When UK could see July heatwave with temperatures to hit 33ºC

The June heatwave saw disturbingly high temperatures across the UK – but we may only be granted a short reprieve.

Temperatures have now dropped after several days of extreme heat last week, with many parts of the UK experiencing record-smashing heat on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.

Friday was confirmed by the Met Office as the UK’s hottest June day on record, with a temperature of 37.3°C recorded in Suffolk, surpassing Thursday’s high of 36.7°C recorded in Merryfield, Somerset.

New EU border checks should be suspended before peak summer, aviation industry leaders have said, after Brits reported huge delays due to the new Entry/Exit System (EES). 

The system, rolled out fully in April, involves people from the UK having their fingerprints registered and photographs taken to enter certain countries.

The EES is used to enter the Schengen Area, which consists of 29 European countries, mainly in the EU.

For most UK travellers, the process is done at foreign airports.

Severe operational consequences disrupting passengers and putting border authorities, airports and airlines under unsustainable pressure.

Senior figures at three major aviation industry bodies wrote to Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission warning waiting times at border control had “increased significantly, now reaching up to five hours”.

Since it’s implementation, the EES has caused travel chaos for Brits.

Russia launched a large-scale attack on Ukraine’s capital Kyiv with missiles and drones, killing at least 13 people and injuring dozens more.

Russia launched a series of strikes on Kyiv, hitting residential ⁠buildings and ⁠triggering ​a fire in a hotel on a central boulevard.

Kyiv mayor Vitali Klitschko has said 13 people had been killed, ⁠with about three dozen locations across the city damaged in the attacks.

Many residents took shelter at metro stations after the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, issued the first warnings of the attack.

Zelenskyy was forced to cut short a trip to Dublin on Wednesday, citing intelligence reports of a large-scale Russian attack.

Ukraine said on Tuesday it hit one of Russia’s largest satellite communication centers in north Moscow for the second time in just over a week.

Russian president Vladimir Putin also recently admitted Russia is facing fuel shortages after Ukraine launched repeated strikes on oil refineries, while Kyiv notably launched a large-scale attack on Moscow last month.

Sir Keir Starmer’s much-delayed Defence Investment Plan had one big bet at its heart: drones are the future of warfare.

American company Anduril makes the “Seabed Sentry“- a weighted cylinder that uses sensors and AI to monitor what is happening under the sea. They could be used to listen out for spying and sabotage by Russian submarines. They are far cheaper than crewed submarines using traditional sonar.

A dozen of the cylinders can be dropped onto the seabed at a time by an autonomous submarine, with the devices forming a network which communicate between themselves and listens out for undersea activity.

The UK is woefully unprepared with the Royal Navy in a desperate condition. Whoever sits in Downing Street come next September will need to address matters of defence, homeland and cyber defence especially, with urgency.

Officials have drawn up contingency plans to cut further green levies from energy bills if prices remain high this winter, The i Paper has been told.

Several options are now circulating among Burnham’s transition team who are believed to be weighing up how to deliver on that pledge. A Treasury source said work on a package was ongoing to help with rising costs.

Burnham could remove remaining green levies from energy bills, funded through general taxation instead.

One proposal would be to raise the bank surcharge from its current 3 per cent.

Replace stamp duty, loosen fiscal rules and tax the capital gains uplift on inherited assets.

A written statement published by the Chancellor said the remaining sum would be “confirmed at Budget 2026, in a fair and balanced way”.

The coronation of Andy Burnham is fraught with dangers. Never will a prime minister have arrived in Downing Street with so little scrutiny of what he wants to do.

Electric flying taxis could be above the streets of London by 2028, a manufacturer has claimed. Here’s what you need to know.

Vertical Aerospace is still testing the aircraft and it will need to be approved by both the approval from the UK Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) and the European Aviation Safety Authority (EASA). But the company says the aim is for air taxis to become as cheap and convenient as ordering an Uber to the airport.

Temperatures have dropped significantly this week, with the Met Office predicting highs of 27°C on Friday and the weekend. It said the weather will feel “much fresher than of late, but still warm in the sunshine and light winds.”

But the week commencing 6 July is expected to see more high temperatures, with the Met Office predicting a “potential” heatwave.

Cambridge is expected to reach a sweltering 33°C and places like London and Reading set to reach 32°C on Wednesday and Thursday, according to BBC Weather.

Met Office Deputy Chief Forecaster Tony Wisson said: “Although a return to heatwave conditions is looking increasingly likely for some areas,  the likelihood of such extreme high temperatures or high levels of humidity as last week is currently low.”

The Met Office defines a heatwave as at least three consecutive days of temperatures above what would normally be expected from that time of the year, and the threshold differs per area.

According to the Met Office, the June heatwave was driven by a “heat dome” – an area of high pressure that stalls over a region and traps heat – that settled over western Europe and brought extreme conditions across the continent.

This has been compounded by human-driven climate change, mostly caused by burning fossil fuels, which is making such extreme heatwaves more frequent and intense.

Scientists warned that the heatwave would have been virtually impossible 50 years ago.

Health chiefs warned of the impact the conditions were having on services last week as they faced significantly more life-threatening emergency calls.

A teenager in Southampton, a man in Shropshire, and a man in Clacton died after getting into difficulty swimming in open water.

The body of a 15-year-old boy was also recovered from a reservoir in Manchester on Saturday.

The deaths bring the total number of fatalities during the recent heatwave to seven after a 50-year-old man was pronounced dead on Wednesday afternoon at Aberavon beach on the south coast of Wales, and a teenage boy was found drowned in Leicestershire.

During the May heatwave, at least 15 people, the majority of whom were children, drowned whilst swimming in open water.

It prompted widespread warnings about the dangers of trying to cool off with a swim in the sea, lake, or river, as the water is often much colder than expected and can cause cold water shock syndrome, which can prove fatal.

Several hospitals declared critical incidents last week, with University Hospital Southampton being forced to cancel a number of planned operations and some outpatient appointments. Cooling systems in MRI scanners at Norfolk and Norwich University Hospitals failed, prompting a critical incident to be declared and hundreds of appointments cancelled.

Hundreds of schools and nurseries were forced to close and a hosepipe ban was brought in for Kent amid surging demand.

A wildfire was also reported in the Peak District last Wednesday due to the high temperatures.

Courts were also affected, with the cells at Bristol Crown Court closed because of the heat and defendants moved to Bristol Magistrates’ Court, where it was thought to be cooler.