Is the heatwave hotter than the summer of 1976?

1976 summer heat just went on and on. There was hosepipe bans, reservoirs extremely low and I can remember water bowsers being deployed in certain areas. I haven’t found the heat during the day bad if staying in my shady garden but it isn’t pleasant trying to sleep.

It was just as hot but I didn’t notice it so much as I was a lot younger !,

I had just returned from a year in Australia and I was teaching in Surrey. During the long holiday I was on the beach in Brighton regularly but the rain broke the heatwave the day I moved into my brand new house! Mud everywhere.
This is a shorter period of heat !

Definitely 1976 was hotter, it started in May and went through to September, with a drought.

I got married to my late husband 5th June 1976 and it was 40 degrees centigrade on that day, I melted in my heavy crepe wedding dress ?

I think the one in76 was a lot hotter and went on for longer. I had one child in the first year at primary school and a toddler. I remember offering to run a stall at the school fair and spent hours in the playground in full sun. And we had spent the morning setting up the stall in the heat. Im older now,kids have left home, so I can sit and put my feet up with a nice cooling fan.

A levels!

I did my A level at the top of à four storey building in 100°F. It was unbearable and no account was taken of it when they awarded the grades. No norm referencing in those days.... We were on standpipes in Essex and it didn't rain for at least two months. But I al finding it harder to bear at 63 than I did at 18. Even after only week. I got good enough grades (just) to study languages at university and later taught them. I did such a good job on my own daughter that she married a Frenchman and now lives in France. She recently produced my first grandchild, who, I hope, will grow up bilingual. He already gurgles in both languages!

I definitely remember it as worse and much much longer. I was cooking in a very hot and badly ventilated kitchen for a restaurant in a Carnaby Street pub. I lived there too; I think it had about 7 floors altogether, with the upper floors being home to several barmen as well as me. Fortunately they weren't bothered enough about personal hygiene to mind that I kept the only bathroom occupied with a bath of cold water that I ran upstairs to dip into hourly. I think most nights we all knocked ourselves unconscious with alcohol, so I don't remember being unable to sleep!

Not sure if it was hotter, I was young and could cope far better in the heat, however it went on for so long. I did my finals in 1976, so hot, after that it was down the beach for the rest of the summer. All the grass on the nearby links turned brown and all all the grass verges

The main difference - so far - is that we had a drought in 1976. We may not have had much rain yet - at least not in Cheshire - but there is every chance that it will change soon. My sons were 5 and 3 that summer and both got mumps, but not severely and they didn't pass it on to me. DS1 got a bee sting in his foot, and his little brother came to me and said," I won't get mumps, Mummy, cos I didn't get stung by a bee."
I noticed, to my chagrin, that a house along the road had a new swimming pool and that it was being filled by hose from the domestic water supply. I wrote to the water company but was told that there was nothing they could do about it. On a weekend away in Shropshire, my (now ex) husband and I were aghast at the extent of fire damage to farm lands and the omni-presence of fire tenders wherever we went.

In 1976 it was so hot in Cornwall that our lawn was brown and crispy. When it did eventually rain I was then living in Devon and people came out and danced in the streets!

Other hot summers were 1959, 1969, and 1975.

My youngest daughter was two-and-a-half and just beginning to use the toilet rather than the pot. I had to tell her not to flush and it took her another 3 years to automatically flush the toilet after use. And even now (at nearly 50) she says she has to (succesfully) remind herself to flush.

Amazing what things are subconsciously instilled in us at an early age. I wonder how the Covid-era babies will get on? (Not with flushing!) but with lack of socialisation, interaction, and exploration. Sorry, off topic now, I shall retire with a cold drink and wet neck towel to mull on this.

The 76 heatwave started on June 6th. We took the infant department on a trip to Chester Zoo for the day. Only the week before it had been snowing ! My boss said that I should have a word with my friend upstairs ( God) for better weather for the upcoming trip. When we got back and I had sun stroke he said that perhaps I’d overdone the prayer for good weather. It didn’t rain for weeks and weeks and the hose pipe ban came into use. Even though I had sunstroke, I think I coped better with the heat than I do now. I want some rain !

I don't remember it being quite so hot then, but it went on for weeks. We never had one drop of rain throughout the whole of the summer holidays, sun and clear blue skies every day dawn till dusk.
I believe it was September when I drove my husband the 25 miles to hospital for his operation and the countryside was unrecognisable.
Everything was brown, the grass, shrubs and trees, not a bit of green anywhere.
I never thought it would recover but when I drove him home two weeks later we'd had rain and I could see green shoots.

1976 was hotter for much longer, all of July and August, no rain until early September, the rivers were drying up and fish dying.
There is no comparison

It probably seems hotter now if you are pre- or post-menopausal. I just seem to be a soggy mess all the time. Even within half and hour of having a cool shower. I vaguely remember sometimes having to collect water from standpipes in the street because of the shortage and the News programmes showing local reservoirs being almost empty.

I would def say no! I was pregnant with my first baby and roasting all the time, we used to walk our dog at midnight when it was cooler - as did lots of other people. Maybe it’s different in different areas. We live on the coast and it’s certainly been hot here but not unbearable. Ps. I also lived in a seaside town in 76.

Musicgirl I think the Minister for Drought was Brummie MP Denis Howell. It started raining heavily almost as soon as he was appointed and thereafter was known as the Minister for Floods.

Oh American Tan. They were the only ones we wore.

MawBe

Certainly as hot, if not hotter but, more important it went on for weeks. As I remember a Minister for Drought was appointed and that sorted it! ☔️☔️☔️☔️☔️

I read that the day Norman Fowler was officially appointed as Minister for Drought the heavens opened and it was one of the wettest autumns on record so that the parched reservoirs, which the doom and gloom mongers were telling us would take years to refill, were completely back to normal by Christmas. There was a sub-Saharan country where they had had a real drought, lasting for over three years. The leaders of the country thought that Norman Fowler was some sort of witch doctor and invited him to come to their country and work his magic there. As soon as he disembarked from the aeroplane, sure enough, the skies grew grey and the first drops of rain in three years fell. ?

dorabelle100 I lived in Ringwood too, do you remember the fires all round and they had to evacuate St Leonard's Hospital

In the Sumer we decided to go camping in the Lake District wnere in the past we had experienced wet holidays. But it was no cooler. I remember walking up Cat Bells in sundress and sun hat and heavy walking boots. So we went over to the North East Coast where it was cooler and visit the Farne Islands.
When it finally rained we stood in the garden to enjoy it.

Our weather has always been unpredictable. Way back i remember it snowed on Derby day June 5th. When my children were small in the 40s and 50s summer temperatures were often in the 90s. We no longer get the cold winters. In London in the winter of 1946/7 the temperature remained below freezing for three months. I was pregnant and often fainted queueing for our meagre rations.

Here in Cardiff the river Taff dried up in the drought of 1976! We could walk along the river bed. We got married at the end of September on a very grey cloudy afternoon, then the rain started about 5pm and forgot to stop! ??

I think we have had heatwaves in previous years. We just get more warnings now. We had a heatwave when we got married in 1983. And a few years back we had water shortages.