UK heatwave – The UK is bracing for record-breaking heat as Met Office forecasts point to temperatures of up to 38C–40C, while the Met Office recorded 29,074 lightning strikes in the past 24 hours. In London, heavy rain tied to thunderstorms has flooded parts of the transpo
By early Tuesday morning, London was still negotiating the leftovers of a brutal night: lightning, flash flooding and the kind of rain that comes fast and then disappears—leaving people to discover, at street level, what it has done to their commute.
London Fire Brigade said it had responded to around 400 calls overnight. That included two house fires believed to be caused by lightning strikes and flooding of homes. As thunderstorms followed soaring temperatures, the force urged drivers not to drive through flooded areas.
The disruption has spilled into everyday life. Transport for London said there is no service on the Elizabeth line between Heathrow Terminals 2 and 3 and Heathrow Terminal 4 due to heavy rain causing flooding. Severe delays were also reported between Paddington and Heathrow Terminal 5 and Reading after an earlier points failure at Southall.
The city’s Underground network has been hit in multiple places: severe delays on the Mildmay Line. running a reduced service because of the hot weather; the Metropolitan Line partly suspended between Baker Street and Aldgate; and the Hammersmith and City Line suspended between Barking and Moorgate. The entire Circle Line has been suspended, along with parts of the District Line.
The weather system isn’t just wet and violent—it’s also intensely hot. The UK Met Office said 29,074 lightning strikes were recorded in the UK in the last 24 hours to 9am on Tuesday. All of these strikes were over England, with the majority—18,540—over Somerset. The Met Office’s lightning map also shows hundreds more strikes across south-east England on Tuesday morning.
Overnight temperatures underlined how little relief people are getting. The highest overnight temperature was 20.4C in Gosport. Hampshire. while eight other places recorded a tropical night. meaning temperatures do not fall below 20C. Those locations were Crosby in Merseyside. Plymouth and North Wyke in Devon. Aberporth. Cardiff and St Athan in Wales. Hurn in Dorset and the Isle of Wight.
Across the UK, the warnings have sharpened into something closer to a hard boundary. The UK Health Security Agency has issued a red health warning for six regions of England from 1am on Wednesday until 11pm on Thursday. The agency said the warning indicates “a risk to life for even the healthy population. ” and that impacts could reach beyond health and social care—affecting transport systems. food. water. energy supplies and businesses.
Those six regions are the West Midlands, East Midlands, South East, South West, London and east of England. The warning is the second red heat health warning to be issued, after the first in July 2022 when temperatures soared above 40C in the UK for the first time.
Dr Agostinho Sousa, the agency’s head of extreme events and health protection, said: “It is vitally important that people understand the risk posed by high temperatures like these, and take steps to keep themselves and their friends, families and neighbours safe.”
An amber health alert has also been issued for the North West, North East and Yorkshire and the Humber for the same period, with the agency saying the impact was expected to be felt across the whole of the health service in these areas.
The Met Office has issued an even rarer step for the weather itself. With temperatures forecast to reach 38C to 40C in parts of England and Wales. Britain’s national weather forecaster issued a red weather warning covering an area stretching from London to Swansea and Somerset to Birmingham from 9am on Wednesday to 9pm on Thursday. Reserved for the most severe events. the Met Office said the heatwave is expected to bring “severe and significant impacts. ” including widespread health risks for many—not just those normally more vulnerable to heat—and even danger to life.
The alert also warned of “substantial changes” needed in working practices and daily routines. It indicated a high risk of failure of heat-sensitive systems and equipment, bringing loss of power and other essential services such as water, electricity, gas or mobile phone services.
For a wider area, an amber weather warning is in place for England and Wales between Monday and Thursday, while a yellow warning for thunderstorms is in place until 9pm on Monday covering an area between Bristol and Aylesbury, including Buckinghamshire.
As the UK watches the thermometer edge toward the most dangerous thresholds, the record trail has already started. The Met Office data shows a highest temperature of 35.1C so far this year. measured at Kew Gardens in London on 26 May. It also set a new record for the highest May temperature since comparable Met Office data began in 1884.
The figures keep climbing: 35.6C is the highest June temperature on record, set on 29 June 1957 at Camden Square in London, then equalled on 28 June 1976 at Mayflower Park in Southampton. The highest temperature recorded in the UK last year was 35.8C, reached on 1 July 2025 at Faversham in Kent.
The 40C mark—passed only once since records began—was reached on 19 July 2022 at Coningsby in Lincolnshire. with five Met Office weather stations measuring temperatures above 40C on that date. including three in London (Heathrow. Kew Gardens and Northolt). one in Lincolnshire (Coningsby) and one in Nottinghamshire (Gringley on the Hill). The highest temperature ever recorded in the UK, 40.3C, was also reached on 19 July 2022 at Coningsby in Lincolnshire.
Heat, though, is not only a human story in the UK. Birds are showing damage too. A specialist said species such as swifts, swallows, sparrows and starlings—making nests in roof eaves—have been particularly affected by abnormally high temperatures.
Romaine de Jaegere. founder of the Centre for the Rehabilitation of Animals Living in the Wild refuge in Temploux in Belgium. said: “Temperatures on the roofs can sometimes reach 50. even 60 degrees Celsius. So they prefer to jump rather than let themselves die and literally cook in their nests.” He said the shelter had received 150 animals in the past three days.
While London deals with flooding and transit failures, other parts of Europe are facing their own escalating heat. Italy’s health ministry has declared a red heatwave alert in 15 cities including Milan and Rome on Tuesday. and said the number would go up to 16 on Wednesday. During a red alert. the ministry advises people to eat light. stay indoors in the hottest parts of the day and sprinkle themselves with cool water.
In France. a heatwave red alert has been issued to more than half of the country’s departments. affecting about 39 million people. and at least 18 have died—including two children left in a hot car—since the weekend. The French prime minister Sebastien Lecornu was scheduled to hold a crisis meeting on Tuesday, an aide said. More than 1,350 schools have been shut due to the heat.
Italy also issued heatwave red alerts for 12 cities on Monday.
Beyond deaths linked to heat, emergency details are stark. In south-east France. first responders were unable to resuscitate two children. aged two and four. who were found unconscious by their mother in the family car outside their home on Monday. a prosecutor in Carpentras said. The deaths followed those of three elderly people. aged between 80 and 95. who died near Bordeaux over the weekend as a result of health problems caused by the extreme temperatures. an official said. Thirteen more drowned in swimming accidents.
Spain’s heat has pushed beyond what many local residents are used to even in the hottest months. In San Sebastian. the temperature was set to reach 40C—more than double the city’s historic average for 22 June. according to Reuters Climate Monitor. Belgium’s heatwave is forecast to last a week with temperatures “the hottest ever recorded. ” warned the IRM meteorological institute’s head of forecasting.
Paris is expected to register its highest temperature for June, reaching 38.4C, according to preliminary numbers from Meteo-France.
In Germany, authorities reported five deaths over the weekend in a spike in fatal swimming accidents. Police said on Monday that several heat-stricken passengers were treated by emergency services at Frankfurt airport the previous day after their plane was held for more than an hour on the apron before take-off.
Temperatures have also been elevated across parts of Spain. The Aemet weather agency said temperatures were 5-10C above normal for this time of year, and more than 10C in some northern areas.
A parallel thread runs through the science being discussed as the heat settles over western Europe. The heatwave affecting large parts of Europe is known as an Omega block because it takes the shape of the Greek letter. with a bulge of hot air in the middle and cooler air either side. Clair Barnes. a climate scientist at Imperial College London. said: “It’s drawing warm air up from North Africa. from the Sahara. and that’s why we have this really intense heat.” She added: “It’s very slow moving and it means there’s kind of no wind. no breeze for respite.”.
She said heatwaves and storms were being intensified by climate change, pushing temperatures higher and causing more rainfall.
The shift is visible in wider research too. A study released as Europe sweltered through the heatwave tracked how heat stress levels surged between the 1970s and 2024. It was published in the journal Nature Climate Change on Monday. Lead study author Rebecca Emerton. of the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts. said: “On every continent. strong to extreme heat stress is now more frequent.” She also said that might not sound like so much. but it meant an extra approximately one billion people were seeing at least some extreme heat stress now that wouldn’t have done in the 1970s.
In the 1970s, for example, 16% of the world’s population experienced at least one day of extreme heat stress—when the “feels-like” temperature was at least 46C. Fifty years later, the rate had risen to 22%.
Back in the UK, the practical response to the heat is already reaching daily schedules. Scores of schools across England and Wales announced they would close or finish early this week to protect pupils amid the extreme heat, while transport bosses warned people against all but essential travel.
The Buckingham School in Buckinghamshire said it would be closed on Wednesday and Thursday and asked students to take part in online learning. St John’s Marlborough in Wiltshire said it would close early on Tuesday and be shut all day on Wednesday and Thursday before reopening on Friday.
The National Association of Head Teachers said it had written to all its members with guidance on dealing with the heat this week, including the impact on pupils and staff, legal positions and when to consider closure.
Advice has been issued for transport users as well. Network Rail warned passengers should “only travel if absolutely essential on Wednesday and Thursday,” saying that “extreme heat can have a significant impact on the railway.”
Even so. Tuesday’s streets are being shaped by the contradiction of this weather—heat without enough recovery. and storms that can turn severe within minutes. For those trying to move through London right now, it isn’t abstract. It is a choice between safety and getting to work: bypass flooded areas. wait for services that may not come. and prepare for a red weather and red health warning window that runs straight through Wednesday into Thursday.
By Tuesday evening, the forecast may feel like it’s looming ahead. But the evidence is already here: lightning strikes counted overnight. temperatures that have climbed toward record territory. homes flooded after storms. and a transit system under strain—while the warnings for the next stretch of the heat continue to tighten.
Europe heatwave UK red warning Met Office lightning strikes London transport disruption Elizabeth Line flooding UK Health Security Agency heat stress study Omega block France heatwave deaths