Is the heatwave hotter than the summer of 1976?

Yes, as others have also said, it went on for months with heat & no rain.Every where gardens were dried up and even parks and trees were going brown & crisp.

We were discussing summer of 76 recently and how some one would have to be about 50 to remember how hot it was.
Although the summer didn't start warm. My husband and his friend was putting up a greenhouse at the end of May and it was so cold I was sat in my full length sheepskin coat giving directions from the instructions.
I too was pregnant and gave birth first week in August. I couldn't sleep through the night and 3.30am when it was daylight I would be outside gardening! Later in day when the heat became unbearable I would have tepid showers. Everyday the sky was brilliant blue and cloudless.
I clearly remember the September thunderstorms that broke that heat wave. The electric was off for a couple of days following and it was back to basics. The summer of 75 was a pre taster of what was to come in 76. July and August 75 was very hot. Just like this year is forecast to be.

No that one was hotter- i can remember I'd gone to stay at my best friends house for a couple of weeks as she had a a big family and as we went to different schools too it was company for me- ( i was youngest in our house but as brother & sister were quite a bit older it was like growing up an only child) i remember i shared a room at my friends house with her & her sister and we had the sash window pushed right up every night but it was still too hot, there was no air really, no breeze like there usually is by night time, the temperature never dropped, we were awake hours as it was so blooming hot! And as we were playing out for a lot of the time during the day (we were 13 by then so 'playing out' meant just wandering around her (new built back then) estate seeing our other friends- or sunbathing on her driveway on a bed cover(they had no car) i remember i got really bad sunburn on my arms that year- i had to keep putting cold wet flannels on them to take the heat out of it(we didn't get all the warnings about the sun/about sun safety in those days)! My mum came to collect me and my arms were so sore & burnt she had to take me to chemist for 'special' cream for treating sunburn- these days we would not let that happen of course, and if it did and was so bad we would scoot the child round to a&e or at very least,the dr's surgery.So NO-1976 was definitely worse (so far) we had a water ban on hosepipes and watering gardens, or washing cars etc, and it got so bad we had stand pipes put up in our street as there was a water shortage as the reservoirs were drying up.

Yes it was hot and lasted months, as other posters say. There were water shortages and reservoirs were perilously low. As someone upthread said, some areas had to have standpipes installed in the streets for water.
I seem to recall that that year we had a plague of greenfly quickly followed by ladybirds - thousands everywhere.
A very strange summer indeed.

I was married in Henley in May 1976 and it was so hot! We were going to Seychelles in June for two years and thought we would be nicely acclimatised before we left. Never. We climbed down the airplane steps in Mahe and it felt like we were in an overheated greenhouse.

I was at the end of my first year at college and everyone else, except me, sunbathed out the back of our halls of residence. I stayed inside all the time and kept haunting the library for more books! Never have liked being out in the sun. I was badly blistered by the sun as a child and have hated it ever since.

For me 76 was hotter and lasted a long time. I recall staying during the night to cook food as far too hot to turn an oven or hob on for any length of time. There was a water ban for weeks too, at least in the south of England.

N.Ireland hit 30 degrees in 1976, y'day 32 degrees so we are definitely warmer this year and told it may break another record today as we still have an amber alert for extreme heat today. I can't really remember the 1976 one, although I was 10 years old, but listening to all your stories about it and how long it lasted, it sounded bloomin awful.

Come to near the coast of Norfolk, we’ve had a lot of cloud, much lower temperatures apart, from an odd day, and the evenings have been quite chilly some days!

muse

The odd day may be hotter but there were parts of UK that had no rain for nearly 7 weeks in 1976.

We were in the UK and had no rain for more than six months!

Didn't they say earlier in the year that one month had been hotter than 1976?
I just don't believe it, I had my first child in March that year and the heatwave started in early April. It lasted into October, without remission, and I am quite convinced that it was hotter than this year. Our local common kept spontaneously bursting into flames and ended up as a blackened wasteland, with charred trees sticking up. This simply isn't happening this year, we've had the awful rain and we do have cooler or more breezy days during the hotter spells.
I'm much fatter than I was in those days and completely melt on an ordinary summer day, let alone when my bedroom is at 31 degrees as it was a couple of days ago. At least today it is breezy.

We spent a couple of days away in an older house this week and the ground floor there was pleasantly cool. I'm trying to think of ways to improve the insulation in our modern flat to keep it a little cooler but huge patio doors really need shutters and in many cases this is simply not possible so we have bought a lovely awning.

My daughter was born December 1975, and her Christening was on 4th July 1976 - this was the hottest day, so far, but it got hotter after that. I think it went on longer than this year and I remember that everybody’s gardens were just burnt to a crisp - no grass, and a total ban on watering gardens or cleaning cars.

No, 1976 was a whole summer of high temperatures right i to September. I remember getting a very dark tan (you did that then!) and it seemed to go on forever.

I don't think so, I was pregnant with my second child and it was unbearable! It went on for weeks and weeks too, and we had to use standpipes ,the water was turned off at the mains during the day where I was living at the time, not ideal when you had a toddler who was still in terry nappies!

I remember the summer of 1976 only too well. I suspect as people say it was longer and prolonged drought but now the weather is all over the place and the odd day has been far too hot. In 1976 my grandmother died in Suffolk and I had the job or sorting out funeral and getting her very neglected house on the market , while also starting my first teaching job in Devon with standpipes and restricted water usage!
But this week I deserve sympathy as I was sat inside as nowhere outside was cool enough when our gasman came round to check the boiler(long story but we think the meter is faulty and needed to check boiler not causing the overuse of gas problem) and to check it he put every radiator in the house on high for 10 minutes and I had to go room to room to ensure the radiators were working properly.YES THEY WERE and boiler fine . But house took hours to cool down.

I gave birth to my daughter on 3rd June and it was already hot then. She had a heat rash in hospital and was shown to the other mums so that they would recognise it if their baby got it.
It was too hot all summer for a young baby. I used to feed her around 4am then put her outside, under our bedroom window at the back of the house, in her big Silver Cross pram with an insect net and a cat net over it until 9am when I had to bring her inside as it was getting too warm outside. I put the pram next to the dining room table with a fan on the table to help keep her cool. It was so hot that I had to put a nappy between us while I fed her or we would be stuck together! It was really hot all summer (2 evening thunderstorms lasting about half an hour each in the middle of summer then straight back to heat. The road steamed as it dried!) This heat lasted until a week or 10 days into September.
Truly a summer to remember!
We slept downstairs as it was too hot upstairs. My friends put their makeup in the fridge to keep it cool. One lady put her knickers in a bag in her freezer to get a few minutes of bliss in the morning. The government was encouraging people to shower with a friend to preserve water. In some parts of the country there were standpipes for water as none was coming out of the tap!

My dd was a few months old and it was hotter fir much longer than the few days we have had. It went in fir weeks /months, every day. I stayed home inside with curtains drawn, unless I had to get water from the standpipe.
The summer before when I was Pregnant was similarly hot, I was working and found it almost impossible to deal with.

I lived in Berkshire at the time and remembered the temperature in the 90s, but is it just that Harrogate is a cooler area, but we haven't gone over 86 degree

The thing with 1976 was that it had been a very dry spring, so water levels were low to begin with - hence the serious water shortages. It was the year I got married too, and after our wedding in Wiltshire we drove up to Liverpool where we were to live. All the farmers fields, which should have been full of cereals and crops were turned to brown dusty dirt bowls.
This was also the early introduction to duvets, which were sold as being able to keep you warm in winter and cool in summer. Who were they kidding? We had been given a 15tog one as a wedding present. Cool, cosy nights? Not a chance.
Prior to our wedding I was teaching textiles in a 1960s designed secondary school. One wall was completely windows, and by the start of lessons at 9.30 the temperature was already in the 80s. Lessons were carried out, sat on corridor floors out of the sun. Aaah! I remember it well

That summer I was expecting my daughter. The heat was very intense. She was born on 9th September. There were storms that night and no more good weather after that!

I don’t think it’s hotter. I had a 3 month old baby in the heatwave in 1976 and we just drew the curtains and went to bed in the afternoons. Too hot to be out and it went on for ages!

It went on for weeks. I was pregnant and had HG and couldn’t go out in it at all as I immediately threw up. I had to sit by the back door and watch my two year old play in the garden. The best summer we’ve ever had and I missed it!

I don’t think so. I remember the tarmac on the roads melting in 76 and it went on for about three months.

The summer of '76 was a lot hotter and went on for a lot longer. I remember, living in Dorset at the time, we had standpipes where we needed to fetch our water. It seemed to be months before we had any rain

Grannyboots - why on earth would you wear tights in Summer????