temperature down to something more comfortable for sleeping. If it's been hotter outside then the house is warmer and I keep the A/C on all night. I recently bought a new one bought also have a second-hand one (made in 1999) and my parents have one they bought in 1998. Both still work fine because they're obviously not used that much, so new ones bought now should, in theory, last for many years.

Is it just me who doesn't consider this week to have been a heatwave? I noticed local BBC news describing it as a "mini" heatwave which is more accurate. Much of the SE & E Anglia didn't hit 30C - and stations which did hit it only just scraped it. The temperatures for the rest of the week didn't exceed 27-29C. I appreciate it's been more of a heatwave in the west of the UK though, where temperatures reaching 30C is obviously rarer.