Yes, it's been dangerously hot - but this week doesn't compare to the summer of 1976
19.07.2022 - 19:39
/ manchestereveningnews.co.uk
Two things were inescapable in the long hot summer of 1976 - the energy-sapping heat and that twee Number One by Elton John and Kiki Dee - Don't Go Breaking My Heart - blaring from every radio.
I was 17, and prone to four-hour football matches down the park - standing over an allotment tap for water to cascade down my throat - no plastic bottles of Evian and the like then. I remember the grime of labouring in a hot factory and the perfume of honeysuckle on summer nights spent idling with mates and girls, sneaking an under-age pint or two of thirst-quenching Midlands bitter, or cold but awful Harp lager.
But while I basked with the rest of the country in an atypical British six months, a national crisis developed. A minister for drought had to be appointed, and, as reservoirs dried out, gardeners were banned from using hosepipes. Meanwhile The Bellamy Brothers, folk rockers who were so soft they made The Eagles look like Hells Angels, chirped "Let Your Love Flow Like a Mountain Stream".
The freak heat then was not the same as we are experiencing now. It was less intense - but lasted much longer. Temperatures on Manchester this week reached 38C and 40.2C at Heathrow today.
The highest temperature recorded in June 1976 was 35.6 C (96.08 F) in Southampton on the 28th. Whilst 35.9 C, (96.6 F) recorded in Cheltenham, was the highest July temperature that year.
For 15 consecutive days, from June 23rd to July 7 in 1976, temperatures reached 32.2 °C (90 °F) somewhere in England. But what really set the summer of ‘76 apart was the drought. Below average rainfall was notable from May 1975 to August 1976, resulting in one of the most significant droughts of our climate record. It was dry from March to September 1976 - six months.
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