2018 British Isles heatwave
period of unusually hot weather in the summer of 2018
The 2018 Britain and Ireland heatwave was a period of unusually hot weather that took place in June, July and August. It caused widespread drought, hosepipe bans, crop failures, and a number of wildfires. These wildfires worst affected northern moorland areas around the Greater Manchester region, the largest was at Saddleworth Moor and another was at Winter Hill, together these burned over 14 square miles (36 km2) of land over a period of nearly a month.
A heat wave was officially declared on 22 June, with Scotland and Northern Ireland recording temperatures above 30 °C (86 °F) for the first time since the July 2013 heat wave. The British Isles were in the middle of a strong warm anticyclone inside a strong northward meander of the jet stream, this was part of the wider 2018 European heat wave. The Met Office declared summer 2018 the joint hottest on record together with 1976, 2003 and 2006, until it was beaten by 2025.
Weather earlier in 2018
Spring started with record cold in early March with the 2018 Great Britain and Ireland cold wave. There were three spells of summer heat afterwards, starting in mid-April. The April 2018 heatwave began on 18 and 19 April. St James's Park in London recorded the country's hottest April day in nearly 70 years when temperatures reached 28.1 °C (82.6 °F).
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This entry incorporates text from “2018 British Isles heatwave” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.