The demand is not that high https://grid.iamkate.com/ 

Probably the usual twatter scaremongering.

12 UTC radiosonde ascent from Camborne, UK penetrated through the plume of the hottest air mass affecting currently UK. 850 hPa temperature was 24.4°C, a new July record and only 0.4°C shy of the all-time record (00 UTC 28.6.2019)

https://twitter.com/mikarantane/status/1549044376319406080

In the garden now and it feels amazing, the heat is very bearable and the plants smell stronger than usual.

As it stands just now, Edinburgh appears to have just missed out on its hottest day on record by a fraction of a degree.

Today's maximum temperature at Edinburgh Gogarbank where that record from 2019 was set, was 30.6°C which is exactly 1.0°C short of that all time record.

For my other local stations, the highest hourly temperature readings were 31°C at Edinburgh Airport and 30.5°C at the botanic Gardens in Edinburgh.

That is likely to be a new station record at Edinburgh Airport and possibly even at the botanic Gardens as well once the figure for there is adjusted by the 18z raw SYNOP/BUFR data.

Either way, today could well have been Edinburgh's second hottest day on record with that really horrible prospect of tomorrow possibly being even hotter than today.

John, can you give me any pointers on how to decode the raw SYNOPs to extract the maximum temperatures? For example Edinburgh Botanic Gardens gives me this load of codes for the 1800Z SYNOP, which would presumably include the day max. Which bit shows the maximum?

If it is indeed hidden in there then the weatherobs site should allow the missing maxima to be extracted, where they only show hourly figures.

#Breaking A 14-year-old boy is missing and is believed to have drowned after getting into difficulty in the Thames in Richmond, west London, the Metropolitan Police said pic.twitter.com/6YyFmb09oI

— PA Media (@PA) July 18, 2022

What a truly preposterous country we live in: pic.twitter.com/fga5lLkFF9

— The Purple Pimpernel (@Eyeswideopen69) July 18, 2022

The UK's biggest military base in RAF Brize Norton is going to be closed until 00:59 on Saturday, according to NOTAMS after today's heat melted the runway.

The closure means it has also grounded aircraft which were used to supply aid to Ukraine

That is raw BUFR code rather than raw SYNOP code and since I am currently down in Hawick, I don't have my usual tools at hand to decode that.

However, I do know that the encoded temperatures and dew points are in °K rather than °C. To convert that to °C, you therefore only need to subtract 273.15 from the value in question.

From close observation, it would appear that the official maximum temperature is contained within the line which contains 012111 303.99. This would suggest that that today's official maximum temperature at that particular station was 303.99°K which converts to 30.84°C.

I can't actually verify that of course but since that figure is slightly above today's highest hourly reading, that is the figure which is most likely to be correct.

If that is the case, this will confirm that the record for Edinburgh's highest ever temperature wasn't quite set there today, although that could well be a new station record.

Furthermore, this is only the first time that I have ever recorded a maximum temperature of over 30°C at all three of my local stations and that is quite an astonishing feat in itself.

Yes, tomorrow is a more difficult call than today for sure. Although a lot of the data supports 40C it is by no means certain.

The Met tweeted an atmospheric profile suggesting complete mixing would result in a temp over 40C in Lincolnshire. 

Good. With gusts up to 50kph we should be mixing nicely. 

It's 27.5C still here at almost 1am I'm not expecting it to drop below 23C now... record breaker no but still a noteworthy warm night!! 

A real surprise this morning.   A pleasant and unexpected 16 deg.

The house is being purged of hot air as we speak.  I don’t think this was in the script for overnight temps.   Maybe I’m benefiting from a shallow temp inversion or maybe it’s Just a “rural thing”.  Otherwise it doesn’t bode well for breaking temp records today  !

Thunderstorms already moving in from the SW. A monotone dark sky and a sticky 19c here. It appears to be moving very slowly so every chance the temps will rocket further east.