Certainly a real drop here. From about 4pm it felt like autumn here. Howling wind, drizzle, thoroughly unpleasant. Had to go and rescue lots of stuff that was blowing round the garden.

AT 7pm yesterday Farnborough was reading 28.1C. At 7pm today it was 12.2C. That's a 15.9C drop in 24 hours.

The highest hourly temp today was 23.4C at 11am. By 3pm it had dropped 5C to 18.4C. Two hours later it was 15.7C!

Fortunately we just managed to get my son's birthday party (outdoor) in before the weather turned. Started at 1pm in warm muggy conditions, and around 2pm the chill started to set in but it was still dry. Finished at 3, and by 4pm it was horrid out.

I kept mine firmly shut to keep warm indoors which is 23-25C so comfortable while outside is very cold but tomorrow going to be 20C with sunshine so that will keep indoors in low 20's to mid 20's by next week.  Don't want to put the heating on if you let the free warmth out too much.

Mine is set to 16°C until autumn. The thought of mid 20s overnight is horrible. I suspect the heating may kick in once or twice before the end of August.

Indeed I have been in Gloucester  totally awful 12 degrees wet and gloomy  yet back home eastbourne sunshine and 26 degrees  incredible contrasts today .   Up here tho about as dire as June gets 

Roasting in parts of France today particularly the SW. Biarritz was 43c. Cap Ferret on an exposed pennisular near Bordeaux reached 42c which seems incredible to me, when I have been there it has always been cooler and heavily Atlantic influenced.

Heavy Thunderstorms in Bordeaux this evening and temps dropped 10c in half an hour. 

An 11am high of 24.6c but at 13.9c now it all feels like a distant memory.

A strange evening with a strong NE'ly wind, upper cloud moving in from the SW, lightning to the NW and despite the very cool feel the 850Hpa's are still close to 15c !

Is that official? We hit 28C down here today with even Thorney having had an hourly temp of 27C, and that's a station kind of outside of any built up areas. Gosport is a station that the met office don't typically release info on until the end of the day, and it is normally hotter - occasionally a UK hotspot. What about Hurn? Gosport station being stuck on the northeast coast out in Portsmouth harbour almost doesn't tend to fair well in easterly winds because of the immediate proximity to the water.

Leconfield is definitely official, with a westerly breeze like today it is well sheltered from the maritime influence.
At one time this afternoon whilst it was 28c there, it was only 18c under clear skies at Stonyhurst near Blackburn , with the sea breeze extending well inland. Sharp temp gradient west to east . Reached 23c here at 12.30 then didn't climb any further for the same reason. A strange day.

All eyes on the north of England for today's heat. Cloud and rain has already pushed into southern parts and will obviously suppress temperatures down here. As well as the prolonged sunshine further north, the upper air temperatures are high all the way up the east of the UK today. This includes the Fife, Angus area of Scotland where there is a tongue of 12C 850HPa air. 

It will be interesting to see if parts of Eastern Scotland enjoy the heat at the surface too. 

Possibly somewhere like Leeming could have the official UK high today at about 28c.
Leeds Weather Centre/Linton-on ooze and Church Fenton would have been candidates if they were still operational.

Cloud is marching NW though, seems to be about at the Wash down to Severn Estuary at the moment. 

Make me wonder why they remove interesting weather stations that give actual high temperatures? York was 29C last week and that far north to get the heat but knowing that York does well in heatwaves from my time in 1985 to 1990 school days in Boston Spa, I used to see York goes to 30-31C during school terms every year,.  

Went up to 28.5C this late morning before unexpected overcast skies come up to ruin it.  Thought you expect some clouds forming but not full on overcast thin clouds.

Talking about closing interesting weather stations but keeping open other stations in areas that give mild nights mainly to keep CET above average false readings so they closed stations that give cooler nights like Redhill, Benson, etc.

Redhill has gone but Benson is still an official station for now! Rickmansworth was another classic frost-hollow station that has been consigned to the history books.

As for today's temperatures, Hawarden looks like the leader with a 27.6C hourly reading at 3pm.

Rickmansworth used to be the hottest every time during 1995 summer I remember so they decided to shut down because of that.   If those nasty clouds did not come up some where would hit 30C today, here would had been was 28.5C at 11.30am with over 4 hours to go for hottest time.

Also, urban areas are where most people actually live so surely it is more representative of what most people are experiencing. I know that operationally rural or airport sites are easier to maintain because there is less risk of external impacts affecting the readings (roads, buildings etc.) which means that the records are more homogeneous. And then you get the heat island argument but I'd certainly prefer to see a Leeds City Centre weather station than use the one a few hundred feet higher at Leeds/Bradford Airport ....

Similar to here. It peaked at 26.7°C for me, before turning cloudier and increasingly humid. Some showers are skirting around now too, but they seem to have missed me.